Jeremy Lin is on the move again. The veteran guard has been bouncing around the league for nearly a decade at this point, which is almost hard to believe. This time, he's heading down south. According to a report from ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, the Brooklyn Nets are sending Lin to the Atlanta Hawks in a deal that also sees the two teams swapping second-round picks.
This is an interesting deal. Well below the salary cap, the Hawks are an easy candidate to take on money. However, teams that take on bad contracts usually do so in order to also acquire a pick or an additional young prospect. In this case, the Hawks and Nets are simply swapping second-round picks, and who knows how that will pan out.
Plus, the Hawks already have Dennis Schroder and just drafted Trae Young, which would seem to indicate they are set at point guard. Perhaps there are future deals in play here for the Hawks, but bringing in Lin doesn't seem to make much sense from their perspective. Also, for what it's worth, Lin is coming off a ruptured patella tendon suffered on opening night last season.
As for the Nets, this move is best seen in conjunction with another move they made on Thursday night, taking on $21M in contracts from the Denver Nuggets in Kenneth Faried and Darrell Arthur. They got a protected 2019 first-round pick for their troubles. And in taking on that money from the Nuggets, they then had to unload Lin's money somewhere else. Thus how he ended up on the Hawks.
In the end, this Hawks-Nets trade likely won't be a memorable one, but it's an interesting bit of business nonetheless.