Seano

To compare Al Harrington to Dominique Wilkins is a serious disservice to Nique, and I like Al. It's a terrible comparison, like comparing a Yugo to a Lamborghini.

The situations are/were entirely different, as others have stated. We were a legit title contender at the time of the Nique trade, right now we're only a contender for the first pick in the draft. We are young, inexperienced and quite terrible. Harrington is a good player and arguably our best (I personally would say JJ is, but wouldn't argue much if someone was to say Al is), but he's merely the best of a pretty bad lot. No way he should even be mentioned in the same breath as Dominique.

Diesel posting a skewed poll?!?!?!??? Shocked, I'm just shocked!

LOL. You might just be onto something there. KB/BK? Things that make ya go hmmmmm....

Ahhh BS. I'm not trying to pick on Woodson or anything, but when you've got an NBA coach so disorganized and so apparently clueless that he forgets to even put his best defender on the floor in crunch-time during the Boston game- what does that tell you?

And his excuse after the game was even worse. I'm paraphrasing here but basically he said, "Ah well, I just got caught up in the flow of the game and that's why I didn't get him in there". Well sorry Mike, but that doesn't wash. I mean he's the freaking coach. How in the hell can he overlook that and forget to sub in the proper players at the proper time????

It just boggles my mind. It truly does. Crap like that just makes this franchise look like an even bigger joke than it already is.

And another thing, for someone who was supposedly a good defensive coach and good at working with young players, how can our defense be as terrible as it is, and why don't these young players seem to be improving all that much? Defensively, we seem to have the standing around aimlessly, matador defense thing down pat- but when it comes to actually stopping someone, fuhgeddaboutit. And how is it that Boris Diaw can go to Phoenix and look like a frigging future All Star in his first season there, yet here he was the invisible man and was borderline useless? That's coaching right there. You can't put it on anything else. His skills certainly didn't improve that greatly over the course of one offseason, meaning he still had those same skills here. But did we see even a glimpse of that? Nah, we didn't see crap from Boris. And that is because either his coaches weren't teaching him properly or they weren't using him right.

Very interesting. Also kind of makes me question the validity of it or that it means all that much. Lemme see....we get blown out by 28 points, and yet only one of our players is in the negative?

Things that make ya go hmmmm....

I believe that Salim could eventually become that shooter you want out there during crunch-time. For now I'm not sure we've got one, but if we did it'd probably be Joe Johnson. For crunch-time defensive purposes, you've gotta go with Josh Smith IMO. But again, that's an area we need a LOT of improvement in.

Not like that wasn't Dallas' fault. It was entirely predictable. Let's see, you've got a player who's been a lazy, underacheiving ball of suck for years- had all the physical tools in the world to be a success, but was completely lacking in motivation, heart, and desire. Then all of a sudden in his 9th season he goes nuts, actually plays hard and sets career highs in points and smashes his previous career high in rebounds by almost 5 boards per game- averaging a double double for the season while playing decent defense.

What made that 9th year so great? Can you say contract year? I mean that was so totally freaking obvious and you'd have to be a fool to have not seen that coming, as well as the inevitable aftermath....that being that after he secured that big money deal, he had no incentive to play hard any longer, and so he went back to being a lazy, underacheiving ball of suck. And now for his 9 million this year, he's not even a starting player. And for the next 5 seasons as his salary balloons up to over 13 million per and he's 35 years old, he probably won't be starting either.

Mark Cuban is generally pretty sharp, but that was just an unconscionable deal that really even an idiot should have seen coming.

Agree, Isiah has done pretty well with the draft. Gotta give him that much...

Eh, just gotta learn to let it roll right off your back. Every message board in existence has its share of blowhards and loudmouths- that just comes with the territory I guess. It's basically just an attention-getting measure for those particular posters.

Diesel tries very very hard to be provocative, which can be ok sometimes as it keeps the board moving during dead periods and can even sometimes generate a good discussion- plus sometimes it's just fun to argue or take subtle shots at each other. But he obviously sometimes tries WAY too hard to provoke, which ends up genuinely pissing people off....as seems to be the case today. At those times he needs to learn to step away from the keyboard unless he *really* is a jerk and really enjoys angering people, which I somewhat doubt but then again I don't know him either.

