Iman

I dont think Crittendon falls to around the 20 pick where we'll be, he's just got too much upside. I'd like to see BK make some moves this offseason including moving up for Crittendon, etc. The pick and Lue or Salim or AJ might move us up 5-10 slots. Next I'd like to see us clear up Tiago Splitter's contract before drafting him. BK seems to like white stiffs at center so it might happen. I know Walter,etc will think no way, but I could see Thabeet falling below Hibbert and falling to us. I dont like him but I'd take him that low. Outside of the draft I think signing Randolph Morris and Anderson would be good moves.

Interesting, I like Marvin but would have to pick that one in this case. Other mistakes to consider(most of which I'd put ahead of taking Marvin): drafting Diaw instead of Josh Howard dumping JT (w Hendu) vs dumping him later or keeping him dumping Nazr not resigning Pryz signing all the centers he's signed (Drobniak, sp?, Edwards, Lo) taking Ivey instead of Duhon not getting Jack, Marcus Williams, etc not firing Woody signing Speedy I'd say not getting into the draft to get a point is his biggest mistake.

I think my most used lineup would be: Chillz Joe Marvin Smoove Solo We'd have no bulk to keep teams off the boards so it would appear we'd get outrebounded but I dont think we usually would. On nights against true big teams of course I'd give Zaza and Lo more PT. I'd probably start the game with Speedy and Zaza, but then sub Chillz and Solo for them. Bring Shelden in next to play with Solo while either Marvin or Smoove slides to the SF. Bring Lue in to rest Joe and use Lue close out some games with him on the floor instead of Chillz.

26 or 29 wins..lol. Actually this year it looks like a lot of teams including the Hawks will finish with around 30 wins and the 8th place team may slip in with 37 or so wins. Some "good" losses like a few of the last games might be important. Washington, NOK, etc arent powerhouses but close losses to those teams on the road show that the Hawks are getting their act together. It wont surprise me to also see us blow some games we should win coming up. But even given all that there is no way short of another major injury or two that the Hawks dont win more than 29 games. That will get us a decent shot at getting lucky in the lottery and getting to keep our pick. For most here that is fine since we want the pick but also hate the thought of giving Phoenix something like the 4th pick. It shouldn't matter, but it does. Either way, I enjoyed tonights game and didnt mind the loss since it may help in the long run. I wish they would have inbounded to Joe though, even if he had missed.

I agree that Charlotte doesnt have much talent now. They are better coached than us is about it. I also agree that Dwight Howard may force his way back to Atlanta. It was one of his goals as a high schooler and he's already a superstar and can demand pretty much whatever he wants. Actually he'd make more money if he eventually gets back to a bigger city just due to exposure, especially if he decided to go to LA or NY. But it's probably just a dream.

Oden is exactly what we need. I cant believe that he's shooting free throws as well as he is left handed, that's incredible. His upside is in the Shaq, downside maybe a bigger Antonio Davis. Solomon needs to gain more than like 40 lbs to play center effectively in most games. He looked fine last night because Phoenix is small and opens up the floor. Solomon's upside is Marcus Camby, downside is Loren Woods.

The league is weak this year, the Suns have a chance. My guess the likelihood of them going all the way is very similar to the likelihood of them losing in the first round also. So they have a chance, probably about the same chance the Hawks will by next year..lol. I'll have to agree with what Eddie Johnson, the Phoenix color guy, said when he and Smitty changed teams during last nights game. He said many felt that letting Joe Johnson go will probably cost them a championship. Ouch!

Very good topic and point Walter. Spending most of your capspace on redundant players is a very unlikely way to win a championship. When you get down to it, we'll basically spending over $40mil on 4 players that if traded would possibly all play SF for their new teams. Given BK's apparent reluctancy to take on salary, you have to wonder if that's what he figures he may do. You even have to wonder a little if that's why he drafted like he did in 2006. It does suck though when you figure that if our young wings develop then all we'd need is a good center to contend, but then realize we wouldn't be able to afford that center. My guess is that it will be 2-3 yrs before we make a big move and I'd guess we'll probably move JJ's salary at that time, probably for a disgruntled big like Bosh or Howard.

