not much left for a next step - a couple of trades, then no picks forever.

Maybe one good playoff year but nothing sustainable without picks going forward. Or so it seems to me. 

Take the #1 out of that trade for Giannis and I would consider it - since they would be unlikely to agree to that then:

I would probably rather take the rumored Spur's offer and retool around DM, Sarr, Jalen, and Onyeka with our packs back in all those future drafts.

Every time I see White play I think - damn, why did we not trade for him?  Some here were calling for it, I recall.

Every time until last night, anyways. 

Zion for Murray plus?

(They would want Trae instead, but are getting tired of Zion not being available for the playoffs or much of most seasons, I suspect).

Bogi and Hunter playing poorly as well

Peachtree TV games have been on League Pass so far, but it’s not showing up on guide for today 

I can't find where to watch this game via Hawks feed - is it on Peachtree TV? 

I (in NC) get Hawks via NBA Pass, and they have carried those on previous Peachtree TV Friday's, but the Directv Pass guide is not showing the Hawks feed available to me, only Minnesota's.

AJC says game is on Bally, but I don't see that on my guide at all.

Clint misses more 2 footers off the glass than any pro I have ever seen. Yes, want an upgrade badly.

Bogi not on there - good. 

Yes - great read!  Thanks!

As of now, I am also leaning towards being ok with dropping to 11th to salvage something out of this lost season.

Trae out per ajc, Rowland, etc.

You said its probably time for him to go on medication - that statement from someone who is not his doctor is out of bounds, in my view. 

I would be embarrassed for him to read your statement, and our responses to it, as his MENTAL health and offering ways to improve/fix things is none of our f***ing business, on a public message forum.

In my opinion.

I earlier posted a reply to one of those Laker fans comments in the Athletic article:

Quote

Jake S. You are overvaluing Reaves and treating Atlanta like it's a Lakers farm club - BS!

The Athletic full of articles undervaluing DM and how the Hawks should be all about helping the big market teams

NBA trade board 2024: Everything to know about 50 players on the market - The Athletic

The Hawks clearly want to make some changes, and moving Murray represents the most substantive one they could make this season. The backcourt combination of Trae Young and Murray has not worked as well as the Hawks expected when they traded three first-round picks and a pick swap to acquire Murray from San Antonio. Atlanta’s hope was that pairing Young with a bigger, defensively conscious, playmaking guard like Murray would allow Young to thrive on or off the ball and would stop the Hawks from hemorrhaging points when he left the floor. Murray, who was coming off an All-Star season, was an intriguing bet.

Ultimately, it’s become clear the Hawks should want the ball in Young’s hands as much as possible. While Murray has made strides as a 3-point shooter — he’s hitting 39 percent on six attempts per game this season — he’s not as impactful off the ball as he is on it, which has diminished his overall impact. Additionally, Murray’s strong defense has taken a dive from its previous heights in San Antonio, when he was an All-Defense-level performer. He still gets steals occasionally but hasn’t been quite as engaged off the ball this season. Any team acquiring Murray is doing so in large part because it believes his play on that end rebounds.

Murray signed a four-year, $114 million extension this summer with a player option in 2027, meaning he’s locked in for the long term. If he gets back to his prior defensive heights upon leaving his current messy situation in Atlanta, his average annual value of about $28 million is a reasonable price tag. But any team acquiring him should probably do so with an eye toward returning him to the lead guard spot.

LeBron’s voice looms large when assessing a potential Dejounte Murray-Lakers deal - The Athletic

But with two days left before the Thursday deadline (3 p.m. Eastern), and with the chance remaining that the fireworks might go off here at the end, there’s at least one high-profile scenario still on the board worth examining from all sides: Dejounte Murray to the Lakers. And with all due respect to the involved parties, from the Hawks front office that has so much to ponder here to the Lakers side that was so widely celebrated when it had a fantastic trade deadline performance around this time a year ago, the widespread intrigue here revolves around one man: LeBron James.

