Final_quest

I’ve said this before, but I really think they went all in for Siakam. Any meaningful player they could have signed was gone by the time he was off the market. If they made a trade using a TPE at that point it would be a bad contract for a phantom second round pick. In short there were no good options after missing on Siakam and they didn’t want to give up future cap or draft assets for the trash available.

We are $7M away from being a top ten spender as well. But no $7M player available for us to sign would have made us a top ten team. You guys are more hung up on if we spend like a top ten team than actually being a top ten team. What $7M move could we have made that drastically changed our outcome this year? Answer: none. If you sign a Thybulle or Niang to a multi year deal, we would have another expensive veteran that is hard to trade. Does that help or hurt?

Ha ha. Every time I suggested that I got told “Cam is a future star” “JC is better than Sabonis”. Don’t trade our amazing homegrown team. Anyways, the guys we did sign were all made available for other players last year. We aren’t getting good offers. Hoping we do this off-season for Murray.

They had a lot of options to improve at the end of 2021. The moment we signed our frontline to high level starter money and traded our draft capital for Murray that completely changed. Our options became trading overpaid starters for other trash or signing guys to the MLE. They did try for Siakam. That could have been a really good move.

That sounds like what you are saying. Murray, Bey, AJ and Jalen were the replacements and “upgrades”. Mixed results for sure. We could have added another MLE player, or kept Huerter or JC. If we did any of those things we would be paying a little more, or a lot more, but it would still be an underperforming roster. We made wrong moves and signings. That is and always has been our root problem. Spending even more wouldn’t fix it. Siakam could have, and that’s why I supported that move. Haven’t heard of any other move that resolves root problems. KAT, but I don’t think we had a shot at him.

The first season after the ECF we added Delon Wright, and that team completely failed to live up to the hype. Lou Williams was a vet min who was a shell of his former self. Cam a net negative player. Huerter was replaced by an all star. There was no way we could pay the $200M plus it would have taken to add players or keep a roster together that had 5 rotation players on rookie contracts. Especially given that their follow up season showed the roster was not that good. They had a chance to show the roster was a juggernaut. It wasn’t. You’re honestly advocating for paying to keep those guys together as if we were on par with Golden State? That’s how much payroll it would take.

It was very underrated AND completely absent. His main contribution was no longer being a liability on the court because he was out with injury. Statistically Cam was always a net negative in his minutes with the Hawks.

I think the FO at least had the right idea by going for Siakam.

But that’s a huge move. Best player we got via trade since Joe Johnson. It cost a lot, didn’t work out, and left us with limited options to improve after we did it. They did nothing except trade for a young all star caliber guy in his prime. Huh? That was the move.

On some level you have to face the reality that doing nothing is a certain way to lose Trae. Spare me the Hawks university talk. We have to improve enough next year to keep Trae. Flipping Murray is about our only option.

Hope you're right. Kyle Korver gets a lot of respect, but not sure what tangible actions Landry and Kyle have taken that gives them a good reputation as a FO. Quin?

I saw Dwight Howard at McDonald's the night before he was drafted by Orlando. Met Mohommad Sanu at a car wash. Had a mutual friend who gave me one of his shirts that I still wear sometimes.

They tried to get Siakam at least. If we kept Collins and signed an MLE player we'd have like a $200M payroll. We used high draft picks on guys like Hunter, Okongwu, and Cam. Traded future draft picks for Murray. Spent heavy on Collins, Hunter, and Capela. Everyone went nuts over not using the MLE because that was the ONLY option we had to get better. Every other card was played. It would need to have been a killer MLE signing to justify being the ninth luxury tax team in the league. Our current FO is not that great AND they are trying to patch a ship that is sinking.

It's a mess. None of the podcasters seem to have an answer either. I feel completely justified pushing for Siakam after watching the Pacers. You see the options available to us now? If we made a playoff push with all the injuries in the East, Siakam may just want to ride that vibe on another contract with us. There is/was the keep Collins crowd, where that puts us into similar territory as Phoenix with much less talent. There is the we should have signed Thybulle or some other bench role player for 4 years at $14M/yr crowd. Similar to keeping Collins that would have put us into the top 8-10 spenders in the league for an extremely mediocre roster. Plus even more dead weight on our payroll to try to shed. If everyone makes this summer about using the MLE or not to go into the luxury tax, I'm already tired.

That’s the thing. We’ll likely get the Kings pick next year, we still get a first round pick in 2026, and 2027 is the only scheduled year we miss out on a pick.

If we get the Kings pick next year we are only at one first round pick deficit. The thing people trip about is that tanking isn’t an option, but do we really want to tank anyways?

With $7M more in spending we would be towards the top ten payrolls. I think it’s a very small component of our lack of success. It would help us to spend a little more, but there are more fundamental problems with our roster and FO. Simply spending $7M extra wouldn’t make us a top ten team. The reactionary moves we’ve made and the wrong type of spending have hurt us more than resistance to spend an additional $7M.

People who didn’t want Siakam were wrong. Although if he leaves Indy for the Sixers, I get it.

Less to negotiate on a contract with the league, but doesn’t the agent also source endorsements? I met with the star from the MTV teen mom reality series. She had someone rep her social media where she got paid $10-40k for product posts.

After the ECF run there was an overwhelming sentiment to commit to our core, what you are calling status quo. I wanted us to trade Cam, JC, Hunter, and Gallo for guys like Sabonis, Siakam, and Levine. The dominant opinion was Hawks’ players would be better than those guys.

Our record stayed meddling, but they traded a whole lot of draft capital for a top player. To me status quo means you aren’t making moves or showing effort. They tried and failed. Now they are regrouping.

Ray Young is probably gonna use AI.

We actually added talent the year after the ECF. Brought in Delon Wright and drafted Jalen. That team started the season 4-8. Finished 9th in the east. Got smoked by Miami in the playoffs. To say we were on an upward trajectory until we let go of Huerter takes a lot of revision. Also if you call adding Murray going status quo…I think that’s off by quite a bit. The primary move they made was a pretty big gamble. The main issue was betting on paying JC and Hunter to be worth 1/3 of your payroll. Second mistake was using your draft capital on a second star that isn’t complimentary to your Trae. Adding a MLE player or retaining Huerter doesn’t fix either of those mistakes.

Just heard Brad Rowland say any Trae trade buzz is most likely media hype based on nothing per his Hawks sources.