I participate in a bunch of message boards and see myopic and argumentative cusses like KB and Diesel on all of them. My reaction to those people is to not even play their little games. They wanna argue, go for it- but I won't be a participant in their need for conflict with others. I've got much better things to do.

Well he is a vet. This is his 8th year in the league, so in NBA or any other terms he's a vet- and by Atlanta Hawks standards he's Methuselah. Still young, but he's very experienced and he is *definitely* a vet.

I think this is a moot issue, as I haven't heard JJ complaining yet and in fact it was his very strong choice to come here. I believe he appreciates the fact that he's got a leadership position on this team.

Now this is a good, comprehensive poll.

Isiah is just a terrible GM, and I would say the pressure is starting to really get to him. I heard where he threatened Bill Simmons on ESPN radio the other day for Simmon's very uncomplimentary columns regarding Isiah's general management skills or lack thereof. Or if not an outright threat it was at least a veiled one, Isiah saying there'd be 'problems' if he ever ran into Simmon's on the street. Bill Simmon's is taking it somewhat seriously. He was like 'Hey, this is the dude that sucker-punched his best friend Bill Laimbeer in the face during a game, so I'd be pretty dumb to overlook or discount any threats of violence coming from him'.

Sometimes I believe that Diesel just likes a good argument, and will argue about literally almost *anything* if given the opportunity to do so- whether he really believes in his argument or not.

Good post Nicholas. I agree with you 100%. Saying that not wanting to overpay Al equates to a 'welfare mentality' among Hawks fans is just bogus. It's just another one of those buzzwords that Diesel likes to use, ala 'Basketball Ignorant'. It's just silliness. No way in hell we should overpay for Al for all the reasons stated above and for the fact that his comments about going to Denver a few weeks ago indicate to me that he's ready to leave Atlanta- and if he's that ready to leave, well then maybe we just need to let him go.

If anything would indicate a 'welfare mentality' to me, it would be the stubborn belief that we *must* hold on to Al Harrington no matter the cost, because the Hawks can't do any better than that. Well that's BS in my opinion. We CAN do better than Harrington, so don't overpay. And if you get put in a position or think you might get put in a position where you have no choice but to overpay, then just trade him off for the best deal possible.

Wow, what a relief. **sarcasm**

There are 30 starting SF's in the NBA right now, some of them good- some not so good. As the second player taken in the draft, Marvin Williams had damn sure better be something more than just another 'starting SF'. The #2 pick, you need to get a star- not just a starting player. I would think that Billy Knight's expectations for Marvin would lie much higher than that. If not, then something is very wrong and Knight needs to be held accountable for that.

We as fans deserve way better than this. It's like a freaking Mickey Mouse show, or that movie Groundhog Day where the same things keep happening day after day after day in this endless loop. Our endless loop consists of stupidity, poor management, poor coaching, poor choices in personnel, the incompetence and futility just go on and on and on. It's terribly disheartening as a fan, and makes me feel there's a possibility that at some point I'll just say the hell with it and give up on the Hawks for good- because this is about as enjoyable and fulfilling as banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall. It's sickening what these fools have done and seem to still be doing to this franchise.

Anyways, that was interesting Lascar. Thanks for posting it.

So would our team, assuming our younger players actually *did* improve. Unfortunately though and mysteriously ***cough coaching cough***, our younger players as a rule don't seem to improve that much- instead the vast majority of them seem to stagnate or even actually regress, and then there are those like Royal Ivey who don't even receive an opportunity to play decent minutes despite the fact that his play probably warrants an expanded role on this team. Some like Boris Diaw get lucky and get traded off to a team and coach willing and able to utilize them to the best of their ability and able to maximize their strengths while minimizing their weaknesses, while the young players here seem to be pretty much stuck in nowhereland.

