crimedog

Quote: Ric Bucher also said we had Amare Stoudamire but the owners vetoed it. The guy is a buffoon. When the real story came to light it was the Suns who didnt want to deal Amare. Also the dude who said Kobe had played his last game in LA if I'm not mistaken.

Quote: Ric Bucher was just on ESPNnews and said he'd be "shocked" if Smith is back in Atlanta next season and that the chances are slim. He said that Smith does not want to return to Atlanta. And commented on his relationship with Mike Woodson. He said if Sixers don't get Brand, they'll give Smith an offer the Hawks won't match. And that if they do get Brand, the Clippers would sign Smith to be their PF. I don't think it'd be the end of the world if this happened. Horford needs to be a PF and I actually believe so does Smith. Al Horford is the better prospect, so it's probably best to let Smoove go at the amount he costs. Also, Smith being our 4 and Horford our 5 was a big reason why people thought we should be a running team. If we start Horford at the 4, we're not as much of a running team. If its any consolation, the yahoo sports basketball guy is saying tha Brand is likely to sign with the Sixers: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=Ande...=yhoo&type=lgns

Well it would be more a case of lucking out than of deftly playing their hand... but yeah, if Brand chooses the Sixers it could make the Hawks BIG winners. Chil would probably be in demand at that point and we might be able to get a couple of nice peices out of him. I was explaining to a coworker that Brand might be better off, beyond just money, playing for Philly. The supporting cast is better, Dalembery complements him better than Kaman, they are in the east, etc. On the other hand, he might like it in LA.

Quote: Having him walk would be a terrible blow, we at least need to get some quality talent in return. However, paying Smoove a max deal is hard to swallow. He is our 2nd best player right now but I have a feeling that Horford will surpass him as our 2nd best player in short order. That would leave us in a big bind when it comes time to extend Horford and resign JJ in 2 years. Beyond the fact that you are banking on a player to not only match but surpass another player who is, statistically at least, very far ahead of him at the exact same age, I think there are some flaws in your logic. Explain to me how signing Smith would put us in a bind in 2010 when we have to resign those guys. As of right now we have no one on the books for that offseason. Speedy comes off that offseason and Bibby comes of this next offseason, we can decide what we do with our less talented players (Chil/Marv/Zaza) with that offseason in mind. Beyond that, if Smith leaves this offseason for either nothing or a mediocre prospect and a couple of mediocre draft picks (Speights and a couple of top10 protected or whatever), what makes you think Joe is going to want to resign with us? How long has Joe been calling for ownership to spend money to win? Since he got here - you think he's going to want to stay here when he's 29 and the team has topped at around .500 and a first round playoff exit? ... and if Al gets as good as you hope he does, who do you think all those teams are going to go after when all the premier FAs get snatched up by the two NY teams or their old teams? They're going to target Al because they will have a bunch of dough saved up and they will know that all they have to do is throw it at him and ASG will blink. I just don't see how not signing Smith now helps us long term unless we have a concrete plan to bring in an all-star in the very near future. If we don't, I think we look to move Joe ASAP before he starts acting like he wants to leave.

Just to point out, we can probably work out a SnT with Josh C instead of letting him walk if we have to fill a couple of roster spots.

Quote: I'm also at the point where we need to look at Sign-and-trade options BUT Philly has no need to do so. If they can sign him outright why would they give us one of their most talented, young, inexpensive core players in Thaddeus Young? Just so they don't have to wait to see if we match? This is an interesting point. Philly might just hope we aren't going to SnT, would any of you be willing to see him walk?

Quote: Childress is a much better fit for our team than Harrington. We need Childress' baseline off the ball play and versatility. He's also a pretty heady player who never seems to complain about his role. He's been a great personality for the team but I think that his baseline play is more replaceable than you consider. Watch our halfcourt sets when Smith is in the game with Chil and without him. With Chils out, we have Smith down near the basket where he does a solid job on the boards and gets the garbage stuff, with Chil in we push Smith to the perimeter where he is more than willing to jack the long 2s and 3s he gets but can't crash the o-boards. Its not a knock on Chil, or Smith, or even Woody for that matter. Chil just happens to be a better fit on a team that has a few guys who can step out and knock a J down. Unfortunately we don't have enough of those guys on our team. Woody had to play them together because Chil is our best reserve. Harrington can play on the perimeter and therefore might be a better fit, both are pretty bad on D... I suspect Harrington is worse but its hard to tell because Chil had to check too many players who were a boatload quicker than him. On the other hand, Chil has been great about being stuck behind a younger guy who hasn't proven to be better necessarily. He also might end up being a lot less money than Big Al H.

