niremetal

Come on, now. I wasn't seriously suggesting that 18ppg was a magic number. I admit my "not unless he averages 18ppg" might have led you to think that I was fixating on that as a magic number, but if you took the time to read the rest of my points, I clearly was not. My main point was that in the NBA, only people who score significantly more than Al does get max extensions, and used 18ppg as a threshold because no one who had failed to crack 18ppg has ever gotten a max contract. Al has never averaged more than 14.2ppg or 9.9rpg in a season. Players with those stats don't get max extensions - or at least they never have before. The lowest I've seen in terms of PPG is Dwight Howard's 17.6ppg - which is still a pretty significant step up from 14.2ppg. And Dwight was averaging more than 12rpg at the same time. Not to mention that since Dwight came straight out of HS, he was 2.5 years younger than Horford was at the same stage in his career. To put it another way, if we signed Al Horford to a max extension, it would be unprecedented given his relatively modest statistics. Al's career high is 3.4ppg lower than the lowest player to have ever gotten a max extension, and that player was significantly younger and a significantly better rebounder than Al is. Of course - and I'm saying this for the third time now - I don't think that stats SHOULD be so dispositive in terms of salary, but a brief glance through the stat sheets indicates that they always have been.

The intersection of Horford's unusually low scoring numbers for an All-Star (and again, I'm not saying that SHOULD matter, but it does) and the upcoming end to the current CBA make past precedents seem questionable in relevance. I don't think anyone views Horford as in the same class as guys like LeBron/Dwight/CP3/Roy were viewed at the same stage in their careers. Add to that the fact that both cap amounts and player contracts are likely to take a huge hit under the new CBA, and it's really hard to see the harm in waiting until 2011. Really, there's almost no way we could end up paying MORE for Horford by waiting until after the inevitable lockout.

Except again - I've never seen someone with Al's stats get a max contract. I don't think that's the way it should be, but it's the way it is. 14 and 10 guys have never been max players. Anyway, the calculus under the new CBA is likely to be quite different than it is now. It's kind of pointless to speculate what Al's contract could look like, and it would be pretty stupid for the Hawks to sign Al this summer, given that the new CBA will likely drive down the market value for players across the league.

Not unless Al averages 18ppg for a full season next year. I think he deserves a max contract, but that has proven to be a threshold requirement. I think D-12 got a max after averaging 17.6 and 12.3, but that's the only semi-exception (I say "semi" because it rounds up to 18ppg).

Yup, exactly.

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.