Dejay

IMHO, this core has already done more than the Smith/Mookie teams and hasn't played together enough due to injuries. Case in point, would Ty Corbin or Alan Henderson even make this roster?

I keep telling you guys about that dude... 'You have no need to become a restricted free agent...' 'I have no need to be a restricted free agent...' 'Staying in Atlanta would be best for you...' 'Staying in Atlanta would be best for me...'

I'll say both...

1 - What is your prediction for the Hawks 82 game record? 57-25 2 - How many All-Stars will the Hawks have this year and secondarily who makes it? (4) Young, Collins, Capela, Bogdanovic. 3 - Rank the following players by who will play the most total minutes (so list all 4 in order from most minutes to least and that is total minutes not minutes per game): Jalen Johnson, Sharife Cooper, Lou Williams, Solomon Hill. Williams, Hill, Johnson, Cooper 4 - How many Hawks will make the end of the season All-Rookie team and who makes it? Maybe Jalen and Cooper makes the 2nd team but IMHO, neither will get enough minutes to warrant 1st team. 5 - Rank these players by best 3pt% from highest to lowest: Gallo, Bogi, Trae, Kev, JC. Bogdanovic, Gallanari, Collins, Huerter, Trae. (You can list predicted minutes and 3pt% if you want but that will only serve as a tiebreaker if all 5 categories are identical).

Have John Collins show up with that shirt with the picture of him dunking on Embiid. Then again, those folks are crazy, he'd need the 82nd Airborne to get him out of there...

The rest of the country looking at Knick fans, like...

Agreed. Just illustrating what a lot of Luka fans were crying the blues about after their boy was sent home (again) while Trae was helping his team advance to the ECFs...

He's got a point. Media and even mainstream folks love to move the goalposts around in their constant need to be right. But all I heard back when Nique was playing was... 'Well, he put up a bunch of points and all but he doesn't help his teammates...' 'His teams never did much in the playoffs so he's not in the upper echelon of all-time players...' No one cared that the East was loaded back then with some of the baddest alpha dogs in the league's history throughout his prime (Dr. J, Bird, Moses, Isiah, Ewing, Jordan, Barkley), along with plenty of other viable players to contend with along the way (Toney, Cheeks, McHale, Ainge, DJ, Parrish, Dumars, Laimbeer, Jeff Malone, Aguirre, Pippen, Dantley, Cummings, et al) while the best Nique had riding shotgun with him was old Reggie Theus and an older Moses whom were both set in their ways. Now why I mentioned Nique? It's because of what we're now hearing from Luka fans in the media and mainstream today when his playoff performances isn't enough to sniff the Western semis while Trae's debut damn near got him a ring... 'Aw, the West is full of contenders and Hall of Famers while the East is soft...' 'Trae has all of those weapons around him to look good. Luka has no help!!!' Oh, the irony...

I said that Reddish was the key in one of my posts going into last year. If he pans into an average player, it's an even swap in and of itself. But if he becomes so good off the bench and in spot starts to the point where we're looking at Bogdanovic as a major asset in the trade market a year from now, the Hawks won that deal all hands down. And from just watching him play with confidence in the Milwaukee series, I have a feeling that we're going to see the latter, especially with Nate Dogg running the show on a full-time basis. Once again, what a great time it is to be a Hawks fan right now. We have a superstar player who doesn't shrink in the big moments; in fact, he fully embraces them. We have a loaded roster full of young, talented players (no Adam Keefes or Doug Edwardses on this crew) and established veterans who can still play when called upon. We have a head coach who appears to know what he's doing and a front office who plays chess while others are still learning how to play Connect-4. And to go even one mile further down the street, the locals here have noticed; ticket sales are to the point where they might be sold out for the season by Thanksgiving if not sooner. I'm ready...

We all know what comes next, don't we?

Happy Birthday. Enjoy it...

She wasn't the only one who guessed correctly....

Oh, to see Trae play the Grinch by ripping the hearts out of Knick fans on national TV Mola Ram-style again. Oh what joy will it be. As I've stated many times, this is what many of us were longing for since the AJC forum days over two decades ago. The days when Hawks basketball meant something in this town again. Even when they won 60 games several years back, no one could say that the exuberance for the team started from the beginning of that season. I have to go back to '88-89 when they brought in Moses and Theus to find another time when folks were circling their calendars and buying up large swaths of tickets in advance. While we look for things to go much better than that season did, I can just say that I'm looking forward to the ride that's ahead...

It's a day that many of us have been waiting on for a very long time...

I said that Christmas 2020 would be the last one that they'd have off. Now what is their schedule going to look like before that game? I want them to slap the New York Bricks (spelled correctly) hard...

Both Johnson and Cooper need work with their jumpshots. Other than that, they looked like they belonged on stage. I thought that Mays and Schofield would bring more to the table than they did. Oh well, it's summer league, not mid-season...

This team was injured and made a run to the effin EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS. Name another young team in recent memory with the assortment of injuries they had who managed to pull that off as a 5th seed. I'll wait. Just because we saw Chicago and the cHeat bring in vets doesn't mean that the Hawks should be trading for stars in reaction to that. At full strength and with the intense playoff experience they already have that neither Beal, Hield, or even Dame has ever faced, they're going to be hungry to get that feeling of playing in the ECFs again. And I believe that they will. Next season. So other teams in the East added players. Big effin deal. Bring it...

It took TS awhile but his Jedi mind trick eventually worked... 'You don't need a max deal...' 'I don't need a max deal...' 'And you will not demand a trade...' 'I will not demand a trade...' 'Staying with the Hawks is what you always wanted...' 'Staying with the Hawks is what I always wanted...'

Oh well, there's always something. Let's see what develops with that...

And I was hoping just to bring Dedmon back; lol. For a minute, I forgot that we have an effin wizard at GM who does Jedi mind tricks to GMs to the point where if I was an NBA owner, I'd make it company policy of my front office not to answer any calls with a 404 area code on it. Or 678. Or 770. Hell, 470 and 912 would probably be off-limits too; Schlenk might have mastered frame relay circuitry by now. If he can extend Collins and maybe Lou (not as necessary with Wright here), we could call it an offseason.

Well, look at it this way. Playing him in chess would be like being married to Larry King. It'll be painful as hell but won't last that long...

Miller and Shaw were Rod Strickland and Iverson compared to Bagley. How he made it into the league is a mystery on the level of the Dead Sea Scrolls and King Tut's tomb...

I still vividly remember during a pregame segment when Bagley first got here. The guy talked about Bagley working on his jumpshot and he called himself showing it off on TV. Of course, he bricked both shots and I nearly collapsed a lung from laughing so hard...

You can do a lot worse than Delon Wright in the backup role. In fact, we've seen them try; remember Jim Les and John Bagley? You'd think by now that folks would know better than to deal with Admiral Schlenk on the phone. Yet, he keeps on finding new marks to hustle like street dudes do to tourists playing the shell game. Poor Sacramento. I said months ago that their fans deserve better than what they're getting. Tristan Thompson was the best they could do? Seriously?

I said this weeks ago. This shouldn't even be debatable anymore as there is no one comparable to him...