Utah Jazz forward John Collins slams the Atlanta Hawks

John Collins let the entire Atlanta Hawks organization know that they stunted his growth.

It’s fair to say no one saw John Collins calling out the Atlanta Hawks coming. If you were filling out your 2023-2024 NBA Bingo cards and you had this as one of your squares, we’re going to go ahead and give you the game. This was unexpected, to say the least. Collins took to Instagram this week and revealed in a post that he holds the Hawks responsible for his growth being hampered.

Now, he did say some nice things, especially about his teammates, the city, and the fans. The franchise, however, did not get such a warm departure. In this post, he made sure people knew that he wasn’t going to fly any higher with the Hawks.

Collins would go on to say;

"To the Organization. Thank you for sticking with me, even at my lowest. Thank you for allowing me a place to grow. But as I see ,it is this hawks time to fly away from the nest. As my growth here is being stunted."

Firstly, it’s okay to be stunned by Collins’ message here. He’s been keeping to himself all offseason it seemed and it looked like he was just going to get to Salt Lake City and grind. That didn’t end up being the case.

Secondly, he’s not wrong. The Hawks didn’t do him any favors. It’d be unfair to say they didn’t do right by him, the team shifted focus to get all-star guard Trae Young going, so it clearly wasn’t going to be his team. The offense wasn’t going to be designed around him. That’s fair, but it’s also fair to say that they didn’t do enough to get the most out of Collins either.

Collins getting traded for just a second-round pick and Rudy Gay really shows you how little value the Hawks had for him. Sure, a lot of his trade revolved around shedding salary, but Collins is too good of a player to just abandon like that.

So now Collins will look to prove to the Jazz that he’s every bit the player they thought he was when he got drafted 19th overall in 2017.