vdunkndunk

Three points: First, great defense often makes a great offense look average or worse. For instance, Oklahoma scored 60+ points in 5 straight games in the Big 12, then scored 14 against Florida. It was the same way when Ohio State was scoring 40 points a game in the Big 10, then scored only 14 points in the BCS championship. Both schools had Heisman winning quarterbacks who looked average at best against a top-flight SEC defense. (Ole Miss did the same thing to Texas Tech last year). Second, I think the SEC generally plays offense more conservatively than other leagues, because SEC teams trust in their defenses more and play for field position and ball control and grind it out a bit more. Third, the SEC's style (conservative offense and great defense) generally has worked very well. The SEC is not invicible and obviously won't win every single non-conference game like some people seem to think, but looking at the SEC's bowl record for the last few years, the amount of teams they put into the bowls every year, and their success in BCS games, I'd say it's hard to argue that any other conference is consistently as good or as deep at the top. USC is a great program, for instance, but would have no chance at winning the SEC 7 straight years like its done in the PAC-10--every year the SEC will have one or two legit national title contenders, plus one or two other legit top 10 teams. Flordia, LSU, and Tenessee have all won one or two national championships in the last ten or so years, plus Georgia has finished second (to another SEC team) Auburn went undefeated, and Alabama spent half of last season ranked number 1. No other league has that many different teams that can achieve that level of success consistently.

Here is my unpopular opinion: there is good reason to panic if a guy has a terrible summer leage. To me, the general rule is that success in summer league is a necessary but not sufficient condition to success in the following regular season. If you succeed in summer leage in at least some of the games, you have a chance to have a productive year the following year....but you have no guarantee. If you can't produce at all in any of the games, and you're healthy, then you're probably not going to have a very productive season. There are some exceptions, and I think this rule is especially true of guards rather than big men, but this seems to hold up in general a lot of the time. (And no, Dion Glover does not disprove this theory.) Chills, for instance, had a terrible rookie summer league and a terrible first half of his rookie season. But as the years went by, he played much better in summer league, and he also played much better in the regular season. While summer league isn't an accurate crystal ball or anything like that, I do think there's reason to panic if you have a healthy guy who stinks it up all summer league and never really puts together at least a decent game or two...chances are he won't be ready to produce right away come regular season. I'm okay with a guy who's up and down in summer leage...you can't tell much from that....but I worry about guys who fail utterly and completely at SL.

If there were such a thing as a healthy Sean May, I think he'd definitely be worth a look. I'm not sure that he'll ever play a full season though.

I don't agree with Childress that basketball is just a business, although I acknowledge that he has every right to treat it as such. To me, while there is a large business element to it, it's also about competition and building a career for yourself that you can look back on and be proud of. I don't know how much Chills is enjoying it out there, or what it's like to be an NBA-caliber athlete, or how much difference a million dollars a year makes in terms of lifestyle and security when you've already made tens of millions of dollars and have tens of millions more coming to you, but I naively believe I'd be willing to accept a million or two less to play against the best of the world in my home country (maybe not to play for the Bucks, though). I like Chills pretty well, but he's far from a difference maker for this team, we have plenty of depth at SF, and I actually think Mo Evans is a better fit for us off the bench because of his three-point shooting, quickness, defense, and experience - not to mention Jamal Crawford is also here now. I would have loved to get something back for Chills, and I hope he enjoys it in Greece and finds it rewarding, but I think we'll be just fine without him. Maybe next year we can work out some kind of trade.

I would trade Smoove for Amare in about half a second, as long as we had assurances from our medical staff that Amare is healthy. Amare would give us the kind of post offense we need - he's a dominant offensive player and would also make JJ much, much more effective. JJ destroys single coverage but has a lot of trouble when the entire defense is focused on him; with Amare the defensive focus would be on Amare, and JJ could make teams pay.

In terms of signing and trading for an unrestricted free agent, I don't know if that's possible, but it seems to me like unrestricted free agents still sometimes do sign-and-trades with their former team because they get some kind of benefit in terms of additional money or years. I don't think we'd want to pay Wilcox additional money and years, but I'd somehow love to turn Childress into a solid backup PF.

