Team context: Atlanta Hawks · Research cutoff: July 18, 2026.
Role and 2025-26 baseline
McCollum averaged 18.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.5 blocks, 2.5 threes, and 1.8 turnovers in 29.8 minutes across 76 games, shooting 45.5% FG and 77.2% FT. Atlanta went 19-4 with him starting down the stretch. ESPN stats · NBA re-signing report
The Hawks gave him a one-year extension, so he projects as the opening-night starting guard and half-court organizer. No long-term commitment protects him if Kingston Flemings is ready sooner than expected. Hawks extension
2026-27 projection
| GP | Min | FG% | FT% | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70 | 29 | .450 | .800 | 2.5 | 17.8 | 3.1 | 4.3 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 1.8 |
Base rotation allocation: 29 of Atlanta's exactly 240 minutes.
Market and fantasy fit
- ESPN's early points board placed him 68th, while RotoWire's current-season rank was around 107th. That gap reflects his steady scoring versus weaker category scarcity. ESPN points ranks · RotoWire
- 9-cat: picks 90-125 for threes, points, assists, and low turnovers.
- Points: picks 65-95 while his starting role holds.
- Dynasty: win-now depth only; age 35 and a one-year deal put him outside the long-term top 200.
- Best builds: teams that need stable guard scoring without a turnover spike.
Range and triggers
- Floor: 14 points in 23-25 minutes after the All-Star break if Flemings accelerates.
- Ceiling: another 18-19 points, 2.5 threes, and four assists across 72-plus games.
- Health: intermittent quad and knee management in 2025-26; age-related workload is the bigger concern.
- Watch: whether he or Flemings closes, back-to-back rest, and assists when staggered away from Johnson.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Lehigh (2009-13), four seasons in the Patriot League — a rare full four-year college career for a lottery pick. 2009-10, 33 GP, 31.9 MPG, 19.1 PTS, 5.0 REB, 2.4 AST, .459/.421/.810; 2010-11, 31 GP, 34.6 MPG, 21.8 PTS, 7.8 REB, 2.1 AST, .399/.315/.845; 2011-12, 35 GP, 33.1 MPG, 21.9 PTS, 6.5 REB, 3.5 AST, .443/.341/.811; 2012-13, 12 GP, 31.0 MPG, 23.9 PTS, 5.0 REB, 2.9 AST, .495/.516/.849. He was Patriot League Rookie of the Year, a two-time Patriot League Player of the Year, a three-time first-team all-conference selection, and finished as the league's all-time leading scorer with 2,361 points across 111 games. He scored 30 in Lehigh's 75-70 upset of second-seeded Duke in the 2012 NCAA tournament. His senior year ended after 12 games when he fractured the fifth metatarsal in his left foot driving to the rim against VCU in January 2013; he was averaging 23.9 points, second in Division I, at the time. Draft: 2013, first round, 10th overall, Portland Trail Blazers — the first player ever drafted out of Lehigh, not traded.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | 22 | POR | 38 | 12.5 | 5.3 | 1.3 | 0.7 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.8 | .416 | .676 | 0.9 |
| 2014-15 | 23 | POR | 62 | 15.7 | 6.8 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 0.1 | 0.9 | .436 | .699 | 0.8 |
| 2015-16 | 24 | POR | 80 | 34.8 | 20.8 | 3.2 | 4.3 | 1.2 | 0.3 | 2.5 | .448 | .827 | 2.5 |
| 2016-17 | 25 | POR | 80 | 35.0 | 23.0 | 3.6 | 3.6 | 0.9 | 0.5 | 2.3 | .480 | .912 | 2.2 |
| 2017-18 | 26 | POR | 81 | 36.1 | 21.4 | 4.0 | 3.4 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 2.3 | .443 | .836 | 1.9 |
| 2018-19 | 27 | POR | 70 | 33.9 | 21.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 2.4 | .459 | .828 | 1.5 |
| 2019-20 | 28 | POR | 70 | 36.5 | 22.2 | 4.2 | 4.4 | 0.8 | 0.6 | 2.8 | .451 | .757 | 1.8 |
| 2020-21 | 29 | POR | 47 | 34.0 | 23.1 | 3.9 | 4.7 | 0.9 | 0.4 | 3.6 | .458 | .812 | 1.4 |
| 2021-22 | 30 | POR/NOP | 62 | 34.6 | 22.1 | 4.3 | 5.1 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 2.9 | .460 | .682 | 2.0 |
| 2022-23 | 31 | NOP | 75 | 35.3 | 20.9 | 4.4 | 5.7 | 0.9 | 0.5 | 2.8 | .437 | .769 | 2.4 |
| 2023-24 | 32 | NOP | 66 | 32.7 | 20.0 | 4.3 | 4.6 | 0.9 | 0.6 | 3.6 | .459 | .827 | 1.7 |
| 2024-25 | 33 | NOP | 56 | 32.7 | 21.1 | 3.8 | 4.1 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 3.1 | .444 | .717 | 1.9 |
| 2025-26 | 34 | WAS/ATL | 76 | 29.8 | 18.7 | 3.3 | 3.9 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 2.5 | .455 | .772 | 1.8 |
| Career | 863 | 31.9 | 19.5 | 3.6 | 3.8 | 0.9 | 0.4 | 2.5 | .453 | .796 | 1.8 |
The 2021-22 split was 36 games in Portland (20.5 PTS, 4.5 AST, .436 FG) before the February 8 trade and 26 in New Orleans (24.3 PTS, 5.8 AST, .493 FG). The 2025-26 split was 35 games in Washington (30.9 MPG, 18.8 PTS, 3.5 REB, 3.6 AST, 2.7 3PM, .454 FG, .804 FT) and 41 in Atlanta after the January 9, 2026 trade that sent him and Corey Kispert to the Hawks for Trae Young (28.8 MPG, 18.7 PTS, 3.1 REB, 4.1 AST, 2.3 3PM, .456 FG, .748 FT). The Atlanta half is the more useful one to read: nearly identical scoring on two fewer minutes, with assists, steals, and blocks all up and three-point volume down.
