niremetal

Assuming expiring contracts remain important under the new CBA...

This.

Not for nothing - but Josh and Al each got "punked" by Amir last night too. The rest of your comments are similarly off-the-mark, since even the best defenders typically get beaten by the man they're guarding a few times a game, even if the man they're guarding is mediocre. Marvin contests pretty much every shot taken by the man he's guarding/switched onto, and rarely gets into foul trouble in the process. That's the mark of a very good defender. I had to laugh at the DPOY comment since many of the league's best defenders don't get votes for that, and the winner of the award usually isn't really the league's best defender. *shrugs* Everyone knows your opinion, dude. I shouldn't have even fed the fire. :rolleyes:

Well, there's this thing called "defense," Diesel. I know you're in denial that Marvin does it well, but people who, you know, don't hate on him at every opportunity realize that. Not saying it makes up for his disappearing act on offense, but he's still a very good defender.

'06 Pistons. And I'd argue that JJ is better than any of Boston's Big 3 (plus Rondo) last year, when the Celts won 62. Of course, having 3-4 not-quite-superstars is better than having 1 not-quite-superstar and 3 borderline All-Stars. I actually always like to analogize JJ to Boston's Big 3: He's not good enough to be a one-man franchise, but he is good enough that if you can acquire 1-2 other players of his caliber plus other solid players to fill out the rotation, you'll contend. But the Hawks don't have the Celtics' (and Knicks' and Lakers') luxury of being a cash cow even when the team is losing, and it's tough to build a team like that on a "normal" NBA team's budget.

This was HawkWeisErr's effort to make a post that he can point to and say "see, not EVERY post I make hates on JJ."

+1

How about in 6 years? No doubt Smoove has improved by leaps and bounds this year, but it's not like him shooting jumpers is a new issue. And stepping 2 feet inside the 3-point line to launch a jumper is actually less efficient than just shooting a damned 3.

Wait, the team isn't perfect? It has flaws? You mean, like, it's comprised of human beings rather than the Monstars from Space Jam (who lost anyway)? Every team has flaws. All the teams ahead of us have flaws. Hell, even the 72-10 Bulls had flaws - depth, lack of a starting-quality center, no PG. Do we have more flaws and/or more serious flaws than those teams? Sure. But it's amazing to me that you can nitpick so much about this team's talent but fail to see flaws in Woody's coaching.

Of course, the final tally is that the Celtics are 25-14 on the road while the Hawks are 17-22. No one's denying that other teams have trouble on the road, even against bad teams. Just that the Hawks' road woes are worse.

Spotatl - first off, the discussion was "why do we end up signing guys like West?" So you now seem to be talking about something totally different - why don't we sign guys IN ADDITION TO WEST. Second, and on that note, I highly doubt that Tolliver would get anything more than a stack of DNP-CDs if we signed him. He would have just been keeping RandMo company. My philosophy on the roster spots 14-15 is to keep them open unless 1) a can't-miss player comes along (like how the Spurs picked up Drew Gooden with their 15th spot last spring); or 2) you suffer injuries and need to pick someone up who can give you a warm body at the injured position. Signing a guy before you know if/where you'll need those warm bodies is both a waste of money and a potential hamstringing if guys go down hurt. You can disagree, but I can't think of a team in the NBA that has ever seen their fortunes change significantly - in the short-term or long-term - because they filled those last two roster spots before the season started.

That's a new spin on the owners being cheap, considering that the minimum salary for Mario is higher than the minimum salary for Tolliver (and any other D-Leaguer whose first season in the league was last year or this year), and that a a non-guaranteed contract is, you know, not guaranteed. Sorry, but cheapness doesn't explain why Rio got the roster spot instead of a D-Leaguer or even a vet (remember that the league reimburses teams for the difference if they sign a vet to a minimum contract instead of a 3rd-year player like Rio). Stupidity/bad scouting, maybe. Blinded by Woody's quirky taste in players, maybe. But blaming cheapness for our signing of Rio versus D-Leaguers or Stackhouse-like vets makes zero sense.

In fairness, the Magic's payroll last year wasn't that much higher than ours is this year (they were a hair below the tax threshold last year; we are ~$4.9M below this year). They still were a much better road team then (27-14) than we are now. No doubt all great teams - higher payroll or no - have the occasional bad loss, especially on the road. It does happen more often to us than it does to most 50-win teams, though. We have much more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde problem at home and on the road than do our counterparts.

