Hawks Earn Third Seed, Mo Evans Expected To Opt Out This Summer

The Bulls (Derrick Rose, mostly) beat the Celtics 101-93 last night to settle the third and fourth seeds in the East. All Miami has to do to secure the fifth seed is beat the Nets at home. If the Heat win, Milwaukee will be the sixth seed and face the Hawks in the first round of the playoffs.

In a longer-term development, Michael Cunningham followed up on a tweet from DraftExpress speculating that Maurice Evans is likely not to exercise his player option for next season by asking the man himself:

"Obviously my focus right now is on the playoffs, and I’m excited about where we are headed as a team and looking forward to it. At the same time I’m excited about the possibilities of this summer. I’ve been on six different playoff teams where I’ve made an impact."

Translation: Of course he will opt out. Why wouldn’t he? There certainly will be a market for a reasonably-priced player who might be undersized for forward but who can defend, likes to mix it up inside and has no fear of taking big shots. Mo, 31, most likely can get a longer deal on the market, if not from the Hawks.

All this time I've been underestimating the market for Mo Evans. If Evans opts out, the Hawks will have $45.1 million committed to eight players plus a $10.9 million cap hold for Josh Childress and, of course, the $1.06 million qualifying offer to Mario West lest another team steal his unique talent away.