Peachtree Hoops: Hawks poised to be active again on draft night

[Hawksquawk]

With six out of the top 44 picks, it should be an eventful evening, to say the least.

With the Atlanta Hawks bevy of picks in the 2019 NBA Draft recently growing even larger (three of the top-17 picks, six of the top 44), speculation is mounting that the club will be on the move again this year come draft night. On Friday morning, general manager Travis Schlenk all but confirmed that moves would be made over the next six days.

“It’s no secret with our three second-round picks we’re going to try to package them and move up if we can,” Schlenk said. “What we don’t want to do, or what we’ll try to avoid is selling them.”

Schlenk has been open about his desire to consolidate their draft picks throughout the pre-draft process, as the team does not want to add six rookies to the roster. Packaging multiple picks to move up this year has been a popular topic of conversation around the Hawks, in both the first and second rounds, with rumors swirling that Schlenk is looking to move up as high as No. 5. Moving two or three second-rounders to buy back in at the bottom of the first round might not be as sexy as jumping up to No. 5 to grab Jarrett Culver, but could be very useful all the same.

The Hawks are still in asset acquisition mode, as Schlenk has said throughout this process and shown with the recently-agreed trade with the Brooklyn Nets. The assets they’ve acquired for this year’s draft put them in the awkward position of having too many assets, but there are going to be teams who are interested in swapping picks as the draft approaches, either to move down out of the first round or jump into the fray altogether if they don’t have their own picks to use. Schlenk and his staff will have to weigh their various options over the next week or so in order to make the best deal available to them, and with so many picks at their disposal, there are sure to be many calls placed to and from Hawks HQ.

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