They should serve as a cautionary tale for us this offseason. Rather than being patient with their build, the Hawks added 4 veterans (Rondo, Gallinari, Dunn and Bogdanovic) for $53 million that have contributed nothing toward their 15 wins (10th in the standings) this season. The last thing we need to do is follow suit, thinking we're a few PRICEY veterans away from sustained competitiveness. The improvement this team needs to make, must come from our youth or through youth we add via trade.
That being said, we have an opportunity to capitalize on the Hawks misery. They are now entering the phase of their rebuild where they have to extend the young players that are actually apart of their core. John Collins, their 2nd best player, is about to become a restricted free agent and bound to command a massive amount of money in an otherwise underwhelming free agent class. With the Hawks already committed to +$100 million next season, they'll have to unload some or all of those players to make it possible to keep Collins.
This gives us an opportunity to pillage them for draft picks. Even if they do keep Collins, they won't be locks to make the playoffs, which could allow us to potentially add another team's lottery pick(s) to our war chest moving forward. I wouldn't mind taking that Gallinari contract for some combination of (a) lightly protected pick(s) and pick swaps. They could be extremely valuable in expediting our rebuild OR as trade ammo for the next available star (e.g. Bradley Beal, Ben Simmons, Karl Anthony Towns). Just food for thought.