clrumph

We just signed Kevin Willis, news conference at 2:00. http://hawks.realgm.com/showarticle.php?artid=473 If nothing else he can give us six fouls to use on Shaq!

Even if we do sign Willis we will still be weak in the middle, but other than Shaq in Miami so is everyone else in the eastern conference. I agree with all of your other points though. I think if everything goes right we should compete for the eight seed in the playoffs, and I also think we will play much better after the all-star break.

Vince Carter has now publicly stated his desire to be traded: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...call_pageid=968 While I am not a huge fan of his due to him being so injury-prone, I would love to see the Hawks trade for Vince at some point this season. I think the Raptors might be interested if we dangled Antoine's expiring contract because they would save a ton of cap space in the future by getting rid of Carter's contract. However, I think the most likely scenario would be a three-way deal where Toronto receives another young star or two that a third team is willing to part with to save their future cap space. Here is my proposed trade between Atlanta, Toronto, and Phoenix (lesser players would have to also be included for cap purposes but I am sticking to the major players involved in the trade for this scenario): Atlanta trades Antoine Walker to Phoenix Toronto trades Vince Carter to Atlanta Phoenix trades Shawn Marion to Toronto All three make roughly the same amount of money this year so this trade could be worked out. Briefly here are the advantages to each team: Atlanta receives a fan favorite (Carter always leads the league in All-Star voting), crowd-pleasing slam dunk artist and the most exciting player since 'Nique. This will also really help attendance figures improve and increase the team's TV exposure. Phoenix has been trying to dump Marion's contract all summer since they signed Q. Richardson. They would like to free up money to bolster their frontcourt and Walker's expiring contract allows them to do just that. Toronto receives a young, durable, exciting All-Star to replace Carter's scoring and athleticism. He also provides much needed rebounding to a team that lacks quality big men other than Chris Bosh. Carter stated in the article that he woud be wiling to play for a non-contender and he wants to be closer to Florida so I think he'll be interested in joining the Hawks. We all know he loves Philips arena because recently he's had some of his best games here (I think he currently holds the scoring record for Philips). What do you guys think? Carter is still only 27 years old so I could see Harrington, Josh Smith, and him forming a very exciting nucleus for the Hawks future!

Interesting article about the state of the Hawks on SI's web site: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/bask...awks/index.html Of course I especially liked the positive comments towards Josh Smith!

Regardless of whether we sign Kenny Anderson too I like our team a lot heading into the season. I think that BK should be commmended for completely overhauling this team while keeping our salary cap flexibility. Don't get we wrong, we are still a year or two away from completing the rebuilding project, but we have made significant progress since the end of last year. Here's my projected starting lineup: PG: Tony Delk (defensive-minded guard with a good jump shot, probably will play about 20 min a game if he can stay healthy) SG: Boris Diaw (defensive-minded triple-double threat, could have a breakout season if he becomes more aggressive offensively) SF: Al Harrington (young forward will prove how good he can be with starter's minutes) PF: Antoine Walker (another tripled-double threat; All-Star in the eastern conference) C: Predrag Drobnak (serviceable center with a decent jump shot) I also think our team has a decent bench with Barry, Childress, J. Smith, Crawford, Collier, D. Smith, and Ivey. If we sign Kenny Anderson that will probably mean that Ivey will be on the DL to start the year. I would still like to see us sign another big guy who can bang heads in the middle and block some shots, but all in all I must give BK a B+ grade this offseason. I'm really looking forward to November 3rd!

Cleveland is really pushing hard to sign Clark so I'm guessing that they would be willing to pay more for his services than BK. Hopefully we can still get him though because we definitely needed somebody who can block some shots.

Looks like we will sign Jon Barry. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=knig...night&type=lgns This probably excludes Kenny Anderson now even though I would like to sign him to a minimum 1-year deal also. I think Kenny will probably sign with Boston.

