Watchman

I would rather trade Smoove than Childress. But, I really don't want to trade either at this point in time. Furthermore, take a look at Miller's assist totals for last year. He played a lot of minutes to only average 5 assists per game. I wasn't really impressed with him last year. I'd be interested in acquiring Nene, but not at that cost.

Maybe that information is out there, I just don't recall seeing it. Thanks.

I wish I didn't have prior commitments for tomorrow. I see that the Hawks are having open house at Phillips Arena tomorrow. That should be interesting. I wonder if any owners or BK will be available.

they were saying that BK and the other 8 owners made the revised offer (Diaw and draft picks)without consulting with Belkin. I have a bad feeling that things are going to go in Belkins' favor, and the fans are screwed.

Owner making mess of Hawks' offseasonBy Marc Stein ESPN.com Archive There can only be one outcome in the Joe Johnson-to-Atlanta saga. There can only be one outcome, that is, which spares the Hawks from irreparable damage as opposed to their usual doses of mere empty-arena humiliation. The Hawks have to emerge from this nightmare with Johnson as their point guard … and with Steve Belkin stripped of any decision-making power. It is no longer enough for the Hawks to simply push the trade through, which is what everyone close to the deal -- except Belkin, of course -- still nervously hopes for by sometime next week. On top of completing a trade that was agreed to days ago, Atlanta must oust Belkin, buy him out, impeach him as team governor. Whatever. Belkin, as the Hawks' representative on the NBA Board Governors, was given final say on player signings and trades when the new three-pronged group assumed control of the franchise March 31, 2004. Not every team empowers its governor in this manner, but Belkin -- in what ranks as a swap of monster significance given how far Atlanta has fallen -- is refusing to sign off on a sign-and-trade with Phoenix that has the support of everyone else in the organization who matters. Only now there's more at stake than sabotaging a deal that would bring the moribund Hawks a young, promising free agent who A) plays three positions and B) actually wants to play in Atlanta. If Belkin stays, who is going to be willing to do business with the Hawks? How will Hawks general manager Billy Knight be able to convince his front-office counterparts that any future trade will reach done-deal status if the Hawks' governor reserves the right to back out at the last minute? It doesn't really matter whether Belkin's belief that Atlanta has overextended for Johnson, who's not yet a proven franchise player, is someday proved correct. When you're a bad team with little to offer apart from money, especially for as long as the Hawks have been bad, you have to overextend sometimes. It's the only way to get players who might be able to stop the losing, and it's certainly preferable to running a team Donald Sterling style, in which an all-set deal gets undone at the last minute by the meddlesome boss. Johnson is a restricted free agent who had been preparing for weeks to sign a five-year Hawks offer sheet worth $70 million, with a balloon payment of $20 million up front. The Suns, in turn, had been planning for weeks to match the offer, until Johnson implored managing partner Robert Sarver last Thursday not to match it -- a request Johnson revealed the following day to ESPN.com while in Toronto for teammate Steve Nash's charity game. Phoenix then changed course and decided that $70 million is a steep price for a player who doesn't want to be in Phoenix, especially with a slew of big contracts already on the books. So Suns president Bryan Colangelo, unwilling to lose a prized asset without compensation, struck a sign-and-trade arrangement with Knight to send Johnson to Atlanta for Boris Diaw, two conditional first-round draft choices and a trade exception worth nearly $5 million. The deal appealed to Knight because it ensured that the Hawks would get their man, without having to sign Johnson to an offer sheet, wait seven days and risk coming away with nothing. Belkin, though, says Knight is parting with too much, in addition to the money promised Johnson, and refuses to give his GM the go-ahead he needs based on the Hawks' power structure. It has been suggested in Atlanta that Belkin, who has been feuding for months with the other two main factions in the Hawks' ownership ranks, is delaying the trade in an attempt to sweeten the buyout package he'd receive from the owners who want to remove him. Yet that assumes his main motivation is money. Others who know Belkin well suggest otherwise. They note that Belkin has dreamed of NBA ownership for years, winding up with the Hawks only after a failed bid to buy the Celtics in partnership with Larry Bird. It's difficult to imagine, given the negative publicity from this flap, that the league would let him back in as an owner in another city … or that he could even find new partners to make a run at another team. This, then, is looking like Belkin's NBA Alamo, which explains why he's fighting his ouster so stubbornly. Upon learning that the rest of the Hawks' ownership was planning a Friday vote to strip Belkin of his governor privileges, the Bostonian filed a restraining order in a Massachusetts court. That court is demanding that the Hawks "desist and refrain" from voting Belkin out until a Tuesday morning hearing. Little wonder one Hawks insider expects "this thing gets worse before it gets better." How bad can it get? If the Johnson deal falls through, one scenario could find the Hawks scrambling to give away some $12 million in a combination of one-year deals just to get to the league-mandated minimum of $37.125 million in salaries for next season. Yet that would only be the start of the misery if Belkin wins the battle. The Hawks will never have a hope of attracting decent talent, and thus a decent crowd to Philips Arena, if executives and agents out there can't believe what Knight tells them. "Obviously," Hawks CEO Bernie Mullin said at a Thursday news conference, "it's a concern at this point in time. "It's not a concern in the long term." Don't be surprised if NBA commissioner David Stern feels the need to intervene. The implication from Mullin, either way, is that the Hawks will survive this crisis by soon negotiating an end to the Belkin Era, or at the very least render him silent. As part of a group known as the Atlanta Spirit LLC, Belkin holds a 30 percent stake in the franchise. Representatives from the other two ownership entities -- who combine to control 70 percent of the Hawks -- publicly expressed confidence Thursday that the trade will be salvaged. Sources close to Johnson, meanwhile, insist the 24-year-old and his influential agent, Arn Tellem, still expect the trade to be rammed through. The Suns cling to the same expectation, having given Atlanta extra incentive by vowing to match and keep Johnson if Belkin forces the Hawks to back out of the trade in an attempt to revert to the original offer sheet. Not that the Hawks should really need any added motivation. If they hope to take their first firm step away from years of laughingstock status, they must know they cannot dare to lose the first marquee free agent in memory who says he longs to be a Hawk. They also have to see, even more clearly after this week, that an overcrowded boardroom can be far more dispiriting than a half-empty building. It can be downright destructive. Which is why overruling Belkin is only half of the project. Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here. Also, click here to send a question for possible use on ESPNEWS