Fantasy history: Season-end 9-cat ranks are not verifiable from the sources reachable for this entry and none are asserted. The category shape, though, has been stable for a decade and is easy to state: points, threes, assists, free-throw percentage, and unusually low turnovers for a lead scorer, against zero contribution in steals or blocks and a field goal percentage that hovers within a few points of neutral. That is four useful columns and two dead ones, which is why he has spent most of his career as a solid but never elite category asset even in years he scored 23 a game. The points-versus-categories gap in his profile is one of the widest in the league and it is structural rather than a market inefficiency — ESPN's early points board has him 68th while RotoWire's category rank sits near 107th, and both are defensible. High-volume efficient scoring with 2.5-3.5 threes is exactly what points formats pay for; the defensive counting stats that separate guards in 9-cat are ones he has never produced, having cleared 1.0 steals only twice in thirteen seasons.
Durability: GP by season: 38, 62, 80, 80, 81, 70, 70, 47, 62, 75, 66, 56, 76. The through-line is his left foot. He fractured the fifth metatarsal at Lehigh in January 2013, broke the foot again as a rookie and missed the first six weeks of 2013-14, suffered a hairline foot fracture in January 2021 that cost roughly 25 games, and was ruled out for the remainder of 2024-25 on March 31 with a bone bruise in his right foot. The one non-foot event of consequence was a pneumothorax — a collapsed right lung — diagnosed December 7, 2021, which sidelined him until January 17, 2022 and accounts for most of that season's 62 games. Between those episodes he has been genuinely durable, including a stretch of 80, 80, and 81 games from 2015-16 through 2017-18. The encouraging datapoint is the most recent one: 76 games in 2025-26, his highest total since 2017-18, at 34 years old and across a midseason trade. The 2025-26 absences were intermittent quad and knee maintenance rather than anything structural.
Trajectory: McCollum's career is two facts. The first is a delayed, role-driven leap: he averaged 5.3 and 6.8 points in his first two seasons buried behind Lillard, Matthews, and Batum, then jumped to 20.8 in 2015-16 at age 24 when Portland lost Aldridge and Matthews in the same offseason and handed him 34.8 minutes. That is a minutes-and-opportunity leap, not a skill discontinuity, and it won him Most Improved Player. The second fact is the more remarkable one: he then produced ten consecutive seasons between 20.0 and 23.1 points on field goal percentages that never left the .437-.480 band. There is essentially no aging signal in the rate data even now — his scoring per 36 minutes was 22.0, then 23.2, then 22.6 across the last three seasons, and his 2025-26 field goal percentage of .455 is above his career mark. Every bit of the 2025-26 counting-stat decline is the drop from 32.7 to 29.8 minutes. That makes him an unusually clean projection problem for 2026-27: the skills are not the variable, the minutes are. Entering his age-35 season on a one-year extension, on a team that traded Trae Young to acquire him and then drafted Kingston Flemings at No. 8, the realistic risk is not that he plays badly but that Atlanta reallocates his second-half minutes to the rookie. Draft him for the first three months and treat the last six weeks as unowned.
Career sources: ESPN career stats · StatMuse season-by-season · StatMuse career averages · Wikipedia — CJ McCollum · ESPN — 2013 Lehigh foot fracture · ESPN bio
Open questions
- Does Atlanta manage him below 29 minutes to preserve the playoffs?
- How quickly can Flemings take the primary backup point role?
- Will his FT% return closer to his career level?