Atlanta Hawks 2016 player review: Kirk Hinrich

For 14 of the 15 players on the Atlanta Hawks roster, our "player review" series will take an in-depth look at on-court performance. In the case of Kirk Hinrich, that would be pretty silly.

Why, you ask? Well, Hinrich played 76 minutes for the Hawks this season. Total.

The 35-year-old point guard arrived at the trade deadline as part of a three-team deal that sent Shelvin Mack to Utah and Justin Holiday to Chicago and, in retrospect, it appears that the trade was chiefly to open the roster spot that eventually became Kris Humphries. Still, Hinrich was needed as point guard insurance in the event of an injury to Jeff Teague or Dennis Schröder, and his limited workload was simply a result of being the number three point guard on a team that only needs to deploy two players at that position.

In his 76 minutes (11 games), Hinrich was generally ineffective, posting a comical true shooting percentage of 22.7% with a 6.2 PER but, again, he shouldn't be judged on that incredibly small sample. In a vacuum, Hinrich is a competent backup point guard who won't kill you on either end of the floor, and even at his advanced age, there is a place in the league for the veteran guard as a stop-gap option.

The overarching takeaway of the second Kirk Hinrich era might be that the Hawks (violently) overpaid to acquire him and open the aforementioned roster spot. Shelvin Mack was stellar in 28 games with the Jazz, averaging 12.7 points and 5.3 assists while making 35.7% of his threes, and because Atlanta could have exercised a (very) cheap team option ($2.43 million) for the 2016-2017 season, that move to jettison Mack seems short-sighted. In addition, Justin Holiday played exceedingly competent basketball (including a 43% clip from three) in Chicago and at the age of 27, there is at least some reason to think he can become a rotation player at this level.

None of that is the fault of Kirk Hinrich, and he did exactly what the Hawks asked him to do in providing a veteran presence (insert joke here) and a "break in case of emergency" option in the backcourt. Because of his significant cap hold, it would be a shock if Atlanta failed to renounce Hinrich's rights as soon as they can, and with that, it would be shocking if Hinrich was around in 2016-2017 as anything other than a third point guard on a veteran minimum contract.