Baron demanding a trade is a joke! For him to complain about the Hornets after they gave him $85 million in exchange for his 40% shooting is ridiculous! Did he ever consider that the Hornets didn't get out of the 1st round because, as the best player and leader of that team, he didn't do a good enough job in the playoffs! Come on Baron, why not continue to work hard in the offseason and try to improve the very same team that basically set you up with financial security for the rest of your life? Of course everybody wants to play for L.A., New York, or Miami now because they feel they can get more exposure (i.e. more endorsement money), but come on, some of these NBA players make more money than some third world countries already! Utterly insane! By the way, I don't want to see Baron in Atlanta either, he is not worth a max contract and he is too injury-prone. Of course with BK in charge that won't happen. BK's cheap azz won't even pay some of these guys the minimum (which is a good thing at this stage of our development)!

I agree, BK needs to fill out our roster soon before there will be no decent players left to sign. Yeah, yeah, I know we all should be patient, but hey, no one said patience is not a characteristic of any true Hawks fan. Come on, we've all been suffering since 'Nique was traded!!!

I am somewhat concerned about our lack of activity since the Dampier situation was resolved. Everyone knows we need 1) another PG 2) A couple of defensive-minded big men 3) more outside shooting. Is BK really comfortable going into the season with only 11 players under contract? Looks like Boston is interested in Kenny Anderson and New York is interested in Keon Clark, so why is BK taking so long to sign them or to otherwise fill out our roster? As our team stands now we will really struggle to rebound and block shots, so basically our only chance of winning will be when Antoine is making almost all of his outside shots. We all know how erratic his shot is so we are probably going to struggle more often than not this year without additional help for our roster. Maybe BK really is wanting to make sure we compete for a very high draft pick next year!

2 years/ 2 million would be nice but I doubt that Clark's agent would go for that without including a player option for year 2 so that Clark could opt out if he has a good year. That's pretty much the same deal Stephen Jackson signed with us last year.

Good point about Clark. I actually would prefer him over Willis also, but maybe Clark is looking for more than a 1-year vet minimum deal to sign here. That is the only reason why I think BK wouldn't have already signed him. Then again, if Clark is willing to sign for the vet minimum he can just about go anywhere he wants so we will have competition for him at that price (like Steven Hunter when chose the same minimum contract from Phoenix instead of taking our offer. That was stupid as hell because Hunter could have showcased his limited skills with more playing time here and then maybe we would have looked to sign him to a longer term contract if he impressed us. He is not going to play much if at all behind Stoudamire.), so we may have to slighthly overpay for Clark if we really want him. I'm also a little wary of Clark's injury history over the last two years though, that's why I don't want to give him more than the minimum. He will do us no good looking pretty on the bench like my man Henderson did for the last few years! If we have already offered Clark a contract he should accept it and try to put big numbers this year and get a bigger contract as a FA next year. He should have noticed how well that worked out for Stephen Jackson. If I was a player like Clark or Hunter Atlanta would be my favorite destination because I would have the opportunity to play my way into a fatter contract the following year. No one said that NBA player's were geniuses, but you would think there agents would talk some sense into them! By the way, I'm pretty sure Willis will play for the 1-year vet minimum because he still lives here and I don't think there is much interest for him around the league because of the reasons you stated.

I think it would be a great idea to sign Steve Smith. He could provide leadership and outside shooting to this team while we make the transition to playing the younger guys more during the course of next year. I also like that fact that Steve can be a mentor to Josh Childress and also be a player-coach type presence in the locker room like Avery Johnson in Dallas. As a matter of fact, I think Childress's game is a lot like Steve's was before he hurt he knee. The only difference is that Steve's range on his jump shot was deeper coming out of Mich. St. In addition, Steve has always expressed a desire to return to the Hawks and work in the front office, so maybe after this year BK can find a job for Steve to keep him in the organization. I think it is always valuable to bring back smart former players to work in the front office because they already have a built-in passion for their team, a la 'Nique and Joe Dumars. I think if we sign Kenny Anderson, Kevin Willis, and Steve Smith to cap friendly deals then our team will be set for the start of the year and we will also retain the flexibility to make trades at the deadline to benefit our long-term future. For example, I really like the fact that we were able to draft Josh Smith from the draft pick we gained for the Rasheed Wallace trade. Hopefully we can strike gold again by using our cap space to broker a deal or two around the 2005 trade deadline. By the way, BK is doing a masterful job not overpaying for aging veterans (like Babcock used to do). $73M for Damp? Give me a break! Dallas will regret that deal as much as we regretted the Alan Henderson deal (well, maybe not that much!)