ATLien_

There's the saying scared money don't make no money. Scared money makes you take Shelden Williams over Brandon Roy. Would you rather of had 5 years of Brandon Roy? Hell we might of won a ring in his 5 years. It also makes you talk about how you're worried about Chris Paul's size and injury history and convinces you to take Marvin Williams. If Travis Schlenk is scared he's needs to go to church. I want them to find the piece most likely to be a #1 on a championship team. If they feel none of those players are available then you look for a number 2 and a defensive anchor. Those are next two most critical championship components. We had all the other parts before, and it never lead to a ring because we didn't have a number 1. This rebuild is mental masturbation if we aren't doing everything to find a true #1.

Glad the Squawk is back up. I was going through withdrawal. I think Porter Jr is my guy which is definitely not consensus, but after watching a couple of decades of hawks basketball I realize having a true alpha dog with number one scoring ability is mission critical. Michael Porter JR is the best scorer in this class and it's really not that close. He can shoot when he comes in the gym and scores at all three levels, is very explosive around the basket and should require a double team. Can shoot off pin downs dribble pullups, can fade, can post, can fade from post. Bud would have had a field day with this guy. Unless the doctor's telling me he only has a two year career I'm taking him. I'm not worried about his back giving out 10 years from now, I would rather have 5 years of Alpha then a Al Horford player for 15 years. If we are rebuilding it should be to get a ring or what are we doing? Porter is the type of piece hardest to find. He's the type of player the last core never found. His back injury is a blessing because he would be gone if he didn't have it. According to this article the injury may impact his year 1, but year 2 players recover fully. That's also helps us maximize next year's pick Sixers style. https://www.sbnation.com/college-basketball/2018/5/17/17337374/michael-porter-jr-injury-history-nba-draft-2018-missouri

I was actually going to post about Kyri, he is a good pairing with Luka if we draft Luka I would definitely look at him at 19. He's a combo guard not a PG as @KB21 has pointed out, but Luka is your pg in this scenario, so he becomes a secondary ball handler which is fine for him. He is one of the best perimeter defenders in this draft and has almost a 7foot wingspan, so he can take the tougher defensive assignment between PG and SG to hide Luka. He's also i think, a 40% 3pt shooter in college. I don't love the fit defensively or offensively for Dennis and Luka. Both are poor defenders that allow dribble penetration and both are poor to below average 3 point shooters. Luka will need the spacing Kyri can provide because his speed is just average by NBA standards and his quickness is below average. Teams will go under on he and Dennis all game. My comp for Kyri is Patrick Beverly with a bit more offensive upside. Troy Brown is a higher upside option, but I would pair him with Porter Jr not Luka. Troy Brown and Luka would clash because he's a better defending worse shooting version of Luka.

As it should be. I'm not going to support a bad uninteresting product. I hope they lose boat loads of money while they're uncompetitive, so they have plenty of incentive to get better fast. It's not a customers job to support you while your product is inferior. I'll tune in next year to see if they got the picks right and if the team is interesting i'll watch. This is bad news for the Hawks though because those are real Hawks fans that stopped watching. NBA ratings in Atlanta always outpace Hawks ratings. The number of Hawks fans here is far less than nba fans, and sizeable majority aren't watching the Hawks. Point is, I don't know anyone who watches Hawks games consistently that's not a die hard.

Doesn't Buds parents still live in Arizona. It could be as simple as wanting to be closer to his family and have his kids closer to their grand parents. Hopefully it's not anything to do with his parents health.

