Mark Bradley:It's not a good time for limbo

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[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 6/1/03 ]

It's not a good time for limbo

E-mail Mark Bradley

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It's a good time to be between coaches. Alas, the Hawks are between everything. Rudy Tomjanovich and Larry Brown and Paul Silas and Jeff Van Gundy and now even Rick Carlisle are on the prowl, but the Hawks are too unsettled to know which jobs should be filled in what order. It is, sad to say, the story of this franchise's life.

The Hawks never get lucky. They never fall into anything good. Every risk -- the tandem of Moses Malone and Reggie Theus, the trade of Dominique Wilkins for Danny Manning, the Isaiah Rider experiment, the Lon Kruger trial balloon -- goes sour. When they make the playoffs, they go nowhere. When they don't, they whiff in the lottery.

With LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony available, this was a good year to have a pingpong ball in the draft hopper. The Hawks had the eighth-best chance of landing the No. 1 pick and the ascendant James, and they wound up with No. 8, which meant they ended up with nothing. Because the Hawks weren't among the top three, they had to cede the choice to Milwaukee, which shipped Glenn Robinson here last summer and has no cause for regret.

The Hawks have made six lottery picks for themselves, and the list is mostly grim reading: Jon Koncak, Rumeal Robinson, Stacey Augmon, Adam Keefe, Jason Terry, DerMarr Johnson. They traded the No. 3 pick in the 2001 draft (Pau Gasol, the subsequent rookie of the year) for Shareef Abdur-Rahim. They would have held the eighth pick last season -- at No. 8, Amare Stoudemire and Caron Butler were still available -- but they'd sent it to the Clippers in the Lorenzen Wright deal. You'd think that, just once, Dame Fortune would take pity on this team and hand it a windfall the size of Yao Ming, but no. The Braves can dismantle their pitching staff and suffer no consequences in the standings, but the Hawks can't catch a break. Their timing is always lousy, a failing never more pronounced than now.

Tomjanovich has won two NBA championships: He's available. Brown and Van Gundy have been to the Finals: They're available, although Brown is said to be ticketed for Detroit. Silas did well with the Hornets: He's available. Carlisle was the 2002 Coach of the Year and just led Detroit to the best record in the East: Shockingly, he's available. If the Hawks had a stable front office, they'd stand a chance of hiring one of these worthies. But the Hawks are in the process of being sold. David McDavid's purchase of the Hawks and Thrashers is due to close toward the end of the month. The hot available guys figure to be gone by then. The hot available guys will pick and choose. With eight other NBA franchises seeking a coach, would any hot available guy choose a team in full-blown flux?

The Hawks have an interim general manager in Billy Knight. In Terry Stotts, they technically have a head coach, although almost nobody expects him to keep the job. In McDavid, they stand to have an owner whose permanent residence will be 800 miles away. If you're an accomplished coach looking for work and you get to choose between dealing with unknowns and trying to work with a star who hates to practice, wouldn't you opt for Philadelphia and Allen Iverson over Atlanta and a phalanx of X-factors?

All things being equal, this would have been a summer of opportunity. Coaches of such eminence don't become free agents all that often. (This isn't college, where a contract means nothing. NBA teams tend to hold guys to what they've signed.) But the impending transfer of title clouds everything regarding the Hawks. Will McDavid want one man to be coach/general manager, or will he hire two? Or will he, not wanting to raze everything immediately, keep Knight and/or Stotts? When will the sale be final, freeing the Hawks to make moves? And what if the deal should fall through?

Maybe it will all work out. Maybe one of the Name Coaches will decide to wait for McDavid rather than lead the Cavs or the Raptors or the Clippers. Maybe the change of ownership will bring the Hawks a change of luck. Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it. Dame Fortune hates this team."

Couldn't have said it any better.