Nickeil Alexander-Walker agreed to a four-year, $62 million deal with the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania — a significant pay bump for the Canadian swingman, who developed into a steady 3-and-D contributor during two seasons in Minnesota and now heads into his prime with an opportunity to continue that growth.
Alexander-Walker, 26, played his way into becoming a key piece off the bench for Timberwolves teams that made consecutive Western Conference finals appearances. But with both Naz Reid and Julius Randle up for new contracts, with Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels all on the books, and with the threat of the second apron looming, Minnesota wound up letting Alexander-Walker, um, walk — and their loss is the Hawks’ gain.
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The deal represents a vote of confidence for Alexander-Walker that wasn’t always a given during his first few seasons as a pro. Drafted by Brooklyn with the 17th overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft, the Virginia Tech product was traded twice before ever suiting up — first to Atlanta in a deal that made Taurean Prince a Net, and then to New Orleans in the trade that landed De’Andre Hunter with the Hawks. Alexander-Walker showed flashes of two-way upside during his time with the Pelicans, earning rotation minutes off the bench in his sophomore campaign, but struggled to consistently make shots and cement himself as a piece of the hoped-for core while playing under three head coaches (Alvin Gentry, Stan Van Gundy, Willie Green) in his first two and a half seasons.
Alexander-Walker was again flipped twice in quick succession at the 2022 trade deadline — first to the Trail Blazers as part of the trade that brought CJ McCollum to the Pelicans, and then to Utah in a three-team swap involving the Spurs. He’d shoot 40% from 3-point range across 51 games in Salt Lake City, but his minutes and opportunities dwindled in parts of two very different seasons on very different iterations of the Jazz — the former, the last-gasp postseason-competing edition led by Gobert and Donovan Mitchell under Quin Snyder; the latter, Year 1 of the post-Mitchell/Gobert/Snyder rebuild under new CEO Danny Ainge and new head coach Will Hardy.
By the time the 2023 trade deadline rolled around, Alexander-Walker seemed on the grim path to the fringes of the league; when Utah sent him to the Timberwolves as part of a three-team, eight-player, four-draft-pick trade, consideration of his potential value lagged far behind discussion of how the trio of D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt might rejuvenate the Lakers, what the arrival of Mike Conley would mean for Minnesota, and whether Russell Westbrook would ever play a second in Utah. (Spoiler: He wouldn’t.)
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But after top perimeter stopper McDaniels broke his hand punching a wall during Minnesota’s regular-season finale, head coach Chris Finch slid Alexander-Walker into the starting lineup for the Wolves’ first-round playoff matchup against the Nuggets. Denver blitzed the Wolves in five games, but Minnesota played Nikola Jokić and Co. as tough as anybody during the Nuggets’ waltz to the NBA championship, and Alexander-Walker acquitted himself well in the process, averaging 8.4 points in 29.8 minutes per game, shooting 40% from 3-point range and using his quickness and defensive instincts to make life difficult on countryman Jamal Murray.
That performance earned Alexander-Walker an extended tour of duty in the Twin Cities on a re-up — two years, $9 million, barely 3% of the salary cap — that would become an absolute steal as he developed into precisely the kind of complementary backcourt piece that every contender covets.
At 6-foot-5 and 205 pounds with a 6-foot-9 wingspan, Alexander-Walker is ideally suited to pull defensive shifts on tough covers across perimeter positions, having spent significant time guarding the likes of Murray, Devin Booker, Kyrie Irving, Luka Dončić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander over the last three postseasons. (Alexander-Walker is Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin. When the Wolves and Thunder met in the Western Conference finals, you might have heard the broadcast mention that once, twice or 5,000 times.) He’s become an increasingly reliable long-distance marksman, especially from the corners, where he drilled well over 40% of his attempts in Minnesota, and has taken strides finishing around the rim after beating a closeout with a drive to the cup.
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The combination of event-creating defense and above-average scoring efficiency is pretty rare for guards. According to Stathead, only 13 other backcourt players who logged at least 3,000 total minutes over the past two seasons have posted a true shooting percentage, block rate and steal rate as high as NAW’s. Some of them occupy perennial All-Star/All-NBA territory: SGA, Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, James Harden, Murray (who hasn’t ever made one of those teams, but tends to sit just outside that conversation and was the starting point guard on a championship team, so we’ll lump him in here).
The rest of the list, though, includes names like Derrick White and Jrue Holiday, Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace, Christian Braun and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Jalen Suggs: super valuable role players on high-level teams, dudes capable of contributing to winning without needing the ball in their hands a whole lot.
Those guys are worth their weight in gold to teams vying for championships; they also get paid. And now, Alexander-Walker’s one of them.
