Hoopinion: ESPNLA: McMenamin: Josh Powell To Leave L.A. For Hawks

[Hawksquawk]

Dave McMenamin reports that sources say the Hawks will maintain their two Josh minimum by signing former Laker reserve Josh Powell:

The Atlanta Hawks are close to finalizing a one-year deal with forward Josh Powell worth approximately $1.1 million, according to sources close to the situation. The deal is expected to be finalized early next week, perhaps as soon as Monday.

That would be pretty quick work by the standards of this organization.

For his part, the 28-year-old Powell is a dreadful offensive player who, despite shooting just 41.7 eFG% and 44.7 TS%, kept his usage rate at around 19% during his two seasons with the Lakers. There are two reasons Powell struggles offensively: he's a below average finisher at the rim (53.8% over 318 attempts) and 44% of his field goal attempts come at least 10 feet from the basket and generate an eFG% of 38.3.

Powell has been a good offensive rebounder (9.8 career OR%; 10.7% and 11.6% in the two seasons in which he played the most minutes) over the course of his NBA career. His work on the defensive glass (sadly and fittingly) is less encouraging as he rebounded just 13.7% of opponents' misses (league average for all players: 14.7%) last season. Marvin Williams, for example, has never posted a defensive rebounding rate that low.

The Hawks may manage to bring back Jason Collins* and find an inferior replacement for Joe Smith.

*As with Collins, the Hawks will get a rebate from the NBA should they sign Powell: $215,210 of the $1,069,509 in this case.

More from McMenamin:

[Powell] was an influential locker room presence as one of Kobe Bryant's most trusted confidants. Powell was credited by teammates for being a consummate professional as a practice player.

That professionalism that helped in practice failed to carry over into games. The Lakers were far worse with Powell on the court. Granted, that has something to do with how good Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum are but it's not like Josh Smith, Al Horford, and Zaza Pachulia are a bunch of bums.

Josh Powell	Offense		Defense
	On	Off	On	Off
2008-09	101.3	114.9	109.8	103.1
2009-10	102.6	109.8	108.4	103.1

No typos in the above table. The Lakers, who outscored opponents by 5 points per 100 possessions in 2008-09 and 8.2 points per 100 possessions in 2009-10, were outscored by 8.4 and 5.7 points per 100 possessions* with Powell on the floor in the last two seasons (over roughly 2400 possessions), respectively.

*Source: BasketballValue.com

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