Sounds about right to me, I bet we pretty much look the same next year as now, including Coaches. A few things that probably have a 10% chance of happening that could dramatically improve us are: 1. we luck up in the lottery 2. we sign Randolph Morris 3. Anderson decides to come over 4. we get lucky with the Indy pick and maybe get Splitter after we're assured he'll come over The more likely scenario and one I wouldnt mind at all either is we draft a couple of local prospects in Crittendon at 19 and Jemario Davidson outta Alabama with our second rounder and then they both make the team get serious minutes by the second half of next year. With Morris and Smoove, that gives us 4 Atlantans, maybe that would be enough to convince Dwight Howard that he needs force the Magic to move him to us the next offseason!

Yup, Chillz stats are inconsistent but his play is consistent. He always brings energy and solid basketball. I sorta agree that Iguodala and Deng are better but it all depends on what a team needs. Without even looking I'd assume all have similar per minute stats on rebounds, assists, to's, with Chillz leading if anything. The difference is Chillz takes way less shots per min. If you need points you dont want Chillz, if you already have a few primary scorers, you may prefer Chillz. You sorta figure if Chillz shot more he'd take poorer shots which would bring his field goal efficiency down, but I'm not sure that would happen unless he had to be like JJ and really put it up alot. On the redunancy issue, yup, we have too many forwards. We have to get a better center, hopefully if one comes available it'll be from a team that covets a team player like Chillz and doesnt need a scorer.

We played real well against the Jazz last game, just got caught in "don't choke" mode and Okur had a career night and they came back on us. I expect us to play well tonite unless we (especially JJ) come out flat. We're due for JJ and Marvin to get their jumpers back, hopefully it'll be tonite. If Speedy doesnt look speedy, put Ivey in, he's a good matchup for Deron.

I just hope Woody learned something about substitutions in that game. He kept Speedy in to try to slow Monta Ellis but he didnt do that since he didnt want a quick foul. Then Woody planned to call the timeout, move the ball up, and take Speedy outta the game. Instead, JSmoove tried to inbound the ball and didnt want to throw it to Speedy so he turned it over. I think Woody should have taken Speedy out earlier. When Lue is back, I'd usually close out games with him on the court, but without Lue, why not close out with Chillz, JJ, Marvin, JSmoove, and a center. Teams seem to sag off Speedy in clutch situations to get him to shoot, which he does too often.

I agree, I dont think Detroit would do it. Salim, Lo, Medvedenko are expendable but probably not worth much. More likely we could use Salim to get us a guard that fits better. I wouldnt pay any more than that for Nazr, I'm not sure he's much of an upgrade over Zaza.

Lol, Cool, at least you got my point well enough to use standing reach in your post instead of continuing to say short arms. Otherwise, I agree with you on Shelden, he's been a defensive disappointment for me. For that matter all our bigs have horrible block stats. I thought maybe ZaZa would learn a little defense or maybe last year he was trying to save his fouls since he had no backup, but if anything his defense is worse this year.

Nice posts guys, tank talk but not all the garbage about having the worst or next to worst record. I'm not jumping on the tanking train but I will admit, I didnt mind this loss much at all. Much like I actually didn't get mad leaving the game after some of our bad early close losses like Miami, Chicago, of even Utah. I wish Chillz woulda taken that ball to the hoop on that last play, even if he had failed he would have learned from the experience. What really makes me not hate this loss was that Joe sucked and Smoove missed alot of the game on bad foul calls and we still almost won. The loss gives us more ping pong balls also. I still think we win 30 or so games unless Joe goes down. However, it is starting to appear that 25-30 wins may get us in the bottom 5 or so with still a shot in the lottery. Now I'd really like to see a close game against Phoenix.