the other owners to become so frustrated that he will be able to buy them out, and then build the team in his own image. Surely he's got to realize that this crap is going to undermine our ability to attract FAs and generate respect for the franchise. What a jerk.

I would like to add Magic Johnson to that list, but I am afraid he would move the team to Vegas.

I turned over to 680 the Fan hoping for an update. I caught the tail end of a report that someone at the station was making, and they said that the owner's group factions were filing suit against one another. Anyone heard anything about that?

Maybe Belkin has had difficulty in raising his part of the $20 million up-front balloon payment.

Back in 1974 or 1975, the Hawks traded Maravich to the New Orleans Jazz in exchange for a bunch of crappy players and very high draft pick(s. We drafted David Thompson and Marvin Webster that year and neither one signed with us. We ended up trading Maravich for Dean Meminger essentially.

Quote: This is a conspiracy theorists dream that probably will not materialize into anything significant. I hope you are right, and that we are making a mountain out of a mole hill. However, Belkin owns only about 34% or so of the team, to the best of my recollection. His share is bigger than anyone else's, but if the other owners agree on something, they can override him. However, since he is on the Board of Governors, it would appear he has to sign off on it, and it seems that there may be a problem in that regard. If he didn't agree with BK's plan, he should have persuaded the other owners to dump him. Not make us a laughingstock in the league, even more so than we have already been.

If Belkin didn't want this deal, he should have stopped it long ago. If we suddenly stop this deal in its tracks, once its gotten to this stage, we can count on a continued lack of interest by free agents in the future. This was poor timing for this to come up. I am thoroughly disgusted.

than Woodson managed to do. Again, I'm no Stotts fan, but Woodson is lousy.

Yeah, and most of the players we spend our time arguing over on this board in all likelihood didn't make it out of the 800s or 900s. They are much more highly compensated than the US President.

What should be the SAT score for a president? 1170 not high enough for you?

I frankly have never been impressed with Woodson as a head coach. I think that Stotts was a better coach, even though I did not particularly like him. I would rate Woodson at slightly above Lon Kruger and Bob Weiss. I wish we had gotten Rivers or Fratello.