Well there aren't many superstar types who can single handedly carry a franchise to the highest levels - Paul, Howard, Duncan, Lebron types of players. Unfortunately we don't have one of those so it looks like the best way to go is to snag a group of talented players who can fill roles. Joe can, if he isn't dogging it/exhausted (or whatever was going on until the ASG break), be an offensive focal point for a team. The chances of landing a better player are slim enough that we should angle to resign. Joe has shown however, that he is willing to leave a team if he doesn't like the situation. To me that means, if we lose Smith this offseason and go back to a team with very little chance to make the playoffs, we need to have a plan to unload Joe for assets before he asks to go to a team where he has a chance to win in 10' when he is a couple years closer to the end of his career.

Quote: Quote: Keep in mind, Mike Redd has experienced more success as a "go-to" guy than JJ, how does that factor into your analysis? WTF?? Where the heck did that come from? JJ is so far and away more reliable to put the ball in the hoop its laughable. On the question at hand, the only guy I'd rather have was Marion a couple of years ago. He's basically a Smoove clone- bad shooting, athletic, pretty good D. Swish my friend, read the post. I didn't say Redd is a better player, he isn't, Joe is better at so many aspects of the game its insane. However a Redd-led Milwaukee team won 40 games a couple years ago and although they lost in only 5 games to the Pistons, Redd dropped 27ppg over those games shooting an insane 52% and 47% from 3. I don't like Redd att all, I like Joe a lot. I was making the point that being paid "the man" money without "the man" production is all about context and almost all good teams have multiple guys making a lot of money. Marion in his prime with Nash was paid a lot but he was the second most important part of an elite team for a few seasons.

For one, Smith is a pretty good defender man on. He certainly isn't elite and he still makes stupid mistakes but he usually holds his own and when he really locks in he can be awesome (like in crunch time of the Toronto game, we had Marv on Bosh and he was getting torched and then we switched Josh onto him and Smith tooled CB4 on both ends a few times). Anyway, that team seems like it would be worse at every aspect of the game. No one on the inside can create their own shot, no shot blockers, we still don't have any shooters, and Chil is a worse defender than Marv who is a worse defender than Smith. I'll reiterate, if Smith leaves with nothing coming back this way, we need to trade Chil for picks and try and grab and impact player or two in the draft next season because the drop in talent/potential is big.

Quote: these headlines make the FA period more and more unpredictable: Chris Duhon has agreed to a deal with the Knicks, according to Sporting News ... Warriors have reached out to Corey Maggette ... Heat and Cavs very interested in Monta Ellis ... Nets target Andres Nocioni . .. Anthony Johnson an option for the Nuggets? ... James Singleton to the Mavs It could get really craZy. Don't think there is one really. I guess we'd go after Brown pretty hard and hope like hell that Marv and Horford make big jumps in their development. If Smith does leave, I'd want to see Chil moved for a pick or two. We'd need more impact players and we wouldn't really be in contention for the playoffs for the upcoming season.

Quote: mean that we are rebuilding? And is a team that has crossed the 35-win threshold once in the last 4-5 years built? It wouldn't be rebuilding because letting him walk would give us no real recourse to get better. We'd be losing one of our two best players and the foundation of our D and not replacing him with anything. In fact, thats the opposite of building, it is pure decay. The whole point of the BK era (not that I'm a BK fan in the least) was to build a talent base through the draft. If we let the most talented (as of now, Horford has some potential as well) player that we drafted walk for nothing, the rebuilding period was essentially a waste. While I know you are intentionally ignoring context when you ask whether a 37 win team is "built", I'd go so far as to say that it doesn't really matter. The point of not resigning Smith from an ownership perspective is because a) they'd lose too much money personally or b) the team would be better off without him in the long run. From a fan perspective though, (a) doesn't matter. So the question is, "In what way would we better off in the long run without Smith if the alternative is signing him to a massive contract?" Unless you think that we will be able to attract a premier FA in the next few years, there is no real upside. No great player is going to want to come to a team that has shown an unwillingness to pay for wins. Make no mistake either, Smith and Joe were the only two players that significantly impacted our team's performance in terms of on/off court performance. Losing Smith and not replacing him seriously hurts this team's prospects for wining. The team losing means there will be fewer fans, fewer fans again further hurts the team's prospects for luring a free agent. So you tell me the upside from our perspective for letting Smith walk. Obviously, if ownership doesn't want to pay for the kid, that is their choice and its their money but the city of Atlanta has proven to be more market driven than most when it comes to our sports teams. If you are putting a shitty product out there, most of us ain't buying it (and I, like most of you, have stuck with this team through some pretty rough times but I might have to take a hiatus if Smith walks for nothing, I watched too many years of losing basketball that was also unexciting).

