Grantland: Wait, what?

[ATLSmith]

I like reading the Grantland column on ESPN. It normally has some good insight into sports with some humor thrown in. The jab at Atlanta in the article doesn't bother me because it is in line with the columns usual style.

However, what bothers me is they say Atlanta can't sign both Dwight and Howard outright. They have a footnote explaining they are assuming the teams re-sign all their free agents, but that is misleading. Of course if the Hawks retained all of their free agents they wouldn't be able to both. Heck, that requirement would exclude just about every team in the league from even being able to sign one of them.

Any capologist here want to write this guy a nice email explaining how this is misleading? And I mean nice, not trying to rip him a new one.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9415882/the-2013-nba-free-agency-primer

Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta will pursue both, and though none of the three has anything close to the sort of cap room required to actually sign both stars outright, both the Rockets and Hawks have a combination of cap room and intriguing potential sign-and-trade assets.³ The Texas teams will leverage their appealing cities and the lack of any income tax, while the Hawks will dangle something — their hometown ties to Howard, the promise of playing with at least one other talented player, the fantastic "screeching Hawk" sound effect the in-house public address system plays after some baskets, and, I dunno, strip clubs.

[*]

Those would include already-signed players, such as Omer Asik and Al Horford, and free agents such as Jeff Teague. The Lakers, as stated above, would not be eligible to receive a signed-and-traded player in exchange for Dwight Howard and Dwight Howard's farts.

[Admin]

WTH does Asik have to do with Atlanta? And I dunno I'm pretty sure we can sign Dwight AND Howard ;)

[ATLSmith]

If we are honest with ourselves and believe Dwight and CP3 get a max deal, then this is right.

Hmmm... Okay. I thought it was different but I haven't followed the cap threads that closely.

[Admin]

Hmmm... Okay. I thought it was different but I haven't followed the cap threads that closely.

We can't offer them the FULL max each but we can offer them close to the max each and are the only team who can sign both but they will have to take a little less to play together here.

[HawkItus]

I'm more upset about the knock that we don't match up to Houston or Dallas as cities. Screw you Zach Lowe.

[DJlaysitup]

The live hawk flying around during the games was a big draw...we really screwed ourselves when we stopped doing that Free agents love that sort of thing.

[Guest]

We can sign Dwight and Howard just not sure if we can sign Chris and Paul...and therein lies the problem. ;-)

[ATLSmith]

We can sign Dwight and Howard just not sure if we can sign Chris and Paul...and therein lies the problem. ;-)

Lol. That's what I get for typing in a hurry.

[capstone21]

Maybe he can get a job as the Hawks beat writer for the AJC

[lethalweapon3]

I apologize to my H-town and Big D pals here, but what is so "appealing" about those towns (as "leverage") that is not the same about the ATL? Are their Super Bowl escorts somehow better than our "strip club" fare? (<--- That was a rhetorical question. Don't answer that.)

~lw3

[DrReality]

But we will never sign Dwight