The spacing kills me. It really does. The only thing Woody does to spread the floor is stick Marvin in the weakside corner. Everyone else is kind of given free rein to roam, and too often we end up seeing 2-3 players bunched within 8 feet of each other (and not setting screens). How many times has the "bailout" pass to Josh from JJ/Bibby/Jamal/Marvin come when Josh was standing less than 6 feet away from the passer?

Because the real world is exactly like NBA 2k10. Didn't you get the memo?

It's truly hilarious that some people on here actually think The Dream has enough money to buy the Hawks. Some people apparently have zero conception of how much a professional sports team sells for relative to how much hip hop artists (even the most successful ones) make. Or at least how much they make and don't lose/spend. The Hawks are worth about $306M. So Dr. Dre and Jay-Z don't even have the money to buy the Hawks (which is why Jay-Z is only a minority owner of the Nets, a team worth even less than the Hawks). The Dream? :laughing5:

Of course, 2 of the 10 in the 10-1 were when he was starting in place of JJ, not Marvin. And even if that weren't true, 10-1 is not 12-1 any more than 10-6 is 12-1. At best, he made used "12-1" based off some ignorant fan's post a year ago on InsideHoops, and didn't bother to check before regurgitating it here. At worst, he just made it up. Either way, it was BS.

That explains why RandMo got the garbage-time burn.

They were 10-6 during that stretch, actually. They won 6 in a row, and then went 4-6, which is par for the course when the Hawks go down a starter (win a couple games because Woody is forced to make adjustments, then lose games once other teams adjust to those adjustments and Woody fails to adjust back). But good to know for sure that we can just dismiss you as someone who makes stuff up out of thin air.

BS. His post didn't even come close to implying that.

Or that it is better to pay him an average of $20M for 6 years than to let him walk for nothing. Or that it is better to pay him an average of $19.3M for 5 years and then trade his expiring contract than to let him walk for nothing. Or that it is better to pay him an average of $18.5M for 4 years or $17.7M for 3 years and then trade him while he is still a Ray Allen-type talent than to let him walk for nothing. Or that any of the above scenarios would be preferable to letting a 4-time All-Star in his prime walk for nothing.

Exactly. I almost blew water out my nose when I saw his bit about Hakeem and MJ. I don't get why some people are intent on comparing Marvin to the guys drafted after him 5 years ago instead of guys who play a role like him today. That is to say, perimeter forwards who are asked to play D, do the little things, and cobble together some points despite not getting many-to-any plays run for them: Tayshaun Prince, Shane Battier, Andrei Kirilenko, Thabo Sefolosha, etc. The main skill those guys have is that they find a way to contest the shot of whoever they are guarding without fouling; on the other end, they usually just fade to the corner or set up on the weakside wing. Those guys' salaries vary widely (and generally in direct proportion to how much they are asked to score), and Marvin is getting paid right in the range of what one might expect of someone in his position (ie a click or two above the mid-level). Outside of posts on fan blogs, I have never seen a single article calling Marvin Williams a bust, probably for the same reason that you can't find guys calling Hakeem a bust simply because he wasn't better than Michael Jordan. Marvin is not as good as CP3 or Deron, and I've never seen a soul since 2006 suggest that he is. Like AHF said, Gray Mule was just saying that while Marvin isn't CP3 and never will be, maybe we should get over that because we're doing just fine as a team anyway - just as the Rockets did just fine, thanks, without MJ.

Trust me, it ain't limited to sports forums.

I won't argue that Sund has a better-than-terrible history when it comes to signing/drafting big men. But I think that you have to look a lot further back than his last couple years in Seattle to make a fair assessment of his coaching hirings. He has hired Rick Carlisle, D!ck Motta (Moderators: really, the filter needs to be changed so that word isn't automatically bleeped out), and John McLeod in his career, all of whom had more than solid coaching careers. He also hired Doug Collins and Alvin Gentry, both of whom are at least average and probably slightly above average. The biggest black mark on his coach-hiring history was losing McMillan and bringing in Weiss, but every commentary I've ever read (including McMillan's) says that McMillan's departure was due to circumstances totally beyond Sund's control. In any case, a ~50% success rate in hiring coaches isn't bad. That's better than most GMs. And honestly, as long as he hires someone who gives a $h!t about both ends of the floor, he couldn't do much worse than Woody.

Hey, don't forget: We beat the Nets (minus Harris and Yi) without JJ too.