Up to this point in his career, Jalen Johnson has had to bide his time as member of the Atlanta Hawks.
Selected with the 20th pick in the 2021 draft, Johnson impressed — along with fellow Hawks draftee Sharife Cooper — at NBA Summer League but in his rookie season opportunities were not plentiful. The Hawks played catch-up in the standings for most of the 2021-22 season as they scraped into a play-in scenario, and, combined with the reality of most NBA rookies (they tend to struggle at times to have an overall positive impact on the court), Johnson simply wasn’t called upon often, and appeared in just 22 games and an average of 5.