Woody wanted CP3 & Roy...

[Admin]

The 5th pick was too high for Rondo. BK tried to get Rondo but for whatever reason we couldn't pull it off. He also tried to get Marcus Williams as well.

The principle behind drafting Shelden was solid, but for the Hawks to have shut down workouts at least a week prior to the draft was not good business. They should have had Shelden in working out several times to make sure he was the right pick. I think they could have seen his limitations had they done that.

My biggest problem is that the pick was extremely hypocritical of BK and his best player available belief and if he had used that then Rudy Gay would have been the pick and sure he would have gotten raked over the coals for it but at least we would have a pretty special player on our roster that would have replaced Marvin by now, just as Al replaced Shelden.

[Packfill]

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Everyone likes to talk about Brandon Roy, but the guy the Hawks probably missed out on the most with that pick - the guy who would have probably had the biggest impact on this team - was Rajon Rondo. However, most of the fans on this site would have crapped in their pants had the Hawks taken him that high. Rondo is an up tempo point guard who can flat out play defense, and that's what the Hawks needed at the point guard position.

Wasn't the pick used to select Rondo one of the ones that the Hawks sent to the Suns to get JJ, which they subsequently sent to the Celtics?

[AHF]

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The 5th pick was too high for Rondo.

I agree you should trade down if you want Rondo but how can you say today that the 5th pick was too high for Rondo if the team couldn't move.

[Admin]

Because Rondo isn't worth (or at least wasn't worth) that high of a salary and he wasn't and still isn't as good as Roy or Gay. If you are going to claim the best player available defense when taking Marvin then you have to do it with Roy or Gay as well and take one of them. I understood the Shelden pick and I had high hopes for him but it was hypocritical of BK.

[coachx]

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Image what a team we would have if we draft both CP3 and Roy. Our Starting 5 would be:

Chris Paul

Brandon Roy

Joe Johnson

Josh SMith

Hortford

WOW..best starting 5 in the league!-makes me wanna cry a lil bit lol o well..we still have a bright future

Quite dreaming.

Had we gotten Paul this lineup:

Paul

JJ

Chillz / Smith

Harrington

ZaZa

The above line up would have won enough games to tke us out of the running for Roy. Chillz may have started due to maturity ahead of Smith early on.

Then the next year we would have been out of the running for Horford. We sould have won more games with Paul.

Don't hurt yourself thinking of Payl, Roy, and Horford all on the same Hawks team. Had we gotten Paul we would have been drafting much later.

[FrankWhite]

Plus, it's unclear that we would have gone after Joe Johnson if we had drafted Paul. Remember, Joe was brought in here under the auspices that he could play point.

No matter how much people here like to play the revisionist history game (and really, why does this happen every time there's a downtime here?), the facts remain: A. Mike Woodson is not Byron Scott; Scott preaches an up and down the court offensive philosophy, he played with the Showtime Lakers and coached Jason Kidd in his prime. He deserves at least some of the credit for Paul's success, and Mike Woodson is simply not the same type of coach, and the same thing goes regarding Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan. B. We didn't have and we probably still wouldn't have a player like David West to compliment Paul. Yeah, Smith would excel in transition, but he does not have the prototypical power forward game that West has. C. We don't have a shooter like Peja or a center like Chandler.

Could we have acquired all of those things in the 3 seasons that followed the 2005 draft? Sure, but it's not nearly likely, especially given our ownership situation. At best we would have drafted Paul (or Deron) and teamed him with Joe in the backcourt, with Smith and Harrington at the forward spots and Childress off the bench. We would have probably picked Shelden later in the lottery the next year, so that's a wash, and we wouldn't have had a draft pick last year. We would have a fun and exciting team with little depth and no post presence and not much shooting ability. Yeah, we would be a solid playoff team in the East, but all these thoughts that we'd on the same track as New Orleans or Utah seem far-fetched to me.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

You don't know that... Woody won't give Paul the minutes he need to lead the team to many wins.

[Admin]

Nope because he never plays young guys. That's why Smoove, Marvin, Horford, Childress, etc. haven't gotten to play any real minutes yet. You Woody bashers absolutely kill me with your blind hatred.

[skyhawk]

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Image what a team we would have if we draft both CP3 and Roy. Our Starting 5 would be:

Chris Paul

Brandon Roy

Joe Johnson

Josh SMith

Hortford

WOW..best starting 5 in the league!-makes me wanna cry a lil bit lol o well..we still have a bright future

Our record would have been much better with Paul so cross Horford and Roy off this list as we wouldn't have been in position to select either player. So, the only players on your list that would definitely be here:

Paul

JJ

Smoove

Childress

That's not a bad team either...

