tmac13

Your starting 5 is the same as mine. I suspect we will also see quite a bit of a Sheldon/ Horford/ Smoove frontcourt as rebounding and defense will be a premium. Those 3 on the court at the same time will clean up the boards.

He excels at being tall and being moderately athletic. He has no basketball IQ and at 27 is past project status. Solo is already better and is 4 years younger.

Not debating Francis positives and negatives but is there any doubt he could help a team more than Salim if he came at the minimum?

It might have been a cost cutting move by Houston.

A guy like West should really help JJ's game. Even if its only 10 minutes a game that will be 10 minutes JJ doesn't have to D up against other talented 2 guards and help his effectiveness at the end of the game.

I finally see the Hawks as a team capable of making a playoff run and bringing some excitement to Phillips Arena. We have talent across the board and actually have depth at every position except maybe at center. That being said I have seen nothing out of Woody in 3 years that gives me any confidence in his ability to coach a team up. He still has the same puzzling rotations and still has not established any real offensive or defensive identity. The Hawks still resemble a team of pickup players that play basically one on one type of games. In my opinion a slow start will mean a very quick hook for Woody. I am interested in the opinions of the board of available candidates to take over in this event..Anyone up for a Van Gundy?

The Heat will likly follow a similar path to last season. Start slow with all the injuries, get healthy and make a run to the 5th or 6th seed the go to the 2nd round of the playoffs.

BK might as well set 28 million dollars on fire in the middle of the arena floor instead of wasting it on those 2.

Maybe an email barage to The Tyrant by all Hawksquawkers could be a start? How many of us are there now?

Enough is enough. The Hawks have been out of the playoffs 8 straight years and for the 3rd offseason in a row we are being hampered in trying to improve by this damn ownership feud..We cannot be look at players that might help us or make any coaching or management changes because of this situation.. There is no way BK or Woody would have survived this offseason in any other situation..Now we are even doing the unheard of in not letting the assistant coaches leave for other jobs.. While is really like this young team I still don't believe they are playoff caliber considering the youth and lack of veteran leadership in the face of other eastern conference teams making major upgrades like Boston and Charlotte. David Stern needs to step in to get this matter resolved.

I am very pleased with our draft choices and generally pleased with most of our roster at this point. I think many on here are getting way too hung up on players heights or standing reaches along with looking at last seasons stats as opposed the stats from the last couple of months as our young guys started to develope. I have been as critical as anyone of the Marvin Williams selection over the obvious point guards but the fact is Marvin was an 18 point a night scorer the last 2 months of the season as he got healthy and more assertive..I was also not very pleased with Sheldon until the last couple of months of the season when Woody finally gave into logic and played him at the 5 instead of the 4. Regardless of his height Sheldon is simply more a more comfortable and accomplished player when he mans the center position..I honestly believe Sheldon can be a pretty good center if he gets the opportunity to play. Josh Smith grew by leaps and bounds after the all-star break last year and is on the verge of stardom if he keeps his head on straight. Chillz has become a very reliable 6th man and does all the little things well. All and all the roster is shaping up nicely. We need Speedy to at least get healthy enough to be a reliable backup and we still still have a need for at least 1 true 7ft big guy that can take up space on those nights when we are overmatched inside(which is a rarity especially in the east). Thoughts?

Kennesaw,GA

"I don't think the contract had anything to do with it honestly. He is a guy who folded under pressure here, and got lucky to go to the perfect team for him, and blossomed. " Pressure in Atlanta?..Yes, I can see what you mean, after all, being buried on the bench of a 13 win team playing in a sparsely filled arena is alot more stressfull than playing a huge role on a great team deep into the playoffs..

Maybe BK needs to talk with MIke Fratello..Lazy Lo's minutes were cut last year because he didn't play good defense..Then Lo bitched and moaned all season requesting trades and talking to the media about being unhappy in Memphis..Hopefully he will play better for Woodson..

Walter, how many times have you seen Sene play?..He is a longterm project, not immediate help..He may be a great player one day, but he is nothing but a project at this point..As far as Roy and Foye, they were not better players at their respective positions in college than Seldon was at his..If anything Sheldon was better than both because of his defensive ability....And finally, yes we do need a real point guard to play beside JJ..He is far and away best suited to play the 2 and has said as much many times this offseason.. Go find another dead horse to beat.

Do you want BK to issue you a public apology? Do you want the other teams in the draft to agree to a do-over since we screwed up so bad? I am just curious because you start thread after thread all on the same 2 or 3 subjects and drive them into the ground.. Roy and Foye are both natural 2 guards, Roy has a long injury history and Foye has not shown any ability to play the NBA point...Saer Sene is a 3 or 4 year project that would have not seen the floor for us this year..

Would you rather have Chris Paul and AL signed to his new contract or Marvin along Speedy signed to his new contract.. My bet is 9 out of 10 gm's would take Paul and AL..This was a slow drip 2 season blunder by BK..

The Spirit need to quit the damn lying..Don't get on the radio and say we will spend up to the salary cap then refuse to better the team..Signing a backup point guard and a washed up center is not exactly the recipe for immediate improvement.. Why not just be honest..We are going to operate on a shoestring budget until the Belkin situation is resolved..

A future 1st rounder!..Thats almost unbelievable..Why drag this crap out all summer for nothing? We should have just renounced him at the beginning of the summer and been done with it.. No more excuses..BK is a lousy GM and this ownership group can't afford to run an NBA team..

Why would we lose our younger players?..Do you assume we will always operate the team on a shoestring budget?..If the team starts having success revenues will go up and allow us to exceed the salary cap like most teams. If we remain a bad team then we are much more likely to lose our young players..They will be sick of losing..

Maybe you need to go find all the clips of guys dunking on Zaza last year..Mihm is an above average defensive center which makes him alot better defensively than Zaza..

I understand what you are saying, but aren't we just plain lucky that the Indy ownership turned down the deal? We were only going to get a lower 1st round pick from Indy because of our insistance not to take on any contracts.. Now we are basically forced by the Indy ownership to go in another direction which will probably include players that will make the Hawks better this year..Because Indy turned us down we are forced into not being so cheap..Its hard to give BK or the owners credit for that one. And..For what its worth I don't blame BK . I think the owners are insisting on keeping costs down because of the Belkin feud.

Mihm is not bad..He is definately better than Lo, and because he is a MUCH better defensive player might be as good if not better than Zaza..He would be a nice pickup.

Come on guys.. I mildly like the moves we have made this summer, but they are hardly earth shattering..We drafted a guy 5th that we may have gotten 8th or 9th..We signed a tiny journeyman point guard and a backup center, and it looks like the best we will get for AL is a pick .. To the outside observer it probably doesn't paint a great picture..We have won in the teens or 20's for so many years noone respects us...Until the team puts some wins on the board we are going to get critcized and rightfully so.

Thank god, another sane person..Some feel sorry for AL, and some praise him for handling the horrible pressure of not knowing where his 7 or 8 million dollar paycheck is coming from.. AL has remained classy and I credit him for that..As far handling pressure and feeling sympathy try a teacher that is struggling to pay their mortgage or the policeman trying to figure out how to send his kid to college..AL has made somewhere between 40 and 50 million already during his career and is about to make 57 million more..Give me some of that kind of pressure anytime..