Seano

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.

Quote: What is worst than an extremist however is an arrogant, smug joker who sits on both sides of the fence and has no opinion. It makes me say... "what's the purpose?" 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.

I'm not sure which is more irritating- Diesel with his extreme anti-Marvin bias or KB21 with his equally over the top, "Marvin will be one of the best players in the league in 3 years time, and this is as good as Chris Paul is ever going to be." spiel. Diesel and KB21 represent the most extremist viewpoints on both ends of the spectrum, so I guess they're probably equally irritating- as extremists always are, no matter what stripes they wear or view they represent. The other point about extremists is that they're always very, very loud and persistent in trying to promulgate their views, and that loudness tends to drown out any and all more reasonable viewpoints. I myself am a member of the mostly silent majority, those who are honest enough with ourselves to admit that we have no idea what Marvin's future holds, we have no idea how good (or how much a possible bust) he might be, but just basically keeping our fingers crossed, hoping for the best for him and that everything works out.

I agree 100% that Woodson should be given the season to see what he can do. We are so young and so inexperienced that it would be unfair to not give him a lot of rope and a lot of patience. It takes time for so many new players to get comfortable playing together. That's just reality. He says all the right things. He's got a great attitude. I love the fact that he strives so hard to stay positive for himself and more importantly for his players, and I love how whenever things go well he deflects all the praise onto his players- he says how proud he is of them and he means it. The players are behind him all the way and are vowing to play even harder so that he doesn't end up getting fired.... so I'm fine with giving him a fair shot. Not to mention that firing a coach midseason would only add to the turmoil and instability surrounding this organization, it'd be a big disruption, you'd have unhappy players- another step back for an organization that has taken far too many of those. And we're in the hell part of our schedule right now, so it's not really such an accurate barometer of this team. But the schedule will start getting easier. Let's see how Woody does in January, when we play 11 of 15 games at home, and 9 of those 15 games against teams currently under .500. We could have a pretty good month there, possibly even a winning one if all goes well and our guys are finally getting a feel for playing together.

Quote: disasterous Not to be too nit-picky about it, but disasterous? Chad Ford is a paid writer, he should know way better than to mis-spell such an easy word as that. It's *disastrous*, Chad. But yeah, it's tough to argue with the points he's making.

In fairness to Woody as well, this has been a terribly difficult schedule to start off the season. We've played 14 games against the Western Conference so far- by FAR the most of any team in the East, and have had only 4 games against weaker Eastern foes. And the West is still stronger. Of the Eastern teams, only Detroit, Miami, Indiana, and Philly have winning records against the West- everyone else is below .500. Not to mention we've played 11 of 17 games on the road so far. So the schedule has certainly not helped, especially given the fact this team is so young and inexperienced. But the hopeful upside to that is that later on our schedule will get easier as we will be playing more and more games against the East and at home, while our Eastern competitors will get their turn to get beaten up by the West.

To be blunt, just say no to Blount.

#10 looks like a mean sum'bitch.

Maybe Diesel just likes to argue. I agree that this topic is super boring and pointless. What's done is done, we drafted Marvin Williams. No one knows how he'll do, whether he'll end up being considered worthy of his high draft status. That's for the future to decide, not any of us. Maybe he will fall apart and become the bust of the century, or maybe he will blow up and become the greatest thing since cheese. We will all see.... But in the meantime this nitpicking, woulda, shoulda, coulda bullcrap is completely pointless not to mention counterproductive, repetitive and irritating. We didn't draft Chris Paul. We didn't draft Deron Williams. We drafted Marvin Williams, so deal with it and get over yourself already!

Quote: again i find myself siding with Diesel. who died? Diesel has been rockin this forum lately like nobody's bidness. I'm ready to go ahead and make him the GM right now.

Meh, who really even cares about Steve Belkin at this point? I honestly don't care whether he gets another team, whether he doesn't, or whether he steps out his door tomorrow morning, gets abducted by space aliens and whisked off to their home planet in the Arcturus 5 system- never to be seen again. I just don't care. All I know is that he's not our problem any longer, and he can go straight to hell as far as I'm concerned.

It's great to see the owners united in standing behind Knight that strongly. He's got a mandate, now he has to prove that his plan will work for us. That's the hard part... I for one though feel very confident in his abilities and I feel good about our future. I really do believe much brighter days are ahead of us.

Hahaha ATL_BALLER, great work on the Photoshop images. Literally made me about spew Coke all over my keyboard.