Quote: Some news after Smoove's visit with the Sixers: Quote: Hawks' free agent forward Josh Smith is reportedly impressed with the Sixers after visiting with the team on Wednesday, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We had a great meeting and a great time visiting with everyone here, and we'll continue to talk tomorrow," Brian Dyke, one of Smith's agents, said Wednesday night. "What I can tell you is that we're very impressed with 76ers' organization and the city of the Philadelphia." Philadelphia took Smith around the city in a limo and scheduled a meeting with major Michael Nutter, as well. The 76ers are armed with more than $11 million in available cap space. Via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Is this something to be worried about? Or maybe it's just his agent playing the agent game and using the sixers as leverage on the Hawks extension talks. What else would he say? Josh isn't going to sign an offer sheet with the Sixers and even if he did he wouldn't want to play there"?

Quote: It is part of the loser mentality that exists around here. Just because we are the hawks we have to overpay JS and potentially handcuff ourselves in the coming years. Nearly every player on that last has played for multiple teams. I like JS but he needs to be paid for what he is right now. We all know that BK wouldn't have given him the max if he was still here. We can't afford to get burned. Josh is a piece of the puzzle. He is not a franchise player and he will never will be. That isn't a knock on him it is what it is. So at what point would you let him walk? If you did let him walk, what would you do next? Keep in mind, Mike Redd has experienced more success as a "go-to" guy than JJ, how does that factor into your analysis? What about a guy like Garnett who's skill set makes him an amazing supporting player but not "the man"? He makes over $10m a year more than what Josh will probably get.

Quote: and that question is simply this. If we sign him to the money he wants and god forbid JJ goes down with an injury, is Smoove capable of leading this team to the playoffs, is Smoove capable of being the man. We all know the answer to this question!!!! Not the man, but gets paid the man money Allstar team: Odom Redd Marbury K. Martin Peja Rashad Lewis Jermain O'Neil Shawn Marion You guys know what these guys have in common right??? Wait, so are you saying JJ could have led the team to the playoffs without Smith? No, you aren't saying that because you aren't actually asking a real question here. There may be three players in the league that have proven to be able to take untalented teams to the playoffs. Now, as far as empirical evidence. At the end of the 06-07 season, JJ went out for 2 months and we won at the exact same rate as we did when he was healthy.

Quote: Quote: If he played on a team with a lot of shooters that would open up the lane for him a lot. Agreed, and if you re-sign him, you take away your ability to add shooters around him. Yep, I am a critic of Childress but not because I don't think he is immensely talented in many ways. I just don't think he is a good fit with our more talented (or in Al's case, potential-filled) players. I believe that you find "talent-core", in our case Joe, JoshS, Al and build around them. Chil is good, other teams see that and might be willing to give us similarly talented players that fit better. I think Chil could be excellent for a team like Toronto, Dallas, SanAn, Boston, New Orleans, or Golden State because they all have bigs (or in GS's case, "bigs") who can create space inside for a guy like Josh.

Quote: If we fail to resign JSmoove, I'm sure it will be in the running for greatest Hawk disappointment, but there are some others that are probably worse. Rider and Shelden are up there because you could see how devastating those decisions would be but they were made anyway.

Quote: The truth is that we're pot committed to resign the Joshes. They are more valuable than what we can get on the FA market. To our team, there's a lot of politics involved with perception to the rest of the league if we fail to get it done. It finally seems like we can get this broken ownership fiasco out of the front of the picture, however, if we don't resign the Joshes and at least try to do what we said we will do, our reputation will be destroyed. I'm not so worried about other free agents. I'm looking at 2010. 2010 will be a huge FA year. You know Kobe, Lebron, Wade, JJ, Horf, Allen, Shaq, Nash, Boozer, etc. What that means is that there will be lots of teams that will have money to spend if they lose their own free agent. I think the team who we should probably be most afraid of is Cleveland. In 2010, they have nobody but Lebron to resign. Then there's Miami and Phoenix. The point is that if we look weak right now with the Joshes, we will pay dearly in 2010 when the sharks come back out and Joe and Horf are on the line. Good point. I feel that sometimes "superfans" like ourselves get a little elitist. We overanalyze the impact or non-impact a certain player(s) can have on the team and then regress that against championship trending. At the end of the day, the Joshes are the reason this team is "young and exciting" and we may have to pay for a little more than production.

