Brandon Goodwin being a passable backup point guard should be a boon for the Hawks, since, as far as I can tell, they haven’t had a backup PG on the roster at all. Like, literally nobody who fits the conventional definition of a “backup PG” was on the roster to start the season. They have Evan Turner, who is like a point forward who really sucks, and they have DeAndre’ Bembry as another point forward (but also not a very good one), and they have Kevin Huerter who I suppose must have been used as backup PG some of the time. But other than those dudes, they went into the season knowing that there was nobody to directly back up Trae Young.
Young is young (haha) but he’s not invincible, and just because he can play forty minutes a game doesn’t mean that he should be playing forty minutes a game. So if Goodwin can reduce some of the load on Young, that should be good for the Hawks going forward even if Goodwin specifically isn’t in their long-term plans.
The other good thing about having Goodwin around is that there’s a huge talent disparity between him and Young. This game didn’t really demonstrate it, but Goodwin is good for the tank. He’s not the “tank commander”, but he’s definitely a “take lieutenant”. Trae Young and John Collins are the only players on the Hawks who are going to accidentally cause the team to win games, so if there’s a ready-made excuse to put in inferior players who can bleed points, the Hawks should be all over that.