Atlanta’s second-round steal is done before he ever put on a jersey.
Hawks rookie center Henri Veesaar tore the ACL in his right knee during a workout on Sept. 15 and is expected to miss the entire 2026-27 season. Surgery is scheduled for October.
Veesaar is 22, born in March 2004, and listed at 7-foot-0. He was the 52nd overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, selected by the Clippers and traded to Atlanta on draft night.
He was better than a 52nd pick
The slide was the story in June. Veesaar averaged 17.0 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.2 blocks across 31 starts in his final season at North Carolina, and he shot 42.6% from three at seven feet tall.
He led the Tar Heels in minutes. He transferred in from Arizona and roughly doubled his scoring output in one year, which is exactly the development curve teams claim to look for.
A seven-footer who shoots 42.6% from deep and grabs nine boards should not last until pick 52. Local coverage in Chapel Hill called the fall a surprise, and it was.
Atlanta needed him more than anyone realized
The Hawks were already thin at center. Losing a rotation-caliber big before camp is the kind of quiet injury that shows up in February when the frontcourt is running on fumes.
It is also the second roster disruption Atlanta has absorbed in a week, coming days before the trade that sent Buddy Hield and Ryan Nembhard to Charlotte for Dorian Finney-Smith.
The timing is the cruel part
This happened in a workout. Not a scrimmage, not a preseason game, not a collision. A 22-year-old doing the thing every rookie does in September to prove he belongs.
Second-round picks operate on short clocks. They get one or two years to justify a roster spot before the league moves on to the next crop of prospects. Veesaar now burns his entire first season in rehab, and he will be 23 and a year removed from competitive basketball when he finally gets to audition.
What Atlanta should do
Be patient, which is easy to say and hard to do with a 52nd pick. The shooting touch does not go away with a knee injury, and neither does being seven feet tall.
The Hawks have no financial reason to rush this. Veesaar’s contract is cheap, his timeline was always long, and a full year of rehab plus a summer league in 2027 is a reasonable path back.
The talent that made him a first-round prospect on tape is still there. Atlanta just has to wait fourteen months to find out what it looks like on an NBA floor.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.