Credit Travis Schlenk for wrangling a lottery gone wrong and making it go right. The Atlanta Hawks cobbled together enough not-prime assets to gain access to the first pick outside the top three, which was as high as they could reasonably hope to get. They took what might have been Jaxson Hayes and turned him into De’Andre Hunter. That’s an overall win.
Still at issue is whether it’s a windfall. Hunter might not have been the fourth-best player in this draft. Even if he was, this year’s fourth-best might have been 10th-best last year. He’s a good defender who became a scorer as a redshirt sophomore at Virginia.