The deal
Hawks get: Jeff Teague, Treveon Graham
Timberwolves get: Allen Crabbe
Get more trade grades for every deal here
Atlanta Hawks: A
The Hawks' disappointing 9-32 first half was the product of multiple factors, but none loomed larger than their complete and total inability to score without star point guard Trae Young on the court. With Young, Atlanta has managed an above-average 108.2 offensive rating (per NBA Advanced Stats) despite John Collins' suspension and Kevin Huerter battling injuries.
Take Young off the court, and the Hawks would almost be better off taking shot-clock violations to set their defense rather than trying to score. OK, it's not quite that bad, but Atlanta is averaging just 90.7 points per 100 possessions sans Young, 10 fewer than the worst offense in the league over the course of the season -- which happens to be the Hawks, despite Young's heroics.
To some extent, it's probably inevitable that Atlanta will decline offensively without Young throughout his career. That's what happens when one player so comprehensively dominates shot creation. Young has finished 35% of the Hawks' plays this season with a shot, a trip to the free throw line or a turnover, and another 10% of them have concluded with a Young assist. That combined usage of 45% puts Young third in the NBA this season behind Luka Doncic (49%) and James Harden (47%), and would put him in the top 10 since the ABA-NBA merger if maintained for the full campaign.
Still, Atlanta's plans for backing up Young were doomed from the start. The Hawks began the season with point forward Evan Turner, an inefficient scorer and non-floor spacer, in the role of backup with Brandon Goodwin on a two-way contract as the only other true point guard on the roster. The Hawks managed just 82.6 points per 100 possessions in the 162 minutes Turner logged without Young before being cast aside as part of a focus on younger talent.
Goodwin's minutes at the point weren't much better, yielding an 85.9 offensive rating despite his own efficient volume scoring, so to date the best solution Atlanta has found has been using Huerter as a backup point guard. Those lineups have at least produced a passable 97.2 offensive rating, but staggering the minutes of Huerter and Young means less of the two of them together -- the Hawks' most legitimately threatening backcourt duo.
Enter -- or more accurately return, since he played his first seven seasons in Atlanta -- Teague, who's overqualified to handle the 13 or so minutes a night Young spends on the bench. A starter up through this season, when he was on the wrong end of the Timberwolves' desire to develop more young wings than they could play together, Teague will bring a combination of scoring potency and playmaking unmatched on the Hawks' roster outside of Young.
I'd have to imagine Atlanta will also play Teague and Young together some, if only to get the former suitable playing time. Even this season, when he was pushed to the bench, Teague was still averaging 28 minutes per game, far more than he could get strictly as Young's backup. Teague is a good enough 3-point shooter to be effective off the ball, having made 37.1% of his catch-and-shoot opportunities this season and nearly 39% since 2013-14 according to Second Spectrum tracking.
My one question about this trade is how Teague will feel about going to another lottery team. At 31, I'd imagine he was hoping to showcase his skills on a contender ahead of unrestricted free agency next summer. But in the event Teague is unhappy, the Hawks could move him again by the deadline if a deal produces another option for backing up Young. Because Atlanta is still under the cap after this move, there are none of the usual restrictions on combining Teague with other players in a subsequent trade. In that case, Teague would surely have more value on the market than Crabbe, a less effective player with a similar expiring contract.
Beyond that, even Graham could be useful to the Hawks. He has started 41 games over the past season and a half, and though he'll have to shoot better from 3-point range than he has in that span (27.5%) to be effective, Graham is a capable defender across multiple positions.
Because all three players involved are in the final season of their contracts, the only cost Atlanta is adding is about a million dollars in salary the rest of the way. That's well worth upgrading behind Young in the hopes of staving off the frustration a dismal first half caused the Hawks.
Minnesota Timberwolves: D
At first blush, it's difficult to see the Timberwolves' logic for making this deal. While Teague was surely on his way out after being benched, Minnesota could have aspired to get a second-round draft pick or some young piece in return. Instead, with three weeks remaining until the deadline, they've settled for simply another expiring contract.
Crabbe's career has gone the wrong direction since he signed a four-year offer sheet with the Brooklyn Nets in the free-spending summer of 2016 as a restricted free agent, a deal that the Portland Trail Blazers chose to match. At that point, Crabbe had established himself as a dangerous shooter off the bench, and he hit a career-best 44% of his long-range attempts in 2016-17, the first season of the deal. But since the Blazers sent him to Brooklyn to manage their payroll, Crabbe's game has eroded. His true shooting percentage has gone from .602 in 2016-17 to a league-average .558 his first year with the Nets and substandard .519 and .482 marks the past two campaigns.
In part due to a lingering knee injury that ultimately required surgery last April, Crabbe no longer does much beyond shoot 3s, and he didn't even do that well in his brief stint in Atlanta. He's at 32% beyond the arc for the season, though that's improved after Crabbe made just 24% of his 3s in his first month back from surgery.
If Crabbe is knocking down 3s, he can provide some value to a team that is shooting 3s at the league's fourth-highest rate but making just 32% of them -- better than only the Hawks. But with Crabbe in the final season of his contract, it seems unlikely he's a long-term option for the Timberwolves. Instead, all they seem to be getting out of this deal is freeing up a roster spot without having to eat Graham's guaranteed salary.