niremetal

I know no one will believe this (haven't for 4 years, at least): But what happens in court has no effect on basketball (or, I presume, hockey) operations. The operating agreements that all owners have to sign with the NBA (and, I presume, the NHL) basically ensure that the assets and liabilities of each team are completely shielded from exposure to the effects of litigation involving the owners as individuals. The leagues HAVE to make sure the teams' assets and operating revenues are shielded, or else you'd see a half dozen major pro sports teams per decade become defunct because their owners went bankrupt. The overwhelming majority of revenues (and losses) stay with the team and the NBA, not the owners - the owners basically gain or lose money only upon selling their stake in the team. In that sense, you can think of owning a stake in an NBA team as somewhat like stock ownership - the ups and downs of the company don't show up on your tax return unless you realize gains or losses (or earn a dividend, which are pretty stingy in the NBA because most teams lose money, so virtually all revenues have to be reinvested into the league). When the idiot judge in Maryland tried to order a freeze on the Hawks signing new players and initially ruled that Belkin could buy out the Hawks for a box of Cheerios, that was the only time that the basketball operations was affected. It lasted all of 2 weeks, because Stern stepped in, wrote the judge, and basically made her realize that what she ordered was at odds with the owners' agreements with the NBA (not to mention common sense). Other than that, the court stuff might be distracting, but it doesn't affect the team's financial constraints. David Stern would have been demanding that the team be sold if that were the case, because the NBA is second only to the NFL in terms of how short a leash the owners are on. The reason ASG doesn't spend more is the same as for all other teams in their position: The Hawks don't sell enough tickets or draw big enough TV crowds. That certainly DOES affect how much a team can spend, though not to the same degree as it does in the NHL and MLB because the NBA has a larger pot of shared league revenues. The Hawks have never been a big draw, and they've never had a loyal TV following. Thus, they don't earn as much money as some other teams. Thus, they don't spend as much. Ta-da.

When was the 1?

It sounds good in theory. I certainly would like to see him work with the bigs on rebounding, especially at reading where the rebound will land. He was a master at that. But a lot of the time, the best players are not good teachers. For all the talk about players working with Hakeem, he has a poor record at developing big men's post moves as a coach. And don't get me started on Kareem's proteges. The best big man coach in the game's recent history is Clifford Ray, who was mediocre at best as a player. A bad coach can actually cause a player to devolve; what worked for the coach when he was a player might be terribly suited for the player he's coaching. So if Devo seems to have "it" as a coach, by all means. But if not...

It might be a different ballgame with the lockout looming, though. No doubt there will be a couple teams willing to shell out 5-year deals. But unless the team is SURE that they can contend with the core they have (plus JJ), it's tough to envision a 6-year deal with raises. In my view, that means either Chicago will offer it or no one will.

There wasn't a precedent for the Heat/Cavs/etc either, before their Finals runs. Teams with traditionally poor attendance and revenues usually need a kick in the *ss to spend more. And the Hawks' record for attendance and revenues is even worse than those teams. And yes, the team should force the issue by making it past the second round. Although this year, it might take going all the way to the Finals to offset the regular season losses. In terms of both earning profit and maximizing our odds of making it to the Finals, the ideal sequence would be Celtics in round 2 and Cavs in ECF. Sadly, it's tough for me to imagine both us and the Celts finishing ahead of the Magic.

My point was that if the Hawks make an unexpectedly deep playoff run, they'll have the money to go a bit into the luxury tax. Same as the Heat, Cavs, and Magic after their respective Finals runs. Of course, it depends on HOW deep the Hawks get (every home game from the conference Finals onward usually brings in ~$2-3M in profit - not just revenue, but profit) and also on how much the economy has taken a toll on revenues this year.

The rule should be that you can't sign with the team that traded you for the remainder of that season.

If Hawks can break through to the ECF, I'm pretty confident that they'll use the MLE rather than just minimums. But otherwise, I think you're right. Unless they can find a way to move Marvin for an upgrade at SF or pull off a sign-and-trade to acquire Bosh or Amare (incredibly unlikely), the odds are that they won't rock the boat too much.

The Magic did NOT pay the tax last season, or in the 2 years before that. They only paid the tax in '05-'06 because the new CBA changed the tax rules; under the previous set of rules, Kelvin Cato's contract would not have counted against their tax figure. It was actually only AFTER they dumped salary and got below the tax threshold that they posted a winning record. Boston, like LA and NY, has paid the tax even in years when they weren't contenders early in the decade. That is because those three teams earn lots of revenue even when the teams suck because they have large, intensely loyal followings nationwide. The Mavs did NOT pay the tax until after they made the WCF in 2003. The Heat paid the tax the year AFTER they won the Finals.

