Rating the East teams' offseasons: Hawks 14th

[CBAreject]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/stor...marc&id=2586126

Mark Stein is ridiculous. It's like he said to himself, "The Hawks are bad. Their offseason moves should be no better than 15th." I have a hard time believing he objectively weighed us against other teams when he puts the Knicks' offseason at 10th. The Knicks overpaid for a mediocre Jeffries who duplicates what they have. The overdrafted Balkman who would've been there at least 20 picks later.

The Pistons let Wallace go for nothing, then they replaced him with castoff Nazr Mohammed, who provides absolutely no shot blocking. Nevertheless, the Pistons rate better than the Hawks in their offseason moves.

The Magic did nothing besides draft Redick, yet they rate as 8th best.

The Pacers effectively swap Peja and a 1st round pick for a worse Al Harrington, but that move makes their offseason the 3rd best. Apparently, Mark Stein gives them a LOT of extra credit for "salvaging" the offseason by getting something for Peja. While I agree they could've done worse, I don't think that makes their offseason, on the whole, a particularly good one.

Every player the Hawks acquired filled a need and signed a reasonable deal. While no move was earth-shattering, it's hard to say any move was a bad one. It's also hard to say the team didn't improve. With that in mind, how can the offseason be the worst in the league? I guess "only getting a 1st rounder" for Al Harrington could be considered a bad move, but he had just finished praising teams like Orlando and Charlotte for "saving their cap-room".

[exodus]

That is pretty bad, even by Hawks bashing standards. Speedy alone should get the Hawks higher than 14th.

[WraithSentinel]

I thought he was one of Espn better writers. That isn't saying much. I at least like reading most of his stuff. That is the worst damn offseason ratings I have ever seen. He need to either redo it, or just fire himself for being a complete idiot. I am not complaining just about the Hawks rating. The entire list if messed up.

[Gray Mule]

Writer talks about what the teams did this offseason UNTIL he gets to the Hawks, then talks about our loosing Diaw

a year ago. Also, he was critical of our draft, not this

draft, but the previous one.

It's old news that we didn't draft the all star point guard

and that Diaw had a wonderful season AFTER he left Atlanta.

What does this have to do with what the Hawks did THIS

year in the offseason???

The answer is obvious - NOTHING.

[y2kenta]

It's funny when you think how teams always prove these jackasses wrong year after year, making them look so stupid.

So we should let the idiots talk out of their asses while the Hawks blow up right in front of them. Then they'll be trying to jump on our bandwagon and claim that they were always rooting for us. It's going to be funny and feel so good to slap them in the face with it too.

[Rick]

I agree Greymule. The Hawks get a poor ranking due to their summer last year, not the current one.

Cheers

Rick

[Nicholasp27]

just wait until marvin blows up this year

he's gonna make sophomore game this year and be very praised

[bird_dirt]

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It's funny when you think how teams always prove these jackasses wrong year after year, making them look so stupid.

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fortunately for the media, and most of the people who follow them, they have very short memory spans. they don't count on anyone bringing up at the end of the season their projections and prognostications. if the hawks suck, they won't change, and they'll keep making fun of them. if the hawks don't suck, then they will just make fun of whomever lost to the hawks. until the hawks put together a couple of good years, they'll never get any respect for who they are or what moves they make.

[Guest Walter]

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You certainly can't call (this) a great summer

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I think most of us would at least agree on that. The question is how many if any not so great summers can a rebuilding team afford to have before they wind up the next GS?

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...especially after the Hawks decided they didn't want anything more than a future first-round pick for Harrington, but at least it wasn't as nightmarish as last summer. That's when Knight bypassed Chris Paul in the draft -- you might have heard here once or twice that Paul wanted Atlanta to take him -- and happily banished Boris Diaw to Phoenix in the Joe Johnson trade ... only for Diaw to blossom into a multipositional wonder the Hawks never knew they had.

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Until MW becomes as someone put it the equivalent of our Hakeem, Paul will be to the rest of the league this draft's MJ (who wanted to play in Atlanta) that we passed on. We certainly gave up more in Diaw than we expected and we will continue to give with remaining 1sts.