This article is kind of laughable, so now if a 7-1 260 pound center looks uncomfortable going coast you cost be has limited offensive upside? I don't want my 7 footer trying to do a steady diet of coast to coast and dribble drives from 3. His shining example of Cousins would be lot better player if he did less hot dogging; maybe he wouldn't turn the ball over so much causing coaches to pull their hair out. Half of the videos he shows just prove how little space Ayton had to work with at Arizona. Most of the Bagley videos are 1 on 1 isolation with no dig downs. Almost every Ayton video had 2 - 3 defenders watching him like a Hawk(pun intended). I understand why this evaluation makes sense for Bagley, because that's his path to being good in the NBA he can't score in the manner Ayton scores either. Comparing Ayton to Okafor laughable. They are only similar in size the comparison stops there. Okafor failed because he can't shoot, rebound or move on defense. None of which are problems for Ayton. He is a physically superior athlete to Okafor in every way, and his defensive issues are clearly awareness issues due to lack of basketball experience. Physically there's no reason he can't be a competent defender, and if his awareness improves enough he can be a great defender. This site clearly has their favorites and is not a good substitute for draft express. Draft express gave good accurate assessments of all players strengths and weakness. I never felt like they were biased. Doncic has plenty of weaknesses where's that article? I've watched full games of his not just highlights.

I thought Sam Mitchell did a good job in his previous stops as a head coach. I think he develops players pretty well and knows when to be firm. I enjoy his commentary on basketball and her clearly knows the game. Not sure he would take over our dumpster fire though.

I agree with you the single most likely outcome in the NBA is you end up stuck in the middle because drafting all stars isn't good enough. You usually need a transcendent talent, which come along every 8-10 years and dominate the league. Imo there is no formula in the NBA, it's more art than science especially in the lottery era. People that are trying to follow a model that's not repeatable scare me. They'll throw out you need lottery picks, but I'm sure every team in the NBA has lottery talent on it. I would love to see the NBA reward the teams competing with a chance at these players. The teams just out and maybe the 7th / 8th seeds. We need more good teams in the NBA and as constructed you can't escape the middle. I'm tired of seeing a quarter of the teams winning less than 30 games. Crazy to think we win 30 games in 05/06 and picked 3rd getting Horford. We would have no chance at 3rd with they record this year. That's how bad the product has become and it's inflating the good teams records.

They are one of the best, but let's see what they achieve before we go trying to replicate their model. There are a lot of young teams with talent. Some of them are in the west though and have a hard time making the playoffs. Minnesota being the prime example. They're the 8th seed in the west, but I feel pretty good about them beating the Sixers in a series. Milwaukee still baffles me. I think their talent is superior to the 76ers but it's sub optimized by poor coaching. Ben Simmons is going to have to learn to shoot for Philly to realize their full potential. I was surprised Miami allowed him to be a facilitator. They should make him a scorer, and go under on everything.

The irony is they fired the guy that drafted them all. Also they got alot wrong too, MCW, Noel, and Okafor. Will agree to disagree they drafted well but it's not easy to get that many picks while getting the picks right. Injuries played a huge role in that. It will be interesting to follow their window. They can't pay all those players so they'll have to continue to prove they can draft well outside of the lottery. You can't spend 24m on JJ when these rookie deals come up. They have a bright future, but people are acting like they a guaranteed a championship now. A lot will still have to go right.

In my opinion what Philly did is just as much of an outlier as the Pistons championship team. First they got the player that should have gone first overall 3rd, Joel Embid, because of injury. This is not uncommon and we may see it this year with Porter Jr. Second, they had the reigning rookie of the year the year Michael Carter Jr returning. Embid sits out the entire year allowing them to draft Okafor. If Embid is healthy this year it's very unlikely the finish bad enough to get the number 1 pick. They get the #1 pick in a draft that just happens to have Ben Simmons. Then he gets hurt for a full year. Allowing them to get Fuletz. In the middle of all that they dupe Orlando into trading Dario Saric for Elfrid Payton who stayed in Europe 2 years and is now their 3rd best player. So if you can draft impact players without them playing for a year or two you can repeat what the 76er done, but normally even when you don't draft superstars you become too good to draft in the top 3 4 times in 4 years and get the number 1 pick twice when you've only had it twice in your teams entire preceding history. Usually teams that get it wrong stay in the top 3 4 plus years not teams that draft Embid, Saric, and Simmons. Perfect example the Hawks blew the Marvin Williams pick, drafted Childress, Josh Smith. We got the number 3 pick in Al Horford while winning 30 games then went on a playoff run that lasted a decade. My point being is we drafted lesser players and even they got too good to be picking in the top 3.