Which again, is a load of crap, because all the teams I mentioned didn't pay the tax until AFTER they made it to the Conference Finals (Mavs) or NBA Finals (Pistons, Heat, Cavs, Magic). So clearly, you can be a contender without paying the tax. It's a tougher road, but it's the road ALL teams not from NY, LA, or Boston take.

I've actually looked through the posts now, and I see 1 post (by jerrywest) that says something to the effect of "Z doesn't care about the money." And it was 2 pages before my post. And no one directly replied to it, which means it wasn't really being addressed. Show me the "number of times" that it came up. Simply predicting he'll go somewhere else is not tantamount to talking about his motivations. I admit I didn't catch jerrywest's isolated post. Forgive me for not carefully reading every single one of the 76 posts that preceded mine. But the likelihood that Big Z won't give a damn about the money was NOT being discussed. So get off it. And if you agree that money won't be driving him, why did you make your bold post about us being able to outbid other teams? Do you REALLY think that matters at all?

I usually like you, but what's the point of you saying IN BIG BOLD LETTERS that we can outbid other teams? You make it sound like Ilgauskas would pick us over Cleveland because we can offer him 2.5% more of his career income than they can. That's just absurd, isn't it? Edit: And yes, I realize that you said earlier that you think he'll sign back in Cleveland. But why stoke the fires of people who will assume anyway that the only reason we didn't land Z is because ASG is cheap?

Of course, what is not being addressed through all this is the likelihood that Big Z doesn't give a damn about the money at this stage in his career. Dude's made north of $120M in his career, and he has never struck me as someone who is remotely about the Benjamins. On the other hand, he doesn't have a ring. The fact that we can offer him more money will, IMHO, give us absolutely no help, particularly against teams that have a better shot at winning a title (and the Cavs and Nuggets certainly have a better shot than we do).

Why are you still not admitting that the other "contenders" (save for Boston) didn't spend until after they made a deep playoff run? And if you are admitting it, are you saying that those teams were being cheap too?

What about the fact that until they made a run to the Conference Finals or deeper, the Mavs, Pistons, Heat, Cavs, and Magic did not spend any more than we did and didn't pay the luxury tax? For the latter 4 teams (not coincidentally, from smaller cities than Dallas), they didn't pay the tax until the season after they made the League Finals? Why is it so hard to understand that it's not present contention but revenues from past playoff performances that spur teams to spend more (again, unless you're one of the 3 teams that are cash cows regardless of winning percentage)?

I love how people say "Get it done, Sund" without considering the reality that the other team has to agree to the trade too. Do they realize the NBA isn't like NBA Live in Commissioner Mode? Oh, also....Josh at SF? Erm...

Basically, after it became clear that Belkin would not be entitled to buy out the other owners for pennies on the dollar, they have acted like every other playoff-bound team without coffers made deeper by a deep playoff run. I've only ever heard people cite three things as evidence that, since 2006, Hawks management has been stingy with money. 1) We didn't (over)pay to keep Childress; 2) we didn't spend the full level on a mediocre 8th/9th man this past summer, and instead signed Joe Smith for the minimum (which I addressed above); 3) they waited until Josh got an offer sheet from Memphis to re-sign him. Those three things frankly are more "let's not throw money away when we can do just as well by spending less" than "let's not spend what we need to win." On the other hand, they made major payroll-increasing trades twice in the past 2 years (Bibby and Crawford), offered a near-max extension to JJ, and re-signed Zaza, Bibby, and Marvin to contracts that lots of people are now b!tching about being too much and/or too long. On the Crawford trade...the Hawks actually would not have been able to do the trade of Acie and Speedy for Crawford if they had waited until the free agent period due to the fact that Speedy was due for a big annual paycut on July 1 (his contract is frontloaded) while Crawford was due for a big annual pay raise on July 1 (because his contract is backloaded). Today, we’d have had to throw in RandMo’s contract to get the deal done. Presumably the Warriors wanted to do the trade before July 1 was for that very reason - they wanted to get the savings from Speedy’s imminent paycut. The fact that the Hawks basically ate $900k to ensure the deal got done says something. Again, one would think fact that that fact plus the fact that the Hawks basically guaranteed an increased payroll (thanks to the annual raises for Joe/Josh/Al and the acquisition of Crawford) even before the would convince people that ASG has the means and the desire to spend what it takes to win. Really, what the people who continue the "ASG is cheap" mantra are doing is just crapping on management for not throwing money at players who aren't worth it, Isiah Thomas-style. You're right, they're not "throwing money around." But the Hawks management is doing exactly what the Pistons, Heat, Cavs, and Magic did before their respective Finals runs - maintaining a budget within ~$5M of the cap, but not going over. People keep forgetting that - with the exception of the Knicks, Lakers, and Celtics (ie the three teams that have massive revenues even when their teams suck), no team has gone into the luxury tax until AFTER they made a run to at least the conference finals. For all of Cuban's flamboyance, the Mavs didn't pay the tax in '02-03 (though the tax system was different back then). The Heat didn't pay it in '05-'06. The Cavs didn't in '06-'07. The Magic didn't in '08-09. The Blazers didn't pay the luxury tax between 2004 (the end of the 'Sheed era) and last year, and only paid it last year because of the Darius Miles fiasco (remember how their President threatened to sue any team that signed Darius Miles, since Miles playing would mean that his contract would be re-activated, putting the Blazers into the tax?). This year, the Blazers aren't paying the tax - on the contrary, the Hawks' payroll is ~$8M more than the Blazers'. Those teams weren't "throwing money around" either, at least not before they made super-deep playoff runs. So saying the Hawks management has shown itself less committed to winning than the teams you listed is just plain false.

