One More Cut, Four Live Candidates
Waiving Devin Carter and Lamont Butler on Sept. 11 didn’t finish the Atlanta Hawks’ roster crunch. It just narrowed it. Atlanta still carries 16 players on standard contracts against the NBA’s 15-man regular-season limit, and the team’s remaining decision points at four names: forwards Corey Kispert and Mouhamed Gueye, and guards Buddy Hield and Ryan Nembhard, according to Hawks On SI’s Jackson Caudell.
None of the four is an obvious release. Each comes with a specific complication, whether that’s guaranteed money, a fresh injury, or a role the front office may not want to give up. Atlanta hasn’t announced a decision, and the specialists covering the team don’t agree on what it should be.
Kispert’s Contract Makes Him a Trade Chip, Not a Waiver Candidate
The simplest fact in this equation is also the biggest obstacle to solving it cleanly. Kispert is set to earn $13,975,000 in 2026-27, and that money is fully guaranteed, according to Spotrac’s contract database. Waiving a player with that much guaranteed salary still counts against the cap; it doesn’t create the kind of relief a true bubble cut is supposed to provide. If Atlanta wants Kispert gone, the realistic path runs through a trade, not a straightforward release.
That’s part of why Roundtable Sports’ James Piercey argued this week that Kispert should be the one to go regardless of the mechanics. His case leans on production, not money: Kispert has shot 38.2% from three for his career, a middling number for a player brought in specifically as a shooting specialist, and Piercey frames him as “too poor a defender, and too limited in other ways” to hold a rotation spot on a team that just added two defense-first wings.
The Dort and Wiggins Trades Changed What Atlanta Is Building
That last point matters more than it might look. Atlanta acquired Luguentz Dort from Oklahoma City and Aaron Wiggins from the Thunder in separate deals this offseason, both established, switchable defenders. Adding two wings built around defense, in the same offseason the Hawks are also debating whether to keep a shooting specialist who doesn’t defend at a high level, reads like a roster identity shift. If that’s the direction Atlanta is actually building toward, Kispert’s fit gets harder to justify no matter what his contract looks like.
Hield’s Guarantee Date Is Still Working in His Favor
Buddy Hield presents a cleaner financial case for the opposite outcome. His 2026-27 salary carries $9.66 million in guaranteed money, and Atlanta has already pushed back the date that guarantee locks in once, a structure that reads as the front office deliberately preserving trade flexibility rather than trying to move on from him outright. A team doesn’t delay a guarantee date on a player it’s planning to waive outright; it delays one on a player it’s still shopping or still deciding about. Hield is also a more proven, higher-volume shooter than Kispert, which gives Atlanta a real basketball reason to lean his way if the choice comes down to the two wings.
Gueye’s Foot and Nembhard’s Price Tag Cut Both Ways
Mouhamed Gueye complicates the picture in a different way entirely. He had surgery in July for a fractured left foot and was expected to miss three to four months, a timeline that puts the start of the season squarely in question. Atlanta already exercised his $2.4 million team option for 2026-27, the cheapest of the four contracts in play, which is exactly why some analysts view him as a straightforward release: he’s non-star money attached to real injury risk, an easy subtraction if the front office wants to simplify the decision. Others see the opposite case. Gueye is a legitimate defender who fits the identity Atlanta just spent two trades building, and cutting him while he’s hurt, rather than trading him or riding out the recovery, would mean eating the injury risk without getting anything back for it.
Ryan Nembhard is the quietest name of the four, and also the hardest to justify cutting on cost alone. His deal is inexpensive enough that releasing him wouldn’t meaningfully help Atlanta’s cap situation, which is presumably why he’s treated as the least likely departure in most of the specialist coverage, even though nobody has publicly ruled it out.
What Actually Happens Next
Atlanta doesn’t have to make this move today, but it does have to make it before the regular season opens. The Kispert-versus-Hield question is really a bet on which shooting specialist the coaching staff trusts more once games start counting, while the Gueye-versus-Nembhard question is closer to a straightforward math problem: recovering injury risk against minimal cap relief. Training camp is where those bets usually get tested in real reps rather than argued in print, and whichever way the Hawks land, it will say something concrete about whether this roster is being built around shooting or around the defensive identity Dort and Wiggins were brought in to reinforce. For the full calendar between now and opening night, see NBA Trending’s guide to the 2026-27 season’s key dates.