FrankWhite

I agree. Jason Richardson is not an upgrade over Gerald Wallace. At best, it's a lateral move for the Bobcats.

Allen is a 32 year old SG coming back from an ankle surgery. He's also a bad defender. Lewis is a very good scorer coming off a career (contract) year, but he is a terrible defender and is being way overpaid. Randolph is a great low post scorer, but he too is an awful defender. He's also a complete basket case off the court, and he's going to a dysfunctional team with it's fair share of headcases. There's a reason Portland didn't even want him to meet Oden. These moves look good on paper, but they don't exactly strike fear in my heart.

How can we know he'll never be an All Star? Generally, if a player is the consensus 3rd best player in a draft being called one of the deepest ever, they're pegging him as a future All Star. The fact of the matter is we won't really know what we have until we see the product on the court.

Quote: I'm disappointed not to get Luke Ridnour or Jarrett Jack. Why would Portland trade Jack to us?

He's great, and he'll be an All Star for years to come... but that doesn't always translate into championships. Look at Ewing or Mourning (before he became a backup) for proof. Can't miss centers can get you to the party, but you better have a great complimentary player to put you over the top. Maybe Roy or Aldridge is that guy, maybe not. Who knows at this point?

So the Hawks should have taken Conley at 3.... and who exactly at 11? Al Thornton? Thaddeus Young? They had 2 lottery picks. If they just had the 3rd pick or could trade the 11th pick into a proven big, they would have drafted Conley. But they couldn't, so they took the consensus 3rd best player in the draft, a guy who can play the 4 and the 5, knowing they could take the 2nd best PG at 11. It's called getting the most value for your picks. How often is this going to have to be said?

I like how someone we know is reliable when it comes to the Hawks, Sekou Smith, states unequivocally there was no deal in place for Amare, yet we're to believe Chad Ford's idiotic insistence that we pulled out of this made up deal. Of course he'll never admit he's spouting BS. ESPN doesn't check to see if their "journalists" are lying, so why would he?

Yeah, that's what happens when you win the lottery in a stacked draft. Luck has as much to do with this as anything else. If the pingpong balls bounced differently and the Hawks got the first pick, everyone would be talking about us hanging banners from the rafters of Philips in a few years. Not really sure what the point of this thread is.

They didn't want Randolph anywhere near Oden and NY was obviously the only place willing to take him on. Frye is a good backup F/C. If they just dumped Randolph, it's addition by subtraction, but they got another high character guy who's also a pretty decent ballplayer in return.

On the other side of this trade, I wonder if GS is now working on trading Wright for Yi. I know they desperately wanted Yi, and considering how Yi's people looked at the draft, the Chinese gov't might force Milwaukee to trade him to a market with a large Asian population, like San Fran.

This doesn't pass the sniff test for me. For the past 3 weeks we've heard it's a 3 way race between Horford, Conley and Yi, and now BK is pissed because he can't draft Brandan Wright? Couple this with Sekou Smith saying there wasn't a deal in place for Stoudemire, just some conversation... eh. I'll wait and see what actually happens before I believe these things, thanks.

The way I look at in terms of Minny's incentive is this: Trading for Stoudemire doesn't change their situation at all. If they couldn't win with Garnett, they aren't going to be any better in the immediate future with Stoudemire. But trading Garnett for draft picks and expiring contracts gives them financial flexibility over the next few years and it gives them 3 of the top 11 picks Thursday to reinvent their roster. They could easily come out of the draft with future starters at PF, C and PG, all with All Star potential, and a completely overhauled franchise. It's basically giving them a clean slate to rebuild. Phoenix's incentive is Garnett is just more skilled offensively and defensively than Stoudemire. If they want to leapfrog San Antonio and win a title in their 2-3 year window, this deal brings them closer to that than standing pat. And of course Atlanta's incentive is we get FRIGGIN' AMARE STOUDEMIRE!!

I can't believe anyone before this game was doubting Oden. Anyone after this game doubting Oden? That person is a goddamn fool.

Seriously, how when you're down 1 and the worst thing you can do is give up a 3 do you not have someone staying with Okur at all times? How the hell do you not tell your players that? Who was friggin' Zaza even guarding? Ugh.

That was about as pathetic a display of coaching as I've ever seen. Woodson has to go.

It won't surprise me if he does the same thing LeBron, Melo and Wade did this past offseason, sign a short term extension in order to get a larger max contract as a free agent. So there's always a possibility he could end up here, but probably not for another 3-4 years or so.

While you shouldn't make any judgement values on a player based on his first game back from a significant injury (and one that directly effects his shooting touch, at that), Marvin did look rusty, but there were a lot of encouraging signs, IMO. I've watched our guys stand around on offense waiting for JJ or Lue to bail them out too much this season not to be impressed with Marvin's aggressiveness when he had the ball. There were several times, especially near the end of the game (garbage time, I know, but still), where he dictated the flow of the offense and went strong to the hole and his quickness posed an obvious mismatch for the Lakers. Once he gets the rust off, I can easily see him being a 12-13 ppg, 6-7 rpg, 2-3 apg type guy, and I think we'll see something like last year where he gradually increases his production each month as the season goes on, to the point where he'll be a 16-17 ppg, 8-9 rpg, 3-4 apg guy at the season's end, hopefully. Marvin has exceptional tools, I don't know how anyone can't see that. He's got explosive athleticism, a nice handle, the makings of a deadly inside-outside game, and he's a pretty good passer, too. So before you judge a 20 year old in his second season's worth, look at where our superstar, Joe Johnson, was at this point in his career. Some guys come into the league hot, some guys take 2-3 seasons to reach their potential. Deron Williams and Chris Paul are completely different players than Marvin, playing in completely different circumstances. While I would've been happy with either of those guys, none of us can say with any degree of certainty who will look like the best player to come out of that draft in 5 years.

That's huge news.

Simmons, like most mainstream NY-Boston centric writers, shits on Atlanta teams routinely. It's really kind of pathetic and has been getting old for years now, but the only thing that'll make it stop is some legitimate contenders to emerge from the city's sports scene on a consistent basis.

Quote: This is most certainly NOT a playoff team. Not until we get a true NBA coach. Sad, but true. Expect about 34-48. We aren't likely to see .500 again. We just blew 3 very winnable games at home. This team has resorted to the same crap we did last year. Mike Woodson is an awful close game coach and the last time I checked...many NBA games are close. I heard Woody in the huddle tonight during a crunch time TO and it sounded worse than a HS huddle. Nice guy. Lousy coach. Quoted for truth.

I love Josh Smith, but every time he shoots a 3, the opposing coach must breathe a sigh of relief. The most explosive athlete on the court and his coach lets him shoot 5 feet out of his range all night. If he would work on consistently knocking down a 15-18 footer, he would be unstoppable.

It's because, like the media and the rest of the NBA, they don't think the Hawks should be winning games, so if it's close they're just not getting the same calls. It's utter BS and I wish David Stern would for once in his life spend an offseason fixing the crappy officiating instead of coming up with ways to punish those complaining about crappy officiating.