As I recall, there was some effort to get Rasheed Wallace early on, but he rejected us for your boys. After that, it was "gee, would we rather offer the vet minimum for Joe Smith or four times as much for another mediocre big man, who probably will end up rejecting us anyway?" Keep in mind that we needed to convince someone to come here and be ok with playing 10 minutes a game, barring injury. We weren't going to lure a Hakim Warrick to take on that kind of role. We could have offered the MLE to a McDyess, but 1) he almost certainly would have gone to the Spurs anyway; and 2) is McDyess really that big an upgrade over Joe Smith (if you've watched Spurs games this year, you know the answer to that is "barely, if at all," which is why DeJuan Blair has overtaken him in the rotation)? I don't think management would have shied away from spending all or part of the MLE if there was a player willing to come here and take on the role of being the second big man (or third wing player) off the bench. But we couldn't offer a bigger role than that to most of the guys on the market, and those that we maybe could have offered a slightly bigger role to were guys that would have rather played elsewhere because they wanted an even bigger role on a team with a better shot at title contention (Wallace, Bass, McDyess, Gooden). For younger guys like Frye and Warrick, they weren't about to sign with a team where they'd be the 9th man at this stage in their careers (and Frye also wanted to play in his hometown). That is precisely why it's tough for middling playoff teams - especially in the East - to lure good value free agents. This summer, assuming we win 52-55 games, we might be able to attract a couple "ring-seekers"

Spotatl has said it a dozen times - we made our deadline deal last summer when we traded our two expendable expiring contracts to get Jamal. I'd say we did pretty damn well.

That's not necessarily true. Even if we re-signed JJ to the max this summer, we wouldn't necessarily be in the luxury tax. Remember that the salary cap and the luxury tax threshold are both a defined percentage of the NBA's revenues. The maximum contract amount for a player, in turn, is based on a defined percentage of the salary cap - which, of course, means that it varies directly with both the cap and the tax threshold. Here is a hypothetical payroll for the Hawks next year: JJ: $15.8M* Josh: $11.6M Jamal: $10.1M Marvin: $6.7M Bibby: $5.6M Horford: $5.4M Zaza: $4.3M Mo: $2.5M Teague: $1.5M Minimum salary x 4 = $3.4M TOTAL = $66.9m * That is the lowest amount a max contract could start at (105% of his current salary). JJ's salary conceivably could be higher if the cap stays the same or goes up, but that is unlikely. Right now, the tax threshold is $69.9M, and the max player contract for someone with Joe's experience is $16.2M. No way in hell his max will START at $17M, because that would require that the cap would go UP by a significant amount this summer - and that, in turn, would require that league revenues be up this year compared to last year (and no one thinks that'll happen). And even if that happened, that would mean that the luxury tax threshold would go up as well. And if you can do the math, adding $1.2M to JJ's above salary would put us below even today's tax threshold. So if the max contract amount and the tax threshold both increased, that actually would make it easier to sign JJ to the max and still stay under the tax threshold. If the cap drops by a significant amount, it could make it tough to keep JJ without going into the tax - but then again, that would also reduce the number of teams that would have the cap space to sign JJ. For instance, if the cap dropped to $52M this summer, only 5 teams (New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, and Minnesota) would have the cap space to sign another team's free agent for $13M or more. That lack of competition for JJ might make it easier for the Hawks to retain him with a strong first offer that starts lower (but perhaps is longer and/or includes higher annual raises). Also, I'm not at all convinced that JJ will draw literal max money - my guess is that his contract will start a few clicks below the max (ie ~$15M). And even if it did put us in tax territory to start the year, we would have until April 1, 2011 to shed salary and get below the tax threshold (eg by trading Crawford or trading/buying out Mo, both of whom will be expiring). And lastly, if re-signing JJ would require us to just barely go into the luxury tax, I'm pretty sure management would be ok with that. In that sense, you're right. People who still call our owners cheap are still stuck in 2006. We've increased payroll substantially each of the past 3 years. The fact that the owners offered JJ the max extension they could offer this past summer, knowing that the tax threshold would likely be much lower come the summer of 2010, indicates that if the choice is between losing JJ without compensation and going just barely into the luxury tax to keep him, I can't imagine the owners would let him walk. They would lose a lot more money if the team lost JJ and went back into the lottery than they would by paying $1-2M in luxury tax.