Is there a single young player on this team who looks like a better player now than he was last year? I don't think so, and that's a real problem in my opinion. These guys should be improving as players at least gradually, but I just don't see it. And that is all coaching, because every one of those guys has the physical tools to succeed.

My opinion is that this team needs to just say no to shoot-first 'point guards'. Been there, done it- and it doesn't work for us.

I say give Woodson till the end of the season only because midseason firings can be so especially disruptive- and the last thing this young and inexperienced team needs is any more disruption IMO.

I don't really see much point in a midseason firing right now- what, so we can win 25 games rather than 20? It's not gonna help much of anything this season. It'll be for the future, so why not just wait to the end of the season anyways. Besides, I don't know of all that many qualified coaches who are desirable, available and willing to work in Atlanta at the moment. I'd rather wait and get the right guy and the best guy possible for the job.

Bill Simmons is great, man. He is funnier than hell.

I believe that right now it would have to start with the coach on the floor. IMO getting a good coach who knows how to manage a game, teach young players (or hire assistants who will do so), and utilize ALL of his players to the best of their abilities- that's worth way more than any player you could get in a trade. Cause a good coach can coach up even a young or bad team, while a bad coach can drag even a good or promising team down.

Woodson is clearly not getting it done, and if I owned the operation that's where I'd start.

That was really ugly. I would call it close to disgusting.

Jeezum man, that's terrible. Nothing against Woodson personally, but how the hell can you and your assistants have 'oversights' like that? To me that is reflective of disorganization and just general overall cluelessness. I mean c'mon- this is the friggin NBA here, not 7th grade JV ball.

In my opinion that's just not acceptable, and really he and his coaches need to at some point be held accountable for that. If you can't manage a game any better than that....well, I would think the writing would have to be on the wall.

Frankly I wish the Nene rumors would just dry up and blow away. I just have a very difficult time trying to understand why you'd trade for a player who:

A. Is certain not to be back this season

B. Is a free agent at the end of this season

and C. His injury status for next season and years to come still remains up in the air.

It's not like the dude suffered a sprained pinky finger. He tore both his anterior cruciate and lateral meniscus ligaments, and sprained his medial collateral ligament. Those are severe injuries, and there is no telling at all how successfully he will recover and if he will ever be the same player again- much less go on and become an improved player.

So, we're gonna trade off our most valuable trading chip for *that*? Are we really that desperate? God spare me, that's like the type of move that got this team into its current shape in the first place. If we were to trade Harrington for Nene, then the Atlanta Hawks deserve to be where they're at.

I also thought we'd be able to make some hay in the month of January, but with these past two losses to subpar teams, have been slapped back to the realization that you can take nothing for granted with a team so young and inexperienced. To go from the heights of beating San Antonio and winning in Indy, to drop to the lows of losing to the likes of Charlotte and Toronto twice, it's a rollercoaster ride through the peaks and valleys that will probably continue until these guys really start to gel- and there's no telling when that might finally happen.

Hopefully you're not referring to me here, as I am neither arrogant nor smug. And I'm not sure what you mean by sitting on both sides of the fence and having no opinion. Everyone has opinions, but to pretend you can sit behind a keyboard and foretell someone's future is just plain foolishness, unless one happens to be Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, Miss Cleo (haha), or has a damn good crystal ball- and I'm pretty confident that none of us can make claim to any of those things.

To say 'I don't know" is not to mean that one doesn't have an opinion, it's just very straightforward honesty to admit that you don't know- and it's ok to not know and to admit that. I don't know what will happen to Marvin. I don't know that he'll explode into the next superduperstar, I don't know that he'll become a major bust, or maybe he'll fall somewhere in between those two opposite spectrums. That's the thing, I don't know that, you don't know that, KB21 doesn't know that- no one knows it, not even Marvin Williams himself. You may think one thing about him, KB may think another, I may think a third, but that's just speculation and opinion on our part- nothing more and nothing less. But to try and represent that opinion as some sort of absolute truth is just bullsh*t, and that's something that both you and KB are guilty of I'm afraid.