From the moment Kirk Hinrich arrived in Washington last summer, he could’ve been forgiven for wanting to leave. It only took the Wizards until a day before the NBA trade deadline to make it happen – and they got a 2011 first-round draft pick to boot.
A short time ago, the NBA announced that Hinrich and center Hilton Armstrong were traded to the Atlanta Hawks for guard Mike Bibby, swingman Maurice Evans, rookie guard Jordan Crawford and Atlanta’s first-round pick in June.
Hinrich, who averaged 11.1 points and 4.4 assists per game in 48 games for Washington, was initially acquired along with Kevin Seraphin and cash from the Chicago Bulls ahead of last summer’s draft in exchange for the rights to Vladimir Veremeenko.
The deal was touted as a chance for the Wizards to get a hard-nosed player they’d always coveted and a chance for Hinrich to mentor rookie point guard John Wall. Both may have been true, but the deal was also a last-ditch effort by Chicago to make a run at LeBron James – which obviously failed even as it claimed Hinrich and his experience playing in a winning environment as collateral damage.
In Washington, Hinrich nightly lamented his Wizards’ teammates need to grow, mature and not make the same mistakes over and over again. In moving to the Hawks, he’ll get a chance to go back to the playoffs, as a starter, instead of languishing in Washington.
As for the Wizards, “This trade continues our plan to build with draft picks and prospects, develop our young players and stay financially flexible,” said Wizards president Ernie Grunfeld in a statement, focusing on the latter portion over Bibby and Evans, who are both 32, older than Hinrich, 30, and Armstrong, 26.
The 6-foot-2 Bibby is in his 13th season out of Arizona, averaging less than 10 points and less than four assists for the second straight season.
Evans, 6-5, has played for six franchises in eight seasons out of Texas. This year he’s averaged 4.5 points in 17.8 minutes per game through 47 games (12 starts). He’s also appeared in the NBA postseason in each of the last six seasons with five different teams, a streak that seems pretty likely to end this year.
The 6-5 Crawford, 22, was taken 27th overall out of Xavier in last year’s draft by New Jersey and has appeared in ten games this season.
A quick look at the salaries, according to Shamsports.com, reveals that the Wizards should save about $500,000 next year off Hinrich’s $8 million salary. Bibby is scheduled to earn $6.4 million, Crawford will make $1.1 million, and Evans’s contract runs out this season. Armstrong’s free agent deal with Washington also was only for this season, and he had been out of favor for most of the year.
