After several years of rapid ascendance, one former NBA player is now moving in the other direction.
The Atlanta Hawks announced on Monday that they have fired their general manager Landry Fields. They will now be promoting Onsi Saleh, their current assistant GM, to their general manager position instead.
Atlanta also revealed that they will begin a search for a president of basketball operations, a job that had been vacant for them in recent years up to this point. You can read the team’s full release here.
Fields, 36, is an ex-NBA forward who played from 2010-15 for the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors. Also a graduate of Stanford University, Fields began as an executive in 2019 as the GM of the NBA G League’s Austin Spurs. He had been quickly rising through the ranks since then, becoming assistant GM of the Hawks in 2020 and finally being promoted to GM before the 2022-23 season.
But in their three seasons with Fields as GM, Atlanta had not done much of note. They were unable to post a single winning season and managed only one playoff berth (a first-round exit in 2023). This season, the Hawks had the eighth-best record in the Eastern Conference (40-42) but lost twice in the play-in tournament, thereby failing to qualify for the playoffs.
Fields also made a couple of notable failed moves, including making the 2022 trade for Dejounte Murray and using consecutive first-round selections on AJ Griffin (who ended up retiring at the age of 21) and Kobe Bufkin (who has averaged 5.0 points per game over two injury-riddled seasons). With star player Trae Young now 26 years old and reportedly facing an uncertain future as he enters his last guaranteed year under contract, Atlanta will be moving forward with a different voice in charge of the front office.