Come on Walter, Shelden measured out about as expected, which I agree is actually kinda short for PF, much less the center some were saying he'd be. But you keep misusing the stats. The first stat that came out was his wingspan, which was huge, I dont remember but it was definitely over 7 ft, I remember tons of optimistic posts. Vertical reach came out next, that's where Shelden sucks, I seem to remember that even Adam Morrison had a better vertical reach than Shelden.

David Andersen. Actually I dont think the chaos is that big of a problem, the fact that we dont want to spend too much since we eventually want to resign our young players is. To really change the team we'll have to move one of those players after we have figured out who fits and what we need. We know we need a center now but our players are still too young to figure out. I think our 3 young forwards will each be tradeable for an impact FA in a year or two.

Geez Diesel, I could see this topic working well if you tried to compare JSmoove to Karl Malone, but Shelden, no way. You were doing better last year trying to compare Shelden to Okafor, go back to that one plz..lol. Or Charles Oakley. Btw, the modern Mailman is Elton Brand for sure.

As you can see, people debate but most agree that NORMALLY losing in more profitable in the long run that just being mediocre. I sure less would agree if a team is young. A young team needs to try to learn how to win. A very young team also really doesnt benefit as much as a vet team from bringing in more youth through the draft. But in our case, the biggest kicker is that most likely we give up our draft pick anyways. The only way I think we should root for losing this year is if JJ goes down to prolonged injury. You figure then we'd be bad anyways and it wouldnt harm our develop as much. I doubt any professional sports commentators will bother to discuss the Hawks, but if they did, I'd bet over 75% would agree that the odds of not getting the pick are too great vs us trying to learn how to win. A few would agree we are hopeless unless we get Oden, etc which is what the tankers on this site basically are saying.

I like Durant alot but he is playing on a very young team that really isnt that good. If Aldridge and Gibson had stayed on another year they'd be an extremely good team but Durant's average would be way down to 18-20ppg. However, Durant probably would still be the first scoring option on that team, unlike Marvin on his team. The Bosh freshman year is probably as close a comparision as possible. I also like the fact that it's easy to see Durant fitting perfectly as a SF in the NBA. Marvin may be able to run fullcourt faster than Durant but otherwise I think Durant is just a little quicker and a decent amount longer with many more ways to score. Marvin has the prettier jumper but it has quit falling for now.

I'm with Diesel, our Coach hasnt figured out how to match us up against Charlotte. Also, Charlotte was just hot, our defense wasnt good but no way Charlotte shoots the percentages they shot against us unless they are on fire. Game1 we looked sluggish and shot poorly but mainly Gerald Wallace was super energized and killed us. Both games Woodson did nothing to slow Okafor. Not that Shelden will ever have the game of Okafor, but I'd have matched them up and let Shelden learn first hand how to play. Medvedenko could have been used to pull Okafor outta the paint, isnt that why we got him? Anyways, we have plenty of winnable games coming up, hopefully we'll get back to playing well.

The posts giving up on Marvin are ridiculous. I'm also disappointed that he hasnt came on after a strong summer. If anything, I thought he would always be a consistent jump shooter. Just watch him in warmups, he hits about 8 outta 10 of his shots while everyone else except maybe Salim throw up way more bricks. However it does seem to me that if Marvin truely is a shooter then he should at least be hitting his free throws. So I guess I'm starting to see Marvin's ceiling being similar to that of Chillz. I hope I'm wrong. However, I still would have drafted Marvin. It appears it will be a bad choice but I just dont see how I could have passed up on a player that was listed as the most likely future superstar in the draft. I think the most likely way to championships is to draft and develop a superstar. Everyone was worried that Deron was gonna be too slow or not enough of a shooter. Paul appeared small and had been shutdown by big point guards in college. I was glad we took Marvin even though we already had 4 or 5 good SF prospects. I didnt want Bogut. The draft is done. Our drafting Marvin may have been just a result of the falling prey to the "hype machine", but at least from what I hear he works hard. Hopefully he'll pan out. As it is, no way I'd give up on him yet and I'm sure BK feels the same. We can still be a great team without Marvin becoming great, but it will be much harder. But either way, in my mind and in the mind most except a few that just wanna whine, it appeared to be a wise decision.

