Tim Bontemps is moving from the broadcast side of the NBA into a front office chair. The Atlanta Hawks have hired the 41-year-old former senior NBA writer as a strategic adviser, and he will report to Onsi Saleh.
The move gives the Hawks a new voice inside basketball operations at a time when the franchise is still being shaped by Saleh's first season as its lead executive. Bontemps spent the last eight seasons at after joining the network in 2018, and his background runs through some of the league's most closely watched coverage, including years focused on the Eastern Conference for.
His path to Atlanta was built over more than a decade around the NBA. Bontemps has covered the league since 2012, when he became the Brooklyn Nets beat writer after an entry-level start at the New York Post following his 2007 graduation from St. Bonaventure. He later spent three years as the national NBA writer for The Washington Post before moving to, where he became one of the network's more familiar reporters on league matters.
What the strategic adviser title will mean day to day is not spelled out, but the role places Bontemps inside the same decision chain as Saleh rather than outside it. That is the sharpest break in the story. A reporter whose job was to scrutinize teams from the outside is now expected to help a team leader think through roster, league and information issues from within the building.
The Hawks are coming off a 46-36 season and a first-round playoff loss to the eventual champion New York Knicks. Saleh also spent last season making several trades to reshape the roster, including a midseason deal that sent Trae Young to the Washington Wizards for C.J. McCollum and Corey Kispert. Against that backdrop, adding a veteran NBA observer suggests Atlanta wants another layer of league judgment as it keeps adjusting the roster and the structure around it.
The unanswered part is not whether Bontemps knows the NBA. He does. It is how far that reporter's instinct will carry inside a front office where the final calls belong to Saleh. That is the next thing to watch as Bontemps begins work in a role that changes not just his job title, but his side of the window.
