After feeling lost and uncertain with the Hawks, John Collins sees a different kind of future in Utah

If you do a Google search of the name of any NBA player who has been traded along with the phrase “fresh start,” you’ll be neck deep in articles.

That’s the positive-angled, glass-half-full sentiment that fans love to hear from the newest member of their favorite team. And it’s only natural that the players themselves would express the desire to move on from the past to embrace the future.

But, those are never the only emotions that a player feels in these situations. It’s not that the “fresh start” stories are untrue, just that they often miss out on what led to that moment. And the difficult-to-digest, not-easily-talked-about and less-optimistic details that led to a player being traded are often more important when it comes to understanding that player, their motivations and what could possibly be on the horizon for them with their new team.

Enter John Collins.

The veteran is definitely looking forward to a fresh start with the Utah Jazz after spending his first six seasons in Atlanta, but it comes after years of mental turmoil and uncertainty.

Collins saw a ton of team turnover while playing under four different coaches and numerous front office executives during the last six years. All the while there was ownership drama, team drama, contract disputes and on top of everything, Collins was being shopped as a trade piece for at least the last three years.

“It definitely didn’t help,” Collins said of the trade rumors in an interview with the Deseret News. “It made me think that I was doing something wrong. A little lost. I thought I’d been doing things right, leading in my way, helping in the community, being a part of the team and impacting things. Even through everything, especially with the contract I was able to earn, I thought I was moving toward something longstanding.”

New contract, same drama

Collins signed a five-year, $125 million deal with the Hawks in 2021, and he thought that recent whispers regarding him being included in trade talks would quiet with the new contract. He felt like he’d proven himself on the court and proven that he was committed to being adaptable with changes along the way.

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He’d led the Hawks in scoring and rebounding through the 2018-19 season and then posted career highs of 21.6 points and 10.1 rebounds per game the following year. He’d had a dip in production during the 2020–21 season, but by that time there were more mouths to feed on the Atlanta squad and Collins was fine with that.

But even after his new contract was inked and as the team seemed to be trending in the right direction in terms of roster development, in a way that included Collins, the rumors didn’t stop.

“What I’ve come to figure out in this league is that once you’re not in the plans, you’re not in them,” Collins said. “And anything can happen once you figure out that you’re not part of the plan moving forward. That was how my cards were laid out and I don’t know why, or what I did, but it wasn’t fun.”

There was no way for it not to impact things on the court. Fear and a lack of fun are not really ingredients for winning and cohesion in basketball. Collins’ efficiency started to drop and he started to seem like a redundancy on the Hawks roster.

As the Atlanta front office was overhauled and coaches were coming and going with regularity, Collins battled through injuries and tried to make sense of his declining role on the team.

Mental toll

But the mental toll on Collins was not what was grabbing headlines, because in Atlanta, the team begins and ends with Trae Young, who has been at the center of everything that happens with the Hawks over the last few years — the good and the bad.

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Though Young is a max contract player who has dazzled at times on the court, there have been numerous reports that Young has caused friction in the Hawks locker room with his teammates and coaches. Last season, Young and then-head coach Nate McMillan had a disagreement that led to Young not showing up for a game. There have been questions about Young’s leadership abilities and his teammates have often had to defend him or deflect as they tried to put out fires as they arose.

Trying to look at it all from Collins’ perspective, it’s no wonder that he’s happy to be somewhere new where he can have a fresh start, and Collins said upon arriving in Utah he was surprised that there was such a lack of ego in the locker room.

Despite Lauri Markkanen being an All-Star, Jordan Clarkson being a former Sixth Man of the Year, and all the individual successes of players, Collins has noticed that things feel different compared to what he’s used to.

“To be successful in this league, you’ve got to think about yourself in a certain way,” he said. “But here, there’s that essence of wanting to win together, regardless of how good anyone is individually. It’s refreshing to be in a locker room with a lack of ego and I’m happy to be part of it.”

While that can be seen as a direct shot at Young and the problems in the Hawks locker room, Collins said that learning to play without Young is going to be just as much of an adjustment as anything else. For years, Collins was Young’s favorite pick-and-roll target and the Jazz roster has a completely different look and feel than any of the Hawks teams Collins has played on.

Clear expectations

“John’s got a great personality and he’s a, ‘yes sir, no sir’ kind of guy who is great with his teammates,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “On the court he’s really versatile. He can do a lot of things and I think that’s where, for me, I have to not let that be distracting. … We need to put him in a situation where his expectations are pretty clear and put him in a spot where he can be successful.”

That’s what Collins wants. He wants to know what his role is, he wants to feel wanted and wants to be able to see that there is a future for him where he doesn’t have to wonder if he’s a part of the plan.

Hardy, Collins and the rest of the Jazz players are prepared for there to be a learning curve after adding Collins to the roster. Spacing will be different, defensive assignments are going to change, there are going to be new wrinkles added to the offense and there will be differences in how the team plays with Collins on the floor vs. how they play with him off it.

So, what does all of this have to do with how things unfolded in Atlanta?

“I’ve fought with myself and tried to prove that I was still who I am in the game,” Collins said. “This summer I said, ‘Well, I must not have been good enough.’ I’ve selfishly tried to turn it all into motivation.”

Though motivated, Collins is tired of beating himself up for what was more than likely a situation that he could not have changed. He understands that the road ahead is not going to be a piece of cake paved in gold, but he wants to be on a team where his experiences can inform the decisions he makes in the future.

“This isn’t just a fresh start,” Collins said. “It can be more than that. It can be the start of something greater.”