In short, BK has passed on the ROY and traded the MIP in 3 months. I believe he passed on the 2 favorites for ROY this year in order to promise SW. And he traded Al for scraps when he could have had more AND allowed us more activity in FAcy. He's certainly no more "biased" than most homer fans are and honestly I think his qualitative assessment is on. I think we win more games and place better in large part because Speedy and Lo are stabalizing, steady contributors, but I don't think we will do better than 10th (and that's the least I expect to justify keeping Woody and BK).

W

[CBAreject]

The question was not whether what Stein said about the Hawks was true. Rather, it's whether his ranking was fair, relative to other teams.

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You certainly can't call (this) a great summer

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OK, fine. It's hard to call it the worst in the league, though.

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Until MW becomes as someone put it the equivalent of our Hakeem, Paul will be to the rest of the league this draft's MJ

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That is also beside the point. That has nothing to do with the 2006 offseason.

What he said about Paul may have also been true, but it doesn't explain his 15th ranking. You could say, "The Hawks really goofed up giving Chris Crawford and Alan Henderson big contracts. That's why they're 15th." While your PREMISE is true, your conclusion doesn't logically follow from it.

[gutz]

HAHAHAH!! What an idiot this clown is. Give me a break. The Knicks 10th? Isiah is the worst GM in the league! We will blow them out of Phillips Arena when they come here for our home opener. Our offseason was pretty solid in my book. I mean we signed a legit PG in Speedy, a very solid backup center who can score, rebound, and play solid interior Defense in Wright, drafted The Landlord who only dominated and averaged like 18pts, 11rb. and 3blks his entire college career to anchor our D, got rid of 40yr. old knees Harrington for a 1st rounder in next years VERY deep draft which also allows Marvin to enter the starting lineup. Sorry but that is a very solid offseason plus we still have tons of cap room for next year in the FA market. This guys knows nothing! Go Hawks!!!

[CBAreject]

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The growing consensus seems to be that Thomas can indeed coax a playoff-contending 40 wins out of these misfits by playing a lot of guards and going up-tempo. That's still the way I'm betting, too, figuring that Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis are so desperate to spruce up their reputations that they'll find a way to coexist. For 82 games, anyway.

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40 WINS??????????

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH THAT'S RICH, STEIN. YOU ARE BETTING THE KNICKS WILL WIN 40 GAMES???? I HOPE YOU DIDN'T RISK YOUR WHOLE WAD ON THAT ONE.

[exodus]

I have a hunch Vegas disagrees.

it will be interesting to see what Vegas thinks the Hawks will do this year.

[Popeye]

Philly got Hendu, i wonder why didn't he put them in front of us.

We got:

Lorenzen Wright

Speedy Claxton

Shelden Williams

Solomon Jones

Draft pick in 07

extended contracts on Smoove, Chill and Marv.

We lost:

Al HArrington (we have 3 sf who can be better than Al)

John Edwards

Magic only got JJ Reddick and yet he alone is better than all above.

That's not bad, at least we are not overhyped, i think that all these writers will say that we over achieved in this upcoming season.

i rather over achieve than under achieve.

[Weez]

their (Vegas') estimation of the Hawks' over/under last year won me some big money.....

[TheDude]

actually we should be saving all these type articles..

it's stupid....how can you judge this season's offseason on this season's offseason? It basically means he put no effort into it and is spewing the same rubbish.

and while some may think we underacheived in our Harrington trade and even possible in the drafting of Shelden, you cannot rank us below some of those teams.

[AHF]

I emailed Stein about this ridiculous column yesterday. The Detroit review is the most interesting to me because he basically says that (1) losing Ben Wallace was a disaster; (2) losing Darko if you couldn't keep Wallace was a disaster; and (3) signing Mohammed was a huge mistake because they would have vastly preferred signing Bonzi Wells for the same price which they could now do except for the fact they prematurely signed Nazr.

Yet he doesn't rank them last in the league. How? Who could have had a worse offseason when that is your analysis?

[DJlaysitup]

This article is garbage (IMO)...previous year's moves or how much the media loves to bash BK should have nothing to do with the actual offseason moves the Hawks made.

I almost majored in Journalism in college - thank heavens I didn't. I couldn't co-exist with the current crop of self promoting grandstanders out there today.