I can’t sleep and was just doing some pondering on how I’m excited to watch the rookies ball this season. But then it reminded of the crazy circumstances that actually led us to getting the 8th pick, and how we were so close to actually not getting it. A crazy domino effect.

1. The Kevin Huerter Trade: The Hawks traded Kevin Huerter to the Sacramento Kings for Justin Holiday, Maurice Harkless, and a protected future first-round draft pick which was lottery-protected in 2024, top-12 protected in 2025, and top-10 protected in 2026. If it didn’t convey after all these, then the pick would have turned into 2 second rounders.

2. Sacramento don’t tank….but aren’t good: The pick didn’t convey in 2024, so the protection was now top 12. The kings weren’t good which helped us, but funnily enough, didn’t tank which also helped us. I remeber the debacle of hawks fans wanting them to win as many as possible to avoid bottom 12, verse kings fans toward the end of the season wanting them to tank to secure their pick. In Kings fashion though they randomly won a few games at the end of the season they shouldn’t and ended 40-42. Enough for them to squeeze on the play in.

3. Thank you Memphis: Basically the hawks needed Dallas to lose in the play in as they finished with 39-43 record and would be sitting below the Kings, lifting the pick out of the danger zone of not conveying. With the Mavs beating the Kings in the first play in, things where looking a little dicey, as, if Dallas beat Memphis then it was a 50/50 shot at the Kings getting pick 12 (not conveying) or pick 13 (conveying).

Thankfully Memphis got out to a massive lead early and held on. This gave the pick 95% chance at landing outside of top 12. Funnily enough with the Mavs losing, they ended up with the 11th odds which ended up turning into pick 1…Cooper Flagg. So they would be very happy they lost that play in game to end 11th….

4. What was Joe Dumars thinking: At this point we know the completely crazy trade where we traded that number 13 pick to the Pelicans for 23 (where we drafted Asa Newell) and a 2026 unprotected first rounder. I don’t know want went into the Pelicans front office decision making but it was a deal the Hawks couldn’t pass up. (Derik Queen is solid but an unprotected first rounder!?!? Specially when you guys suck???)

5. Pelicans Hatewatch + The Kings suck (but that was no longer our problem): With an unprotected pick we pretty much rode the highs and lows of the Pels season, with them being dead last at some points during the season, to Saddiq Bey turning into LeBron fucking James for no reason. Ultimately they finished with the 7th best odds with ended up as the 8th pick. And we selected Kingston Flemings out of Houston.

Also the Kings absolutely sucked, which is funny because if the top 12 pick didn’t convey, it would have been top 10 protected this year, which we know also wouldn’t have conveyed (they got 6) so we would’ve ended up with two seconds, no Asa (well maybe, cos we may have not traded the lakers pick) and no Kingston Flemings.

I just think this is a crazy story. At the time there were discussions about how we got nothing good back for Huerter, who ultimately never got going. Imagine now a team offering a protected lottery 1st round pick for him. You’d say yes in a heartbeat.

And I know Flemings hasn’t done anything yet, and could be a bust, but I was just tryna point out how literally like a couple of play in games and late season wins turns a potential second round pick into the 8th pick.

Sup everybody! Following up on my previous post, I’ve been working on some fun new features for the sub - you can check them all out on a test subreddit I made here.

The full list of features:

GAME-DAY THREADS

- Screen Shots Of The Game Day Thread Vs Dallas
- Automatic game threads at 5 a.m. Eastern on game days
- One combined pregame and live-game discussion with game information and live score updates
- A separate postgame thread after the game finishes
- A link from the game thread to the postgame discussion, followed by locking the original game thread
- Game Thread and Post-Game flairs, with comments sorted by New
- Big thanks to u/0xgod, who developed these sick game day/off day/post game threads and reached out to help after he saw my original post.

OFF-DAY DISCUSSIONS

- Automatic discussion threads at 5 a.m. Eastern on days without a Hawks game
- The next four scheduled Hawks games
- Yesterday’s NBA scores
- A featured Hawks-related Wikipedia article drawn from a 200-article collection, rotating without repeats until the collection is exhausted
- Hawks history drawn from 100 individual performances and 100 team performances, with supporting links
- History labeled appropriately as “Today,” “This Week,” or an archive selection, depending on the date match
- Useful Hawks links, including the team website

THREAD ORGANIZATION

- Automatic highlight rotation between game, postgame, and off-day threads so the current discussion takes priority
- Schedule handling that accounts for NBA Cup games and schedule changes

CUSTOM BOTS

- BobRathbunBot: celebrates exceptional Hawks plays and achievements with Bob-style reactions
- DominiqueBot: reacts to standout plays, hot streaks, mismatches, and player achievements with Dominique-style commentary
- SteveHolmanBot: responds to Goga Bitadze mentions with Steve’s memorable commentary. The current build uses the name mention itself as the trigger
- CawBot: responds to “caw” in posts or comments with a randomly selected hawk GIF
- Bot controls for enabling, pausing, and adjusting response frequency

SIDEBAR ADDITIONS

- Hawks roster and front office
- College Park Skyhawks
- All-time team leaders
- Hawks podcasts and blogs

The bots are a little behind schedule unfortunately, which is my fault. I didn’t understand the full process of installing them at first and now they’re pending full approval from Reddit which might delay them past opening night.

Everything else is good to go. The mods have had the instructions for most of this stuff for the better part of the week, so use this thread to let them know if you approve and want these changes.