When the final buzzer sounded on the 2022-23 Atlanta Hawks regular season — a throwaway game against the Boston Celtics — despite 19 points from Atlanta Hawks wingman Garrison Mathews, I came away with the feeling that Mathews hadn’t shown the flashes I thought he was capable of after joining Atlanta late in the season in a February trade with the Houston Rockets. I had hoped that Mathews would rejoin the team in 2023-24 to show what he was really capable of.
Sure enough, the Hawks brought Mathews back for the 2023-24 season, and while he didn’t begin the season as a member of the rotation, by December he was seeing regular minutes for the Hawks, eventually featured in 66 games and averaging 15 minutes per game.