5694number3

Just throwing something out there, but it looks like only 1 Hawks game is on national TV, and there is only one Thursday game this year and it's not even on TNT (you get to watch Ugly Betty all year, Marvin!). Don't you think if the Hawks roster was solidified before August 1st, maybe they would get a few more TV spots? Shouldn't the ASG take this into account in their summer dealings? Because I sure as heck think they should.

Add a little under $16M for the player options exercised by Ron Artest and Kenny Thomas ( I know Artest exercised it, and Thomas would have been a fool not to have exercised his $8M+ option). This puts Sactown over the cap right now. But I do like the idea of Brad Miller though.

I like Gomes and I thought he would be one of the RFA's to get a lot of attention this summer. I think that McHale made it one of the Wolves priorities to re-sign Gomes. The fact that they can match must have scared off a lot of teams from putting out an offer sheet, so Minny is taking their sweet time. Surely that won't come back to bite the ass of a quality management team the likes of Minnesota.

I, for one, will miss the "J-Chill's Fro-Zone" sign above the club level. I know Johnson and Smith and Horford all have their little signs for their sections, but seriously, the Childress one was the only one I ever saw. It was at the perfect angle for when the cameraman under the basket did a closeup on the free-throw shooter. I just want to know who will take that precious spot. My guess: Mario's Trillionaires. Trillion

Good news for all you "Ugly Betty" fans - for at least the second year in a row, the Hawks don't play on Thursday night at all. I know that's TNT's doubleheader night, but sometimes they do schedule more than 2 games those nights. The Hawks can't even get on the untelevised games. Undefeated on Thursdays!

That game against the Raptors in November - that was the game where the scoreboard operators at Philips did not give Toronto credit for a basket some time in the second half. The final score should have been 97-95, assuming nothing else changed. That's unrealistic though, since the end game would change significantly. Anyway, the line for that game was Hawks -3-1/2 (0.5 cover). Maybe he was trying to fix it so Toronto would cover and got screwed over by a sleeping scorekeeper. Now there's a conversation an unmarked van in the Philly area should have picked up.

Personally, I like the lottery and I think it works well enough - any change to combat tanking and your just shifting the tanking window/ I admire the creativity, but wouldn't these calculations encourage tanking from Day 1? Let's say you have a team that you know will be bad and shouldn't make the playoffs, say the 2007-08 Grizzlies. In the first scenario, wouldn't you want to start the season off on a 5 game losing streak to get 400 points right off the bat? And how would a season opening 10 game losing streak effect the PAL count? I wouldn't mind seeing a change to the NHL system where a team can move up only 4 spots. Also, maybe there could be a way a team can trade for ping-pong ball combinations - say Memphis could have given Charlotte a future 2nd rounder for their ball combos.

Frankly, after nearly a week of waiting, I expected better from Sekou. While I guess the trades all would make the Hawks better, there is almost no chance that any one of the opposing teams would make any of these because they aren't helped in the slightest. First of all, the only trade that can be done today is #2; Wilcox and Stoudemire are both BYC until after July 1st. #'s 3, 4, and 5 - they can't be done after the 1st round is completed since a team can't be left without a first rounder in consecutive years, and who wants to see 2 guys wearing Hawks hats on draft night who will never play for the Hawks? Sure, Garnett would be nice, but I don't think this trade could work for Minnesota because the Wolves have 12 non-Garnett players on their roster; adding Childress, Johnson, Williams, and Wright - that's 16. Plus they would have the #s 3, 7, 11, and 41 picks in the draft. That's a lot of guys playing for Sioux Falls in the D-League. Personally, I can't see Minnesota, Memphis, or Phoenix making these deals because this would give them 3 1st round draft picks (4 in the case of Phoenix). Sure, you get a multitude of supposedly good players on the cheap, but with 3 rookies, there is bound to be overlap in positions, and I think there would be some level of animosity. Plus, what if the best-case scenario happens and they all become starlike players? After 4 years, they'll all want max contracts, and there goes your cap flexibility. (But maybe it's a good thing, 3 stars locked up - let me know when this happens to a team with 3 #1's in a year.) Anyway, I guess I'd go with #2, though I don't see how this helps Denver other than making their front line worse and saving them over $15M in '09 and '10 if they don't pick up the option on Shelden.

Paul Shirley. How come there's no Hawks jersey on the cover of his book?