[AHF]

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Image what a team we would have if we draft both CP3 and Roy. Our Starting 5 would be:

Chris Paul

Brandon Roy

Joe Johnson

Josh SMith

Hortford

WOW..best starting 5 in the league!-makes me wanna cry a lil bit lol o well..we still have a bright future

Our record would have been much better with Paul so cross Horford and Roy off this list as we wouldn't have been in position to select either player. So, the only players on your list that would definitely be here:

Paul

JJ

Smoove

Childress

That's not a bad team either...

Agreed. Woody would definitely have played Paul and we would have won a lot more games the past few seasons with him. Who knows how the roster would have shaken out, though. We might even have gone after someone like Tyson Chandler knowing that our picks were not going to be high ones and that we had $$ to spend (see combined salaries of Claxton, Shelden and Lo Wright).

[GST]

Dolfan:

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I find it incredibly odd that a guy who is extremely thorough would give a guy a promise and not even look at anyone else the way that he did.

Yes, I thought the same thing.

AnakinJoe:

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One thing that we have read is BK puts a lot of value on drafting healthy guys.

Yep.

Yet BK signs Speedy with his well documented injury history.

BK: Fire Woody. Nope.

BK: Trade Chillz for Calderon. Nope.

It sure looks like BK is being over ruled as to how the team is built. This is one reason I am less critical of BK than I am of Woody.

[leftwich]

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Yeah, I think it's entirely possible if he wanted Woody gone as bad as it seems and who knows when that started. It may not have been entirely (or even mostly) to screw Woody it could have been a big FU to the media who always dogged him about drafting SFs. I find it incredibly odd that a guy who is extremely thorough would give a guy a promise and not even look at anyone else the way that he did. It's not like we were talking about Lebron or something with the pick. It was a very questionable guy who most felt was a reach. You don't find that odd? WOW!

There's absolutely no way a GM risks his own job to screw over the coach or to say FU to the media.

[Admin]

So what is your explanation for the one and only time that BK has not been obsessively thorough about drafting, signing, or trading for a player?

[FrankWhite]

He screwed up? Even Joe Dumars, who I think we can agree is one of the best GMs in the game, has screwed up horribly in the draft.

[mattlanta]

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Image what a team we would have if we draft both CP3 and Roy. Our Starting 5 would be:

Chris Paul

Brandon Roy

Joe Johnson

Josh SMith

Hortford

WOW..best starting 5 in the league!-makes me wanna cry a lil bit lol o well..we still have a bright future

Kind of unrealistic, and it's hard to tell. Since Chris Paul + JJ alone would of made us a decent enough team to not be able to get Horford with such a high pick. I hate it when people say that though... I mean... do you guys even think about what you're saying before you post?

[Admin]

Yes Dumars screwed up and drafted a bad player but that's not what I am talking about. I'm talking about the fact that he didn't work out anyone else over the final what was it a week or so before the draft and supposedly promised to pick Shelden at 5. That's NOT the style of BK. Never was before, hasn't been since. He is one of the most thorough GMs in the league and for him to do what he did with the Shelden pick is very odd no matter how it's spun.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

26-27 mins/game isn't going to give Paul enough command of the team... That's about 9 less minutes that Byron Scott gave CP in his rookie season.

[Admin]

Horford averaged 31.5 minutes in the regular season and almost 40 in the playoffs so I'm not sure where you get that Woody wouldn't have given Paul plenty of minutes.

[DeacKillsaDevil]

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Image what a team we would have if we draft both CP3 and Roy. Our Starting 5 would be:

Chris Paul

Brandon Roy

Joe Johnson

Josh SMith

Hortford

WOW..best starting 5 in the league!-makes me wanna cry a lil bit lol o well..we still have a bright future

I seriously doubt we would have been in the same draft positions if we had drafted CP3 instead of Marvin so it's hard to say that that is the line up we would have today.

[FrankWhite]

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Horford averaged 31.5 minutes in the regular season and almost 40 in the playoffs so I'm not sure where you get that Woody wouldn't have given Paul plenty of minutes.

It's not unrealistic to think Woody might be quicker to pull a young point guard from games than he would be with a big. He did apprentice under Larry Brown, after all, and his utilization of Acie at times this year was baffling.

It's all just supposition, but I think it's reasonable to say Paul fell into the best possible situation for him and there's no guarantee he would have flourished like he has under Woodson.