Both teams started slowly, we had Ivey at point and Lo at center. Woodie called a few times outs when our defense let down. Ivey got two fouls early and Chillz came in and next thing you know we got out to around a 10pt lead and held it most of the first half. KG was sluggish and his shooting was off whereas we were getting good shots and hitting them and not turning the ball over. In the third quarter we gradually expanded the lead continuing more of the same. I'd pretty much describe it like how NOK killed us but in this case we were the killer.

I'd look at another way. If we finish with a bottom two record, it's still only around 50/50 that we get to keep the pick and less than 50/50 that we get Oden if we did keep the pick. That's more like a 20% chance of geting Oden if we finish bottom two, and I'm sure it's gonna be hard to be worse than Philly unless Iguodala become Bobby Sura II. And I dont think it's that hard to get a good player today since so many are overpaid and teams are stuck with them. Utah snatched up a few good players when they had capspace, why cant we? Jermaine O'Neal is very good and it seems that he's obtainable for two prospects and the capspace. Same goes for KG. The Clippers will be dumping soon if they dont turn it around. Brand would be nice and shouldnt cost that much. Bosh or Gasol or Randolph might be let go if their teams dont turn around. Smaller deals that might get us a good player might be getting Channing Frye from NY for not much more than capspace or Lamarcus Aldridge from Portland for a Chillz type player. Then you have free agent signings which we should have a better than normal shot at given our capspace. I easily see 6-8 "put us into contention players" moving in the NBA in the next 2 yrs which gives an average NBA team around a 1 outta 5 or 20% chance. Maybe you'd say much lower for us given BK's history, I'd say higher given our assets, either way, close to tanking odds in my mind and not so disruptive to our young talent. I'd actually give us about a 10% chance of getting Dwight Howard. I know that sounds ridiculous, but he impresses me as a person that might just decide he wants to use his home of Atlanta as the place for him and his mission and he might refuse to resign with Orlando.

The Hawks have looked pretty bad until last night. But still, as stated above, we looked pretty good until after the Utah loss and on that road trip. Basically it's been while Lue and then Smoove have been out and Joe was off. I dont think we are as good as I thought earlier but I still think we'll win 25-30+ games unless Joe goes down. I've even heard Walter "the Bulldog" say he thinks we have too much talent to have the worst record without some players being benched/injured, etc.So given all that, I just dont get all the posted arguing about tanking. I'll admit that the last few years I've walked away from Philips reasonable pleased when we lost in good games, even the Chicago and Utah games. I rack it up to a learning experience and think maybe that helps our draft position. I also understand draft odds and the importance of us getting a center. And if Joe goes down I'll probably root for our 20-25 wins getting us a shot at Oden. But this is a bad year to tank. We aren't guaranteed to get to keep our pick. We're trying to develop young talent, even if just as a trade assets. Unless Joe goes down, losing would wreck our chemistry and our players trade value. About the only good that would come from us playing bad and having Joe would be at least that would be enough to cause Woodson's firing. I've read all the tanking arguments but it's just too risky since our pick isnt top 8 or so protected. Also, it was mentioned we'll never be more than a lower level playoff team even if a few of our youngster develop into allstars. That could be true but I would hope that if our players improve even close to allstar level, we should be able to move them if the team doesnt have what it takes. I'd bet just that one game last night moved Smoove's value up substantially. Salim and ZaZa are our key disposable players currently to me. We need to find a team that will give us a center or point prospect for some of our disposable assets. Then draft well with the Indy pick, and then move Marvin or Chillz or Shelden (hopefully all will play well the rest of the season and we win 30+ games) for what we need to finish off the team. I'd also rather have Oden but it just ain't gonna happen (unless Joe goes down and/or we get lucky in the lottery). In the meantime, rooting for us to get it back together gives us the best chance to eventually be good. Tanking is just too risky.