Personally, I like resigning Flip and Zaza, letting Bibby walk, and signing-and-trading Childress for Chris Wilcox, who's a free agent this summer I believe: PG: Flip Murray Jeff Teague SG: Joe Johnson Jamal Crawford SF: Marvin Williams Mo Evans PF: Josh Smith Chris Wilcox CR: Al Horford Zaza Pachulia Flip is a better defender and had about the same PER as Bibby, and he'll be a lot cheaper. Wilcox would give us a productive and athletic backup PF who could also play C.

Out of players who appear number 15 or later in Chad Ford's most recent mock draft (meaning that, if his projections are at all correct, we should be able to get at least one of these guys), here is my top 5 , ranked in the order I like them: 1. Ty Lawson 2. Earl Clark 3. Dejuan Blair 4. Jeff Teague 5. Eric Maynor

Either Ty Lawson or Eric Maynor from VCU would make me very happy. Lawson and Maynor are the two PGs we have a real shot at who I think would be a great fit. After that, I like Steph Curry or Johnny Flynn. Patrick Mills or Darren Collison would be worth considering if the guys above are off the board. At this point I'm not a big fan of Brandon Jennings, Jrue Holiday, or Jeff Teague, and I don't think we have a shot at Rubio.

This is why I want to trade Smoove and wasn't in favor of a huge extension....I'm afraid if he gets hurt or simply loses his freaky edge in terms of athleticism as he grows older (which is likely to happen at some point) he won't have a lot of game to fall back on. I remember Steve Smith saying that after he hurt his knee, he knew he could still play in the league because he had size and he could shoot. Smoove has got size, but his jump shot is terrible, he can't dribble, and his postgame, while it's getting better, is still mostly dependent on quickness and athleticism.

I'd love it. We'd take an obvious hit on interior shotblocking, but I think Amare actually rebounds at least as well as Josh, and offensively he's much more productive and efficient. We need an inside threat bad - Joe and Bibby would become so much more deadly with Amare out there. I'm not sure if we're offering enough to Phoenix, though. If we had to, I wouldn't mind offering Marvin and Smoove, then resigning Childress to take Marv's place.

I'd like to resign Childress. I remember he seemed to be frustrated with the Hawks in part because he had a chance to do a sign-and-trade to a contender, which was something he was interested in; and I remember Sund saying on the radio, in reference to Childress, that you don't sign a role player to go over the salary cap unless you think you have a legit shot to contend. To me, though, it now looks like the Hawks are a legit contender to at least make the second round of the playoffs, and Childress could be a guy who solidifies us as a perennial top-4 seed in the East for the next couple of years. In fact, we're already sitting in the no. 4 spot right now, but I believe adding Childress would put us on equal footing with Orlando for the next couple of years, and might allow us to move past Boston (getting old) or Cleveland (screwed if Lebron leaves or gets injured) sometime in the future. I'm also fairly certain we couldn't sign a better free agent given our cap situation, and Childress already knows the system and has chemistry with the team, so I'd like to give it a try.

I don't think Law is going to be a future NBA starter, at least not a top-tier starter, but he might develop into a decent backup. But Bibby's only thirty or so, and his shooting should hold up for the next couple of years, so I wouldn't mind seeing him extended for another two or three years. So I'd just go with the best available player.

I thought this was an interesting comparison and looked at Tim Thomas vs. Marvin in terms of PER, to give an idea of their per minute production. Good news for Marvin: Tim Thomas's PER in his fourth season was 12.32. Marvin's PER right now is 16.20. Thomas has actually never had a PER that high in his entire career.

I was more excited about Flip Murry when I first read that we'd signed him than I am now after I just checked his stats. I remember there was that one first-half of the season when he was in Seattle and (I think) Ray Allen was hurt, and he came in and scored a bunch of points. That was the last I really thought of him, so I thought he'd be a much better shooter than he is. I guess he'll help us, but I'll miss the effeciency of Chills.

