Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the Las Vegas Summer League on Tuesday and discussed the current state of the team’s roster with much of the offseason work done. The following are excerpts from the interview.
Q. What are your thoughts about the roster as it currently stands after all the moves that you made?
A. We are comfortable with where we are. We feel like we have good depth — three centers, three forwards, six guards when you count Charlie (Brown). Really, we like the versatility of it, too. Other than really Alex Len and Trae (Young), guys can play multiple positions. We are pretty comfortable.
Q. Are you done?
A. We'll probably add one more veteran.
Q. Do you plan on adding another two-way player?
A. Yes. The staff is going through that right now, just evaluating who is out there. Watching all these games to put together a list.
Q. Can you give me any insight on the trade of Omari Spellman?
A. It balanced our roster out a little bit. Getting (Damian Jones) back who can play center and we get a future pick for taking on very little salary.
Q. Have you thought about bringing back Vince Carter?
A. We've talked to him. I think he has options. I think he has interest in us. I've been talking to his agent.
Q. When you do develop a plan to play the young core of players?
A. That will start when we get everyone back healthy and in September. The coaching staff will sit down and figure out what the rotation is going to look like. (Coach) Lloyd (Pierce) understands that we need to get these guys minutes. Last year, Trae and John (Collins) played about 30 minutes. They are probably going to play 35 minutes this year as they continue to grow. De'Andre (Hunter) is obviously going to play a lot of minutes. Cam (Reddish) we are going to play a lot.
Q. Does the style of play change at all with the players you have brought in?
A. No, I don't think so. What we did was we traded away some wings, but we drafted some wings, versatile guys. A little more focus on two-way players, De'Andre and (Bruno) Fernando both are really good defensive players. I think Cam is an underrated defensive player, too.
Q. In hindsight, you went into this offseason with the draft lottery and then the six draft picks. How do you think you did when it was all said and done?
A. We got three guys that I don't want to say we targeted but guys we were really high on. We had both Cam and De'Andre rating in the top five all year long. Every month we do rankings and our group had them in the top five. We can walk away with two of those guys, we feel really good about. We were really high on Bruno and when he slid down to the second round, we cashed in some of our chips to go get him. We think he has a bright future.
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