The Demise of the Hawks

[TomSelleck]

This is another sermon I've been preaching for years. How many times on this board have I talked about the Hawks one day having to pay the price for having BK run the show when he was clearly over his head? Sure, they improved over time but was THIS the reward we were looking forward to when they were losing 50+ games a year for nearly a decade?

The worst thing is that Sund was apparently too incompetent to know that BK's plan was going nowhere. BK may have acquired all the players, but Sund decided to give them new contracts, and for more money on top of that. Sund is the one who gave Marvin Williams a new $40 million contract, Mike Bibby a new $18 million contract, and Joe Johnson a new $120 million contract. He didn't have to. He could have said this team has already peaked we need to do things differently if we ever want to take it to the next level.

[Wretch]

It might be up for debate, but I was one of the belief that BK failed to secure a decent return value for Reef and Ratliff. It was a straight up dump. To this day, I still don't understand how he got all that praise for basically giving away talent. Disregarding the opinion of whether he could have gotten more, the wiping of a team is neither a good or bad mark for a GM. It's just a starting point. To me, BK started off wrong. It's what brought me to Hawksqawk in '04 from RealGM.

He also was too busy tripping over himself and the chance to build his own team, that he lost sight of what really needed to happen at that point. We should have tanked the season. I don't know what GMs, owners, and coaches talk about or how they do it, but the bottom line is that the season was done at the trade deadline. We were going for the franchise talent...why didn't we try to secure the best pick possible? We had no intentions on keeping the coach or half the players on the team at the time. Why were those meaningless wins SO important? I think anybody with some sense would have dropped the "tank" hammer somewhere.

2005 needn't even be discussed... You don't pass on a franchise PG for anything but a franchise big. Looking back, do any of us really blame Portland for passing on MJ and Durant? Sure it looks dumb in hindsight, but you can't really argue with the draft logic. Talented big men are a rarity. They did the right thing. Sucks for them, but they did what any team would have done. On the flip side of that is us... I don't care what people said about Marvin. I liked him too (or rather, I liked the hype I was fed at least). But I REALLY wanted one of those PGs. Most of us did. The rest of the board wanted Bogut. The obvious choice here, with all of the SGs & SF's we already had, was to trade down and pick up one of the guards in that draft. I heard that BK was trying to do that, and I applauded his effort. But honestly, I think he just used that as an excuse to take another forward and he had no intention of dealing the #2 pick.

2006? Again...you screw up the rebuild, you screw up draft picks...then you gamble on a reach? Trade the damn pick or go for BPA. GM-101. We're talking the most basic GM draft strategy. Once again, BK shows no sort of creativity or insight. It's all 6'-8" or bust.

All of that brings me to a point about BK. One of the things I hated about him...more so than screwing up the draft, was his DAMN ATTITUDE. He was arrogant, bull headed, and self concerned. Billy Knight was only out for himself. He cared nothing about the franchise, the city, or the fans. HE CARED ABOUT HIMSELF AND HIS "PLAN." Despite how teams were built throughout the history of the game, BK was determined to build his vision of a team and start a trend. Problem is, players are not groomed to play multiple positions and some guys just have a knack for one aspect of the game or another. He was completely blinded by his ambition and probably ignored a ton of sound advice.

Until we undo his madness, or significantly rebuild the core of it, we're stuck.

[Diesel]

You are giving BK a pass for every pick except Marvin, which makes no sense. Marvin was considered by most ( even our #1 antagonist Chad Ford ) to have the most potential upside of any player in the top five list of prospects.

Nope, I don't think you read correctly.

I gave him a pass for Childress because we also got smoove and Childress led a 27-2 Stanford team that without him was nothing special.

I don't give passes for Acie nor Shleden. I in fact believe that the Shelden pick was a payback pick.. but who is he to cross Arn Tellem. It's just bad business. Tellem made the JJ trade happen. When our ownership went to pot and there were other teams that wanted Joe, Tellem held the reigns. That gave him a little bit of collateral with us. Blue Chip Stock if you will. Joe delivered so when Tellem says, Roy is going to PTL and I need you guys to take Shelden... what do you think happened?

The Acie pick makes more sense than the Marvin pick but another missed opp. It's a shame we didn't have the forsight to combine the #11, Marvin and Smoove for #2. Durant would look good in a Hawks uni.

[Wretch]

It's a shame we didn't have the forsight to combine the #11, Marvin and Smoove for #2. Durant would look good in a Hawks uni.

It's a shame we didn't deal Marvin when he still had that shroud of "mystery" around him. I've said this before, but I really have to bow my head to you on Marvin. You said something about him a long time ago...A LONG TIME AGO...like a year after the draft maybe? Six months?

I think you called him Tim Thomas. You were talking about how he was all hype and how a decent evaluation couldn't be made on a college bench player (on a loaded squad at that). Long before the Marvin hate started... I'll never forget that post. It was like a chill went down my spine. Part of me was like, "NO....F'N way...." The other part was like, "OMG....what if he's right." There was an eerie echo of truth (I think you condemned us man...lol).

I hoped and prayed you were wrong...but you hit the nail on that sh!t.

JJ

Durant

Horford

...man, that would be nice. Especially if we could still get Bibby/Hinrich later on. Would Seattle have done that deal though...? That's an interesting thought... I believe Marvin is from up there isn't he?

[Dejay]

Yep, it was one of the few things that Diesel and Walter agreed with from the start. But they weren't alone. Ex, AHF, Sothron, Wretch, me, and others I'm forgetting soon joined them. It's one thing to have potential; it's another to have the 'want to' that turns that potential into actual performance. It has become painfully obvious that Marvin doesn't have it.