Rick Sund on Josh Smith "I’m going to have his exit interview sometime this week."

[Joker]

http://blogs.ajc.com/hawks/2012/05/31/atlanta-hawks-rick-sund-q-and-a/?cxntfid=blogs_hawks

[AHF]

Two interesting notes. Cunningham goes right at Josh's offensive inefficiency and Sund puts that squarely on Larry Drew. I hope that means he is going to tell Drew that this will be addressed schematically this season assuming we end up keeping Smith.

I thought this was an encouraging quote as far as recognizing we can't meet our goals simply by resigning everyone and going at it again. Sund doesn't use the injuries as an excuse for not doing something.

MC: When you evaluate the team, are you able to separate out the effects of all the injuries from where you need to get better?

Sund: Two-and-a-half weeks after the season, you are a little bit more pragmatic. The emotions are out of the focus. When you look at it and you have to say, the last four years this team in the Eastern Conference has had the third-or fourth-best record either by the end of the regular season or by getting through the first round and getting to the second round. We’ve had the third- or fourth-best record in the last four years. Our goal is to get into those top two [in the East], because that’s when you have a legitimate shot to get to the finals. That’s that championship level. That’s the NBA’s version of the Final Four. You want to be one of those top two teams playing at the end of May and into June because you’ve got a legitimate shot to win a championship. We’ve fallen short of that. That’s our goal. Having said that, we have to look at our club and say where are the areas we can improve, what can we do without taking a step back. So we will have to explore all opportunities.

That said, I expect that an ASG owned team will do very little in the way of significant trades and will simply bring everyone back along with a few new minimum guys and our draft pick.

[coachx]

Sund never mentioned Josh Smith until he was prodded.He spoke of the injury to Horford.When asked about the offense he mentioned Teague, JJ, Marvin..........but no mention of our 2nd leading scorer.Then he was asked about offensive efficiency.......he only mention JJ in the 4th quarter with no mention of Smith.He never even mentioned Josh Smith until MC specifically asked about him. You can tell Sund was very guarded when he was finally prodded to talk about Josh Smith.......a player he tried to trade on draft night 2011. He even cut MC off before he could finish the question concerning Smith's declining offensive efficiency and # shots from the perimeter. He then blamed it on Coach Larry in an attempt to shield the diva from any personal accountability that would only piss him off more.Thats just my take.......and that is what I expect out of GM.

Edited May 31, 2012 by coachx

[hawkman]

Your 'take' sounds a little biased. Sund hardly answered any of the questions asked him.

[Joker]

Two interesting notes. Cunningham goes right at Josh's offensive inefficiency and Sund puts that squarely on Larry Drew. I hope that means he is going to tell Drew that this will be addressed schematically this season assuming we end up keeping Smith.

I thought this was an encouraging quote as far as recognizing we can't meet our goals simply by resigning everyone and going at it again. Sund doesn't use the injuries as an excuse for not doing something.

That said, I expect that an ASG owned team will do very little in the way of significant trades and will simply bring everyone back along with a few new minimum guys and our draft pick.

Nothing wrong with what he said.

[Buzzard]

Defending in certain areas [like] field-goal percentage. In all of that, we really improved.

I don't see where Sund gets this. We are 20th in FG% allowed by our opponent at .444 and 11th in team FG% at .454.If we improved to 20, that is not something I would barg about and call significant. Edited May 31, 2012 by Buzzard

[GameTime]

Sund isn't doing anything. Calm down y'all.

[lethalweapon3]

Why is a general manager talking to a player's parent in the offseason, and if so, why is whatever the parent saying relevant enough to be shared in a public conversation about the player's status?~lw3

[APE]

Yay! Our goal has gone from making it to the second round to making it to the conference finals!

[NekiEcko]

Yay! Our goal has gone from making it to the second round to making it to the conference finals!

Finally after 7 years ofcourse

Why is a general manager talking to a player's parent in the offseason, and if so, why is whatever the parent saying relevant enough to be shared in a public conversation about the player's status?

Now that is the mystery for me, why does he even had to go though the parents? Now that is the mystery for me and its all wrong.

[KB21]

Rather than reading it, I am interested in actually hearing Sund comment about offensive efficiency when he comments about Joe's offensive efficiency in the 4th quarter and in crunch time situations, where he mentions that he knows MC is a stats guy. I'd love to hear if Sund just kind of laughs that off, or if he actually keeps up with it. Sund was in Seattle when they started dabbling with advanced stats when they hired Dean Oliver as a consultant.

[KB21]

Here is an interesting comment by Dean Oliver about Rick Sund. It is dated, but it gives you an idea about what Rick feels is a legitimate accomplishment.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/26699/with-melo-gone-good-times-in-denver

One of the earliest lessons I got when I began working with an NBA front office came from Rick Sund, then the general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics. Sund told me that winning 50 games is a huge accomplishment in the NBA, and that it is a threshold that would normally ensure we could keep our jobs. While that’s not true in every case, it generally is.

This year, the Hawks won 40 games in a shortened season. Their winning percentage is the equivalent of a 50 win season. Overall, the Hawks have averaged about 48 wins a season in Sund's tenure. Based on this comment, I would think that Sund would be on board with retaining Drew for another year because winning 60% of your games is an accomplishment. With that said, you can certainly make a case that after a 53 win season in 2009-2010, he would have been on board with retaining Mike Woodson. My guess is, ownership had their minds made up that they wanted to make a change but not a drastic one. This makes me think that there is some truth to the premise that Larry Drew lobbied for the job while sitting next to Mike on the bench.