Is the NBA like the NFL? In the NFL a coach can't make a lateral move while under contract without the teams permission, but if it's a promotion they're free to go. If it is like the NFL, stripping Buds president of basketball operations title may backfire. The Bucks could name him to both positions and it actually would be a promotion. It could void his contract.

I like those guys too, but they are clearly a tier down from the three I mentioned. The difference in Farieds contract and Noah's is 5 million. 17m versus 12 and one additional year. 5 million is worth getting a Elton Brand like player in Carter Jr with 3 range. Bamba could easily be a multi time defensive player of the year candidate with budding offensive skill. Malik high floor 3d sg/sf. He could be a 40% 3 point shooter and guard 3 positions in his prime. Bud best develops 3d players. There's a very good chance New York won't want to move that pick, so I would gladly take Denver's, but I need to try and get 9 and those high upside players. With Denver I would like to try and pry away Malik Beasly if we deal with them. Even if we have to give up our second to get him. I have a feeling they'll want to keep him; I can't see them being able to resign Will Barton.

You have to spend 90% of the cap regardless. Long bad contracts kill you. Well have 5 + players on rookie deals the next two years. To get Carter Jr, Bamba, or Mikal bridges I think 9 is where you need to be. One of them will fall. 14 ain't going to get it done. You can get Williams there, but you need an elite shooting scorer like Harden to make him effective like Capella. With our poor shooting teams will sag off Dennis and Baze and take him out of the game. We saw this happen to Collins all year. Collins and Williams is a great defensive and rebounding pairing, but not ideal offensively.

I actually think taking on 2 years or less bad contracts is a, way to shorten the rebuild significantly. The bad contacts will come off the books right when you need to pay Taurean etc. For example I want Ayton but if we pick 3rd, 4th or 5th he won't be there. We could take Doncic or Porter Jr and take on the last two years of Noah's contract for the Knicks pick and draft Collins perfect running mate Wendel Carter Jr at 9. Or take 2 years of Marvin Williams get Charlotte 11 pick. I need someone I like to be there though.

I thought I read the same about Ayton too. Haven't they only been playing basketball like 5 years?

I said they should have taken Bobby Portis as the time, and I still believe I'm right. I believe he's the best of those players. 2017-2018 age 22 Portis 3.5 win shares .548 TS%, 35.9% 3pt%, 1.0 VORP. His per is 19.9 this year. I believe THJ has only eclipsed 15 per once in his career in year 2 with the Hawks. Kelly Oubre is a sub 12 per guy in this his best year and was sub 10 his first two year. Avg 13.2 pts and 6.8 boards in 22 minutes. Per 36 he's a 21 and 11 guy. Very useful rotational big that can start or come off the bench. Stretches the floor and rebounds. Good positional defender that can switch on the perimeter, but is not a rim protector. The Hawks should put me on their payroll. Or just read the Squawk for free. I told them to take Gorgei Dieng instead of bebe. I said take Gary Harris, I said trade up for Lauri Markannen, John Collins or Donovan Mitchell. We got lucky with John Collins, but he was worth trading up for. It amazing how I can watch videos on draft express and not even watch college basketball and evaluate better than guys who do this for a living. Maybe they know too much about the players. I'm just looking cold and objectively as possible. I'm not always right either but good gracious it doesn't seem like rocket science. I had Malik Beasley and Caris Levert ahead of Tauren Prince on my board for the hawks as my realistic 1, 2 or 3 options at pick 12. I thought the other two had more updside and we needed a star offensive player with a aging core. I projected to Tauren to be a 3&D role player and thought he would be available with the Bembry pick. I still think the other two would be better than Taurean under Bud's coaching, but who you go two makes a huge difference. Brooklyn is a disaster and Malik has 3 quality SG's in front of him in Denver. Hawks please don't blow this draft.