Nique Maravich Roundfield Rollins Rivers

What is the point in front-loading a contract, if the average annual salary figure will be used in determining cap impact? I thought that we front-loaded JT's contract for that reason(?)

It seems more likely to me that Turiaf has Marfan Syndrome as he has the aortic weakness, and is slender. Curry is very "un-slender." I am not necessarily opposed to signing Curry, but not for a long contract, and not for the maximum amount. In addition to the heart concerns, he is a pathetic rebounder for someone his size. Someone could possibly teach him some techniques, but if you don't have the desire to be a good rebounder, you won't be. What happens if he signs a five year contract, and has to sit because of his heart conditions. We would at least have to keep him on the roster for the two year period, like the point guard we acquired earlier (sorry I just can't think of his name at the moment). During that time, he would count against our cap, just as the aforementioned point guard did. Therefore, we would be unable to acquire a decent replacement for him. If we are unable to get Dalembert, I kind of like Diesel's concept of hiring some "rent-a-center" type players such as Hunter, ZaZa, etc. for the time being, until a better situation arises, either by draft or, here's a novel concept, an unrestricted free agent. I don't really see why we're going after Joe Johnson. We have a SG already (Childress). I don't really think they are going to play JJ at point guard. I don't want him interfering with Childress' development. As for trading Childress, I'd sooner trade Smoove. Maybe in the long run Smoove becomes a better player, but for now I'd prefer Childress.

Yeah, but Gooden got his production in only 30 minutes per game, whereas Al got his in almost 40 minutes per game. Gooden is by far a better rebounder. As Al missed a lot of games last year, their total minutes played is nearly the same. In around 2500 minutes for each player, Gooden got over 750 rebounds, whereas Al got around 460 rebounds. Their point production was nearly equal. I guess it depends if you want a power forward that rebounds and blocks shots versus one that doesn't rebound, gets a few steals, and never blocks a shot. Al is too much of a tweener. In that context, I'd have to take a look at that trade. Gooden also is a much better shot blocker (.94 vs. .24). Al is pathetic in the shot blocking department.

Eddie Curry to me is like a modern version of Darryl Dawkins. All flash no substance. Poor rebounder for someone that size. Not a shot blocker. At least Dawkins could block shots. Curry's only virtue is offense. I'd rather go for someone who has more of a total package.

Maybe it says that Al is on the block and they are trying to protect him from injury. Almost like a deal is done, and they are waiting for some specified time, such as the all-star break.

Well, since we are out of the running for Dampier, I for one would like for us to pursue Przybilla. He has no offense, other than his outlet passing, which in my opinion was very good. However, he is a good rebounder, a good shot blocker, and takes up a lot of room in the paint. Drobs is not a rebounder, but is a decent offensive player. Together perhaps they could form a decent tandem, sort of like the days of Tree Rollins and Steve Hawes. I would have liked to have seen what Rebraca could do if uninjured, but perhaps Drobs is more durable. I guess we should go ahead and sign Kenny Anderson for PG duty also. I don't think Delk is really a PG. It reminds me of when we were going to try to use Eldridge Recasner as our PG. He just wasn't one, and neither is Delk.

I think, because he has played in college that he will be a more complete player, and will make an impact sooner. With Howard, you don't know what you're going to get. He may be great, he may be a bust. I think I'd go for the sure thing. Okafor is a total player, and has the NBA body. Howard is a bean pole who may take years to fill out.

I watched the game last night, thinking that after a few minutes we would be down by 20 or so. I ended up watching the game all the way to the end in the 3rd OT. This team played much better than the team with our alleged "all stars." If the asking price isn't too much, I would definitely attempt to re-sign Sura and Rebraca. Sorry I was so bummed out about the roster remake. These guys were better and way more entertaining than watching Reef and Ratliff. Sura was such a good passer, and Rebraca was the best offensive center we've had in a decade or more. I realize that the good play may not last for the remainder of the season and that the novelty of being with a new team may have prompted them to "overachieve", but I thought the game last night was really refreshing. JT made some great clutch shots, and some boneheaded turnovers (as usual), but on the whole, I thought even he played better. I'd definitely bring Sura and Rebraca back as bench players next year if we could get them for $2 to $3 million per season.