‘Everything’s future forward’ for Hawks following trade deadline

External expectations for the Hawks (26-28) skyrocketed in the offseason after the moves they made to bring Porzingis, Kennard and Nickeil Alexander-Walker onto the roster. Now, only Alexander-Walker remains of their big free agency moves, but the internal expectations of looking to the future remained the focus for the Hawks.

“Everything’s future forward. We didn’t want the flexibility that we created at the start of the season to be impacted by the deadline,” general manager Onsi Saleh said on Saturday. “And we felt like we maintained that flexibility and again, your favorite word, ‘optionality,’ going into the summertime. We really wanted to maintain that.

“There’s always interesting pathways, like getting in a trade exception, having the MLE (midlevel exception), having cap space, different things like that. That’s how we got Nickeil last year. That’s how we got Luke. And we want to take advantage of those circumstances and just maintain flexibility for moving forward.”

But the Hawks also wanted to make sure that the deals they made allowed them to recoup as many assets as possible.

Since then, the Hawks have acquired:

“We felt like we didn’t harm that,” Saleh said. “We also felt that, if you’re going to make trades in this league, you need things to trade. And, we were at a deficit in certain things, and it was hard to see people move. But the same time there was an importance to getting more assets to try and add to the team, not only via the draft or via trade, if it ever comes up. But we felt good about what we did.”

Here are some other key things Saleh said Saturday about the Hawks’ moves at the 2026 NBA trade deadline.

On the future financial flexibility Kuminga and Hield’s contracts provide: “With those two guys, specifically, we’re evaluating, right? We’re going to see how this season goes and understand where it all ends up. But we got a bunch of games left. Let’s see how this all fits and works. Because they’re both pretty good players.”

On balancing building for the future and trying to win now: “We’re trying to do both. We’re trying to add talent, but also with being competitive is really important to us. Having a competitive environment in your program, I think just helps with player development, and I think it’s really important where we are at to be competitive. And I felt like we tried to do both things at this deadline, and we felt pretty good about it.”

On what he sees from the team as currently constructed: “Honestly, when it comes to expectations and things like that, the only thing I really care about is development and these guys getting better, growing as a team, growing as a group. I think that was a big reason for the shift this season was seeing our young core kind of grow and develop together and create a style play under Quin (coach Quin Snyder), that made a lot of sense. So I just want us to be competitive. That’s the biggest thing. I’m not going to put any expectations down there. We’re trying to build this thing out to be really good and sustainable for a long period of time.”