{"id":774391,"date":"2026-07-02T13:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774391\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:59:10","slug":"hawks-sign-henri-veesaar-to-four-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774391\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks Sign Henri Veesaar To Four-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hawks have signed second-round pick Henri Veesaar<\/a> to a four-year contract worth roughly $9.3MM in total, per Kevin O\u2019Connor of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link<\/a>). The deal was completed using the second-round pick exception<\/a> and is worth Veesaar\u2019s minimum salary.<\/p>\n

\"\"Projected by many draft experts as a late first-round pick, Veesaar fell all the way to No. 52 last Wednesday, where the Hawks traded up from No. 57<\/a> to snag him. According to various reports during the second round, there were other teams interested in the former UNC big man, but his representatives were steering him to a club willing to give him a standard contract and a spot on its 15-man roster.<\/p>\n

In addition to getting that standard deal he sought, the 22-year-old will also have the first two years of his deal guaranteed, Hoops Rumors has learned. The third is non-guaranteed, while the fourth year will be a team option.<\/p>\n

Veesaar was ranked No. 28 on Jeremy Woo\u2019s final big board for ESPN<\/a> prior to the draft. After spending three years playing a fairly modest role at Arizona, including redshirting as a sophomore, Veesaar had a breakout junior season with the Tar Heels in 2025\/26, averaging 17.0 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.2 blocks in 31 games as the team\u2019s full-time starting center.<\/p>\n

Veesaar was a strong finisher in the paint, converting 67.7% of his 8.0 two-point attempts per game. He also knocked down 42.6% of his 3.0 three-point attempts per contest, though he only made 61.5% of his free throws (3.8 attempts).<\/p>\n

He joins a Hawks frontcourt that also features Onyeka Okongwu<\/a>, Jock Landale<\/a>, Mouhamed Gueye<\/a>, Asa Newell<\/a>, and fellow 2026 draftee Zuby Ejiofor<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hawks have signed second-round pick Henri Veesaar to a four-year contract worth roughly $9.3MM in total, per…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,71659,85],"class_list":["post-774391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-henri-veesaar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}