So our offseason looks like it will amount to losing Josh Childress to Europe for nothing, signing a journeyman replacement for Chills along with an undrafted backup bigman, and then alienating Josh Smith for a couple of months before finally giving him the contract he was looking for all along. Great job, ASG! Good thing we brought in a GM who drafts busts at center year after year so he could also submarine our relationship with our free agents. If our GM can't draft and he can't negotiate with free agents, what exactly can he do? And what else has our ownership done but make bad hires, keep bad hires for way too long, blow some major draft picks, sue each other for years, and watch our intelligent and high-character 6th overall pick flee to Europe rather than put up with the treatment he received from this franchise? It's very hard to be a Hawks fan right now...I once had a lot of optimism but it's gone completely. If we had just wrapped up the Joshes right away, signed Kwame and Morris, and signed Evans, for instance, I'd at least feel like we were building something and getting better (doesn't seem like too much to ask, right?). Instead, this summer has been a complete disaster, and we're not out of the woods yet - there's still the chance we lose both Joshes for nothing after being told for a year that keeping them was ASG's "top priority". (I'd hate to see what happens to priorities farther down the list, by the way.)

The Hawks need to match this offer TODAY. There's no reason to even think about it. It's a fair and reasonable offer, and not matching would basically mean that I will never watch or think about the Hawks again until ASG is run out of town.

To me, Evans is a nice signing, but what we needed was Evans AND Childress, not Evans instead of Childress. We also needed a happy Josh Smith AND Kwame Brown, not an unhappy Josh Smith and Randolph Morris. The Hawks had a chance to build continuity while strengthening their bench, and instead we just see more incompetence.

What we need is for the ownership dispute to become so bitter that both sides simply agree to sell the team to some third party.

Marvin's PER has improved a little bit in each of his first three years, from 12.24 his rookie year to 14.53 last year. Not much, but at least he's been improving. I've pretty much given up hope for him to do anything but maybe make an all-star team once or twice in his career at best (and that looks like wishful thinking at this point), but I'm still hoping he'll at least become a solid starter. His first two months last season were great - if he could stay at that level for an entire year he'd be a significant contributor. Unfortunately, for two months last season he was also horrendous, so who knows what the deal is with him.

I was at Game 6, and I was so pumped after the game that I wanted to buy season tickets even though I don't live in Atlanta. But now I'm not even sure I want to watch this team on TV. What's the point? I don't trust the ownerhship group at all, they haven't done anything but bungle everything they've tried to do so far, and it's been about two months with our new GM and I've already written him off as a dinosaur who doesn't understand the current economic climate or how to make a player feel halfway wanted (or how to draft anything except for centers who all end up as busts). I'm sure Joe will want out as soon as his contract his up. I love basketball and in an ideal world I'd like to cheer for my hometown NBA team, but there's only so much disappointment and embarrasment one franchise can inflict on its fanbase before that fanbase gives up (like most of the Atlanta fans already have).

In comparing Bass vs. Amir, I'm going on only a few things (since I haven't seen much of either of them). (1) Amir is supposed to be close to 6'11, while Bass is 6'8. (2) Amir has posted PER's of 20, 20, and 17 in his first 3 season, while Bass has posted PER's of 9, 7, and 15. (3) Amir is 21, Bass is 24. (4) Hollinger has a much more positive report on Amir than on Bass: Amir Johnson: Brandon Bass:

I probably like Josh Howard a little better than Prince, but not by much. I'd WAY rather get Amir than Bass, though, so I'd rather do a deal with the Pistons.

Without Gasol the Lakers would not have gotten homecourt advantage in the West and would not have reached the Finals at all. If I remember correctly, Odom is the one who did nothing in the Finals.

I suppose they're comparable in a sense. But when you do compare them, it's clear that one is a much better prospect than the other. It's true that they're both skinny backup big men who haven't played much, but one is four years younger and more than twice as productive with his time on the court. That's why I don't think Amir and Solo are on a comparable level in terms of the kind of prospects they are and the kind of value they could have for this team.