Quote: Quote: Quote: "They seem to like him. They seem to be genuine." Not to read too much into this, but does this suggest that either he expected them to not be genuine or maybe the hawks didn't seem genuine? What it means to me is that they didn't actually make him an offer. Yeah, it goes on to say that other teams are still going to talk to him.

I'm not goint to start worrying about Smith not wanting to come back until he says he doesn't want to come back.

Quote: It was in the best interest for the ASG to let someone else negotiate the contract. That ties up the other team from making moves for 7 days, it allows us to look at our options and if we decide the offer is too much then we talk trade with them. If we decide he is worth that then we match. I highly doubt that Smith will be playing anywhere next year and by the slim chance that he does we will get something of value in return. They aren't just going to get him walk for nothing. Good call. Lets not lose our [censored] until we need to.

Quote: That's not the only way. He could get his big contract and get lazy (e.g. Eddy Curry) or he could become a cancer (e.g. Zach Randolph) and those would be VERY difficult scenarios to move a guy making 14-19 million per year with multiple years left on his deal. I think it's unlikely that he becomes lazy and I doubt he will become a cancer (although he does have a bit of an attitude) so we should be okay on those accounts, but they are real possibilities in addition to the injury possibility. To be fair, Eddy Curry was always lazy and Zach Randolph has had numerous run-ins with the law in his life, something that Josh hasn't had (now DRose has though...). ... but yeah, nothing is certain in the NBA. He could just end up not getting any better.

Quote: Trading maxed out players is not very easy. This is true. The only way we would be able to trade him and get value back would be if he kept improving (in which case we wouldn't trade him...). Look at Redd or JO, although JO's contract is bigger. That being said, Gasol had the same value-salary question and was traded for expirings so as long as Smith doesn't regress, we could hypothetically find a team with expirings that was trying to make a big push and swap Smith that way. Still, we should all hope that he doesn't get offered 14.5 for many reasons.

Quote: the day he put on a uniform. In the ideal situation, he would have came in and been able to give us the same production from the PG position that he gives from the SG position. Chillz would have been the starting SG, Marvin the starting SF and Smoove the starting PF. That didn't work out for a number of reasons. Worse case scenario was ALWAYS that JJ might not be a PG but he WILL be one of the best all around SGs in the NBA. Period. When I said skills, I meant "mad skillz" as in JJ is a "straight up baller" who can hold his own on the court with anyone. I also said "skills as a player" not skills as a PG. You still aren't getting my point. I watched most of the Suns games in 04-05 (one of my roomates was from BC and therefore was obliged to be all over Steve Nash's nuts), Joe was good but not "take over" good. There are plenty of very skilled players that can produce like Joe did in 05' but can't do what Joe does now. We gambled that Joe's skills could translate and that he could become the type of player he is now, which is a whole different level than the player he was then. The Cavs made a similar gamble with Larry Hughes (who was considered better than Joe at the time) and got screwed for it. Resigning Smith is going to take a gamble too, the difference is that there are teams willing to pay good money for what Smith brings today because he is a dominant shotblocker and efficient scorer inside - obviously the problem is that he takes too many shots from the outside.

Quote: Sekou Smith was on 680 yeasterday afternoon. I forgot to post something about it when I got home, so here is the day-old recap. Sekou was asked if he thought one or both Joshes would be back with the team. Sekou's answer was that he just wasn't sure. He could see both guys staying, leaving or one signing and the other gone. I don't find this encouraging as Sekou is probably as close as anyone to this ownership group. It sounds like Sekou just doesn't have the pulse of the owners. As for upcoming trades. Sekou mentioned that Sund may go after some of Seattle's players. He specifically mentioned Chris Wilcox as a guy that Sund may go after. Maybe its an SnT- Childress for Wilcox and a top 10 protected pick? -My idea not Sekou's. I wouldn't mind Jeff Green either. Those are the two highlights that I can still remember. Well Sekou doesn't know Sund very well, and I don't think anyone knows the ownership group particularly well. I don't see why he would jeopardize his credibility and say "they will sign both without question"... The fact that the meeting yesterday didn't really do anything isn't a great sign but no one has given any indication that the Hawks would actually let Smith walk yet so... Chil is another story.