The Hawks have taken flight in 2025-26 behind the play of offseason addition Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Atlanta Hawks coach Quin Snyder envisioned a role for Nickeil Alexander-Walker that Alexander-Walker hadn’t considered.
“He saw a ceiling higher for myself than I did,” Alexander-Walker told NBA.com in a phone interview. “And that was really cool for me because I felt like in my career I’ve never had that before.”
What did Snyder see? A player who could average 20 points, contribute more as a playmaker and still provide strong defense.
What has Alexander-Walker done? After joining the Hawks in free agency last summer, Alexander-Walker is having the best season of his career. He has helped the Hawks to a 42-33 record, makes a compelling case for 2025-26 Kia Most Improved Player and is one of the most impactful free agents from the summer of 2025.
Alexander-Walker, who is a cousin of Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, has doubled his scoring from 9.4 points per game with the Minnesota Timberwolves last season to 20.4 ppg this season in just eight more minutes per game.
With increased offensive responsibility, Alexander-Walker has maintained his shooting stats (45% from the field, 39.1% on 3-pointers), doubled his 3s made per game (from 1.7 to 3.1), boosted his free-throw shooting percentage (90.1%) and doubled his steals (1.3 spg).
“He sees me as a person who can do more than what I was doing,” Alexander-Walker said. “And that’s something that was very important to me: Could they see the potential through what I was only able to show them through my role?”
Drafted No. 17 by the New Orleans Pelicans in the 2019 NBA Draft, Alexander-Walker was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz at the 2022 trade deadline and spent a brief time with Snyder in Utah, which is part of the story.
Growing his game in Minnesota
The Timberwolves acquired Alexander-Walker from Utah at the 2023 trade deadline, but he was the undercard on a three-team deal that sent Mike Conley to Minnesota, D’Angelo Russell to the Los Angeles Lakers and three second-round picks to the Timberwolves.
Listed as a guard at 6-foot-5, Alexander-Walker settled into his role as a 3-and-D wing and blossomed. He was vital to Minnesota’s run to the Western Conference Finals in 2024 and 2025. But on Timberwolves squads that included Anthony Edwards and either Julius Randle or Karl-Anthony Towns, Minnesota didn’t need him to score 20 points often.
There were games for the Timberwolves when his offense was necessary, and he showed he could do it, scoring 23 points on 9-for-15 shooting against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 4 of the West Finals.
As Alexander-Walker describes it, his role was “corner 3, get to the paint, eyes out, defend.” That’s not a complaint. It’s reality, and Alexander-Walker thrived, making him a priority for several teams in free agency last summer.
Though Snyder and Alexander-Walker spent just two-plus months together with the Jazz in 2021-22, Snyder followed Alexander-Walker’s career. Snyder said he believed that with the right player development program, Alexander-Walker could be that scorer regularly.
“He said these are things we’ll need you to do,” Alexander-Walker said. “And those things weren’t things that I was asked to do my previous years. Just the ability to take contested shots. He was like, ‘Hey, there might come a time throughout the game we might need you to take a contested shot.’ ”
‘Decision-maker’ arrives in Atlanta
It was a lightbulb moment.
“A contested shot can be deemed a bad shot, but not really because you know a lot of great players, a lot of good players in this league, very rarely are they getting uncontested looks,” Alexander-Walker said.
A slow start – 2-for-15 on 3s in the first two games of 2025-26 – obscured the Hawks’ vision for Alexander-Walker. The message from Snyder didn’t change: Stay aggressive. Keep shooting.
“Because our hearts are in the right place, they often align with how we think and act,” Alexander-Walker said. “And that makes it easier for him and I to work together to find my spots and settle into being a decision-maker.”
In his sixth game, he scored 21 points, starting a stretch of at least 20 points in 15 of his next 22 games, including 38 against the San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 20.
He had a career-high 41 points in a 124-112 victory against the Orlando Magic on March 16. In that game, he was 12-for-21 overall, 9-for-14 on 3-pointers, 8-for-9 on free throws while also logging seven rebounds, five assists and two steals.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker drops 41 points on the Magic to keep the Hawks rolling.
That began a month in which the Hawks went 12-2, moving from ninth to sixth place in the East. In 15 games in March, Alexander-Walker averaged a team-best 22.7 ppg and 3.9 apg on shooting splits of 52.8%/46.8%/94.2%. His true shooting percentage (70.3%) is best among all guards who played at least 10 games and more than 20 minutes per game in March.
“The thing that we’ve tried to impress upon him from the outset is that we need his aggressiveness (and) for him to understand that that’s not tied to whether or not the shot goes in,” Snyder said. “If you aren’t finding efficiency in some of those situations, let’s look at them. Let’s work on them.
“He’s got such a tremendous work ethic, it’s logical that he’s going to improve as the season goes on. The game’s slowing down for him a little bit. He’s so aggressive that as he’s found his tempo in more and more of those situations, he’s gotten more efficient.”
‘The most fun I’ve had playing basketball’
Alexander-Walker is complete with gratitude. He doesn’t take his situation or profession for granted, and that emerges in his answers. He takes time to consider the question and deliver a response that conveys what he means.
He said this season is “the most fun I’ve had playing basketball. I get to go on my own journey with all that I’ve learned, and I’ve tried not to think about averaging X-amount of points or doing X-amount of things with more usage. My mindset is ‘just get better.’
“I’ve worked so hard for something like this. Nourish it. Treat it correctly. Honor it. Value it. That’s my focus.”
At the end of the conversation, Alexander-Walker was asked if he had anything else he wanted to share. He named people who have been by his side: his wife, Sara; son, Paris; mom, Nicole; Snyder; personal basketball trainer, Nem; Nate; Cali; Jalen; Shandon; Vince; Ashton; James; Kendall; and B. Bailey.
“Everyone named was part of my village from the summer to this year,” he said, “and they’ve been tremendous.”
And so has Alexander-Walker.
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Jeff Zillgitt has covered the NBA since 2008. You can email him at jzillgitt@nba.com, find his archive here and follow him on X.