While the 39-year-old has not publicly campaigned for the Murray deal in the way he did for Anthony Davis in 2018, he has been sending all sorts of signals lately that he would like the Lakers to do something of significance. Add in that James can become a free agent in fewer than five months from now, and it’s not hard to understand why there’s so much spotlight on this situation at the moment. With that in mind, let’s unpack how they all got here and whether this is a deal that should get done.

Hawks-Lakers talks

As our Lakers beat writer, Jovan Buha, detailed here, the Lakers’ trade talks with Atlanta have continued in recent weeks. The holdup, as has been widely reported for quite some time, is the Hawks’ clear disinterest in taking back D’Angelo Russell and the need for a different landing spot for the Lakers guard as a result (Brooklyn is routinely highlighted by league sources as a Russell candidate here). The Hawks are known to covet Austin Reaves, whom the Lakers have no interest in giving up. The Lakers, per Buha, have offered Russell, rookie guard (and 17th pick) Jalen Hood-Schifino, the 2029 first-round pick (preferably protected) and additional draft compensation.

As for the contracts, here’s how they break down.

Russell: Owed $17.3 million this season, with a player option worth $18.6 million in 2024-25.
Murray: Signed through the 2026-27 campaign, with a player option worth $31.6 million in 2027-28. If he picked up that option, the lump sum owed from this season to the end of 2027-28 is $132.5 million. Murray, like James and fellow Lakers star Anthony Davis, is represented by Rich Paul of Klutch Sports.

...

The Hawks and the Murray calculus

It’s been 20 months since the previous Hawks front-office regime succumbed to ownership pressure and did the Murray deal with the San Antonio Spurs that cost them three first-rounders, a first-round pick swap and Danilo Gallinari. They were one year removed from an East finals appearance at the time, with organizational aspirations of title contention if they could find the right star to pair alongside franchise centerpiece Trae Young.

But as we’ve seen since, with the Hawks getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs in consecutive years and now sitting 10th in the East (22-28), even after a recent four-game winning streak, this clearly wasn’t the move to make back then. And the 25-year-old Young, who is the only player in the league averaging at least 27 points and 10 assists and was named an All-Star for the third time on Tuesday, hasn’t gotten any … younger in the process.

As Marc Stein reported recently, and which was confirmed by a league source to The Athletic, second-year Hawks coach Quin Snyder is known to be advocating for the Hawks to hold onto Murray. That sort of prominent voice is certainly enough to split the room, so to speak, when a particular trade is being analyzed.

What’s more, the Hawks’ front office, which is now led by general manager Landry Fields, added another key figure recently who is surely weighing in on the conversation. Chris Grant, the former Cleveland Cavaliers general manager who worked with Fields in recent years while with the Spurs, was added by Atlanta as an executive adviser in mid-January.

The challenge here for the Hawks, it seems, is that doing this deal without Reaves would do very little to help their chances of winning now. There is value in recouping some of the assets lost in the trade to land Murray, but one first-rounder (and perhaps a first-round swap and/or second-rounders) pales in comparison to what they gave up to get him in 2022.

The question, then, is whether they decide to forge ahead with this flawed roster while waiting until this summer to revisit the Murray market. Young is signed through the 2026-27 campaign, which lessens the pressure a bit when it comes to their star player politics. They’re only 5 1/2 games out of the sixth spot in the East (and the chance to avoid the Play-In Tournament), with recent wins over the Raptors, Lakers, Suns and Warriors (not to mention a close loss Monday night to the red-hot Clippers) showing signs of promise. And considering the way Murray has played of late, waiting this out might be the right move for the Hawks.

(

a typical Laker fan comment

You've got a nice offensive player in Austin Reaves on a cheap contract. Why not part with Reaves and ask for Murray + Bogdanovic + other rotation players? You get a roughly equivalent 3rd guy and significantly bolster the tail end of your rotation. Bron may not want to lose Reaves, but he isn't going to throw a fit about a trade like that. WCF is still probably the ceiling for that team if we're honest.

