Paul Millsap says Hawks never made him contract offer

The decision to leave Atlanta was apparently an easy one for Paul Millsap.

The 32-year-old forward, who agreed to terms on a three-year, $90 million deal with the Denver Nuggets on Sunday, said that the Hawks never even made him a contract offer to return to the team.

“It was pretty simple,” Millsap said to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Denver, they came and they’ve been wanting me for years. They made that known. The presentation that they gave me, it felt comfortable, it felt real. At the end of the day it was going to be the team that I felt most comfortable with and Atlanta. Atlanta decided to go another direction. They didn’t want to make an offer. So it was pretty simple. Denver was the team.”

Millsap, who put up 18.1 points, 7.7 rebounds, and 3.1 assists a game in 2016-17, spent the last four years in Atlanta, making the Eastern Conference All-Star team in each of them. But Hawks GM Travis Schlenk had been hinting at a breakup for weeks, and now Millsap can look ahead to the next chapter of his NBA career as he returns to the Western Conference with the Nuggets.