Between the Falcons collapse in the Superbowl and the Hawks tank, I've watched less sports this sports year than ever. I usually watch 77-82 Hawks games a year. I've probably watched 6 whole Hawks games the whole season. The irony is I watched the Smith, Childress, Horford Hawks no problem, but those guys had a big role and I watched to see them grow. Watching them was actually fun. Watching this current Hawks roster has no intrigue or purpose. John Collins, the guy who should be getting developed, has been reduced to a pick and roll robot who barely touches the ball. His game is shrinking from college not expanding. Dennis is what he is there is no intrigue there and he's an above average player. If I tune in I'm stuck watching journeyman and career backups take shots my rookie should be getting. I have no need to watch Kent Bazemore and Marco and Dennis jack up shots all game. I think I'm just at a point in my life where I'm not going to support a bad uninteresting product. Hard for me to say because I love basketball. Hoping we strike gold in the draft Ayton would be nice then we could have Collins and Ayton roll in stereo. Bud will turn him into Clint Capella in no time.

I usually value well rounded players over offensive only players, but the Hawks more than anything need to find a go to player on offense. Not having that player has limited all the Hawks playoff success over the years. We've had a ton of close games even against the Cavs that we couldn't even get shots off at the end of the game. I think if Porter is healthy it would be hard to pass on him. He looks to me like he has the best potential to be a go to scorer in this group. Having the guy on offense helps everyone else fall into their proper roles. It's early but I would go Porter, Ayton 1 and 2. Bagley Donic, Young, and are in my next tier in that order. Young is a chucker and I don't like that. He is definitely way faster than Donic though. Bagley is the most physically talented, but is short on skill. Bagley probably has the highest upside of all these guys. Sleeper guy I like is Kevin Knox at Kentucky. He looks like he has two way star potential in the Paul George / Jimmy Butler mold. I don't like him at one, but I would try to satire aquire a second lottery pick to get him.

Merry Christmas all. Haven't really been watching much this year, but I'm still lurking. I'm enjoying all this new found time I'm not spending on the Hawks, if they aren't careful a guy could get used to this. Bud for the love of God let John Collins develop other parts of his game. I don't want to see his development year wasted rolls exclusively.

The Delaney play that pissed me off the most was the one at the end of the quarter. We get the ball with less than 10 seconds he pulls up and clanks a contested off the dribble mid range shot when Kent Bazemore is wide open in the corner for 3 with no-one within 5 feet of him. Baze is just clapping his hands and then gives the WTF face after he sees that shot. The guy is not PG and fancies himself an elite scorer when he's not.

I agree with you but the reason we went almost exclusively perimeter was Dwight. Against Dallas we scored 50+ points in the paint. When you're not shooting well your supposed to go to the basket. We kept jacking jumpers. When Dwight was out with foul trouble Dennis attacked the rim relentlessly which helped us build our lead.

This was a much better game for Dennis in spite of that fact we lost. He was very under control and did much better job running the offense than game one. He attacked well with Dallas' poor interior defense and adjusted well when Dwight was in and out off the game tonight. He matched his production from game 1 with 7 fewer shots. Defense was much better in first half than game 1.Against Dallas we gave up a ton of open 3's from missed rotations. Most alarming was the number of corner 3's. That seemed to get cleaned up in this game. Honesty, Dwight cost us this game. He kept Schröder out of the paint. He got all our bigs in foul trouble and got our rotations all out of wack. This is what Bud never got about Dwight. Even when he's having an off night in the post he's still getting the opposing team in foul trouble. Bembry being gone hurt a lot too. I honestly never want to see Delaney again.

Finish 11th in the east. Dennis assist to turnover ratio 2.69 to 1.

Put me down for 33 wins as well. We will beat a lot off teams just by playing harder than our opponent in a long regular season. I would of gone higher before, but pre season was a real mixed bag. Bazemore finishess in top 10 for MIP. Bembry finishes in the top 5 MIP Bud nixes any Collins post season awards with his coaching. Unless there is an award for most screens set without an offensive touch.