In interviews up until a week ago he was all about this team and performing the best he could for his teammates - at least that it was he was saying on the broadcasts. 

He is not only hurting the Hawks with this, he is tarnishing his own (formerly) stellar reputation.

From The Athletic Bounce newsletter:

• And, of course, the tried and true instance of a player unfollowing his employer on Instagram, which Russell has apparently done. 

Is it possible DLo has been traded away from the Lakers for the second time in his career? Or he’s about to? His contract has been heavily mentioned in trade possibilities for the Lakers. And we’ve heard about plenty of rumors, including them possibly dealing for Dejounte Murray, Zach LaVine or someone else. As noted, the trade deadline is Feb. 8.

Watching Clint fumble passes, blow layups and tip-ins night after night really gets old - I want him replaced (with a competent offensive center) more than anyone on the team.

If it's not an easy catch and flush then Trae should quit sending the ball his way - wastes so many possessions.

Rare coverage by The Athletic (it''s Hollinger but he is not wrong)

Atlanta Hawks have hit bottom, but can their season be saved? - The Athletic

Atlanta Hawks have hit bottom, but can their season be saved?

ATLANTA — Washington 127, Atlanta 99.

Yikes. The Hawks have hit rock bottom … right? Right?!

Well, things can always get worse, but if this isn’t the exact bottom, the Hawks can certainly see it from there.

Coming off a moribund home loss to the Indiana Pacers on Friday that theoretically should have served as motivation, the Hawks were outworked, outexecuted, outcoached and outplayed on every level on Saturday against the lowly Wizards.

That this happened on their home court, against a Washington team that visited State Farm Arena with a 6-31 record and whose minus-10.4 points per game scoring margin was among the worst in NBA history, was an embarrassment for a team that is theoretically in “win-now” mode. So much for that: The Hawks are 15-23 and in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. If the season ended today, they wouldn’t make the Play-In Tournament.

Atlanta didn’t have injuries to blame either: Seven of its top eight players were available Saturday, above par at this time of season in the NBA. The Hawks could only point fingers at the limitations of the roster and the inability of the coach and front office to cure them thus far.

Before we go further, I will make the glass-half-full point that the Hawks have been in similar straights before. Indeed, it’s practically an annual event on the local calendar, a peach-flavored basketball Festivus.

Most notably, they were 14-20 when they replaced Lloyd Pierce with Nate McMillan in March 2021, a season that ended with a trip to the Eastern Conference finals. They were 17-25 in 2021-22 before turning on the jets to win 45 games and beat Charlotte in the Play-In. And they were 29-30 last season when they replaced MacMillan with Quin Snyder, recovering enough to beat the eventual East champion Miami Heat on the road in the Play-In and take two games from the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.

“Although our record is ass right now, we can be a lot better,” Trae Young said after the game. “This is a process, and I’m not worried.”

Perhaps that history is giving the Hawks a false sense of security because this weekend sure seems like a good time to worry.

For those who didn’t watch, it’s hard to put into words how utterly lifeless the Hawks looked this weekend. Needing to grab some wins in a five-game homestand against less-than-imposing opposition, the Hawks instead were pounded 126-108 by a Tyrese Haliburton-less Pacers team on Friday and routed on Saturday by the aforementioned Wizards.

.....

The least bad move for the Hawks from this point would probably be to pivot to a soft tanking that generates a relatively high pick in the 2024 draft (they still have that pick), which could yield either young talent (although this draft isn’t well-regarded) or a trade chip.

Otherwise, the pressure is on the front office of Landry Fields to remake this team, and on Snyder to shape it into something better than what we’ve seen thus far.

< more at link >

DJM only one that had a decent game last night, perhaps tonight his last as a Hawk?

Look at some of the other comments following that post - they are delusional about Reeves's value.