Yeah, especially for the sake of the young fans and posters like Mike and Red1524- I really hope we're able to get this thing turned around ASAP. It's strange and a little sad to think that for the majority of their lives as fans they've seen nothing but mediocre to downright terrible teams. I feel very fortunate that during my youth and the time I first became a fan the Hawks were an outstanding, near championship-level team. There was always just someone just a little bit better than us in the East, whether it was the Bird, Ainge, and McHale Celtics, the Bad Boy Pistons, or Michael and the Jordanaires. Very frustrating that we kept coming so close but were never quite able to get over the hump, but still there is nothing quite like having a team that is a legit contender year after year after year. It's just thrilling, and it was awesome. So hang in there fellas. We were near the mountaintop once, there is no doubt in my mind that we will get there once again.

I'll be turning 39 next month, remember both the bad and good old days of the Hawks. Far as I know I might be the only Squawker in Maine, hell I might be the only Hawks fan in the entire site far as that goes. This is hardcore Celtics country.

Yes. Other than maybe Mrs. Belkin, I do believe you are the only other person who supports the Belkinator. Congrats! You are member #2 of a very exclusive club.

Diesel I know it's the offseason and everything, but IMO you need to work on improving your trade scenarios. You've come up with some real doozies lately.

I wouldn't mind hanging onto Delk for depth purposes- we still need players. I'd rather see that than see a bad or unneccesary trade. So unless someone is prepared to give us something we really need or want, I'd just as soon hang on to Delk at least till the season is underway- then see what happens then.

I feel more and more like Harrington's gonna be traded now, but we'll see what happens.

Quote: The same guy said the acquisition of JJ was one of the ten worst moves of the offseason, so take what he says with a grain of salt. I don't think he thought signing JJ was a terrible move, I think he thought giving him a max deal in addition to Diaw and the picks was just too much. But what he failed to take into account is that we are the Atlanta Hawks, and there is just absolutely no way we were ever going to acquire a top-shelf free agent without paying through the nose for his services. In other words, we didn't exactly have the creme de la creme of NBA free agents beating down our door. So you either give the guy max money as well as give a huge gift and renewed sense of optimism and hope to your fans, or you dont- and you continue the painfully slow and terribly uncertain method of trying to build a team strictly through the draft, asking your fans to hang in there and please keep shelling out the bucks in the meantime. So, I really don't see how the JJ move can be faulted. Maybe it will be shown over time that we did give him too much, but in our present circumstance we had very little choice.

I don't really see how Belkin could stay on at this point. He's been thoroughly defeated, he's been humiliated (that pic of BK refusing to shake his hand is literally all over the net), he's been discredited by Hawks management, his fellow owners, and his commisioner... he's been ripped to shreds in the papers (and again, not just in Atlanta, it's all over the net), and he's now hated with a white-hot passion by Atlanta Hawks fans, most of whom probably didn't even know his name before all this went down. Talk about a rout. This was Belkin's Waterloo, and he got beat hard. If he's willing to stay on after all this, the dude's got some serious cojones.

Quote: Would you do it? God NO, are you insane? That'd be a freaking terrible trade. A garden variety center and a pick for the 2nd player chosen in the draft, who we haven't even gotten the opportunity to see play yet???? What if Marvin becomes a superstar? I know you've taken a disliking to him for reasons that are completely beyond me, but the fact is that the people who are paid to evaluate and measure these things...you know the professionals, the talent evaluators, scouts, GM's etc etc etc were unanimous in declaring that Marvin Williams was one of the top two players in this draft, and as far as star potential goes he may be the number one. So, I'm pretty inclined to listen to these guys opinions far and beyond the opinions of any poster on any message board- nothing against you personally of course. So lets try and be realistic here, eh?

How much exactly do we have to spend on payroll in order to meet the minimum?

Hahaha. Good stuff....

I think some people are seriously overvaluing draft picks here, and to say that Al Harrington is not worth a first round pick is ludicrous in my opinion. Al is a proven and established NBA player who's still only 25 years old himself, a future pick is an entirely unknown commodity- a complete crapshoot. So, what to you has more value? The guy who is already in the league and has already proven he can play and play quite well, or some future draft pick of which there's no way to determine whether that pick will pan out or even be able to play in this league? That's why you see NBA teams trade first round picks so often, way more often than NFL teams do- because they understand the draft is such an uncertainty. You always stick with the guy who's already proven himself, especially when he's still so young. Now trading Harrington rather than losing him for nothing next offseason, that's a different story. He's still worth way more than a single first round pick in my opinion.