I remember lots of people were screaming that Knight blew it again when he picked Horford over Conley. Terence Moore kept claiming he was a future star, even towards the end of his rookie season when it was apparent that he was having a tough time adjusting to the NBA game. I wouldn't mind trading Mo for him, but I doubt the Grizz are looking for anything but an expiring. If I were Portland, though, I'd be really interested. Maybe he and Oden can help build each other's confidence back up.

Also... 6-8 when JJ scores 16 or fewer 6-7 when JJ scores 27 or more (5-1 when JJ scores 27+ and shoots better than 50% from the field; 1-6 when he shoots 50% or less) 21-3 when JJ scores 17-26 For comparison, the Heat are: 3-5 when Wade scores 19 or fewer 10-7 when Wade scores 30+ (8-2 when he shoots better than 50%; 2-5 when he shoots 50% or less) 14-15 when Wade scores 20-29

Of course, the Hurricanes are 25th in the NHL in attendance despite being the only major pro sports team in the area, having a superstar, and being just 3 years removed from a Stanley Cup victory. Even the year right after that victory, they were only 15th in attendance (then 20th, 20th again, and now 25th). Clearly, the transplant population isn't driving very hard. It's not unlike what happened with the Hawks with Nique - fans kinda sorta paid attention when the Hawks became contenders, then tuned out as soon as they backtracked a bit. Same with the Braves in the 90's - the Braves only led the NL in attendance once (1992, right after the miracle season) and never led the league (never came close, actually). They never finished better in attendance than they did in the standings, despite winning The Hawks had a superstar in Nique who led the league in scoring and was electrifying to watch. Fans still didn't show up in great numbers - as I said, they never cracked the top 1/3 of the league in attendance despite 4 consecutive 50-win seasons. The rule about Atlanta sports teams doing worse in attendance than in the standings held true even when the Hawks were winning 57 games and had one of the 3 most exciting players in the league. That argument can only go so far. Because the Braves most certainly have (and, far as I know, still do) market to those areas, but the Braves attendance has always had the same problem as the Hawks - attendance lags behind (and usually well behind) the team's record in the standings. Even after they won the World Series and had superstar players. And I don't think anyone will argue with a straight face that basketball trumps baseball or football in the areas of Georgia outside Atlanta (which is in and of itself another reason that Atlanta is a poor pro basketball town). Another reason is one you alluded to - the Atlanta metro area is VERY spread out. It also has incredibly poor public transit. The result is a ton of congestion on the highways and a frustrating time getting to games even if you're a fan who lives in the close suburbs. If you're trying to get to a 7pm game coming from Athens, Augusta, or Macon...well, it's even harder. And as I said, basketball is just not as popular as football or baseball in Georgia generally and the areas outside Atlanta metro in particular.

Cash can't be used to equalize salaries in a trade.

The thing is, all of the reasons that people bring up for why Atlanta fans don't go to pro sporting events are also true of many other cities that outdraw us (both in absolute terms and relative to our position in the standings). Most arenas are in unsafe areas of big cities. Cobo Arena and Memorial Coliseum were notorious for being crime-infested areas. Same with the blocks around Madison Square Garden pre-Giuliani. The area around the MCI Center in DC used to be awful, although it has become thoroughly gentrified in the past decade. The Boston Garden, The Summit, Reunion Arena...virtually every arena was either built in a run-down area of town or saw the area around it become run-down (due in no small part to the arena itself, no doubt). The Hawks lack of success in the playoff, the fact that the area around the Omni was dangerous, the years that Atlanta has gone without a superstar...all of these things are true. But they also are true of other cities' teams, but those teams don't show the same lag between record and attendance that Atlanta sports teams do (and again - it's ALL Atlanta sports teams, not just the Hawks; the Braves are actually an even better example). I seriously think it's the transplant population factor that is mostly responsible. It's tough to cultivate city pride and team loyalty when most city residents were born elsewhere and brought their existing loyalties with them. I'll be a Hawks fan all my life even though it's been 8 years since I left Atlanta, and my girlfriend will be a Blazers fan all her life even though it's been 8 years since she left Portland. Imagine people like us forming 2/3 of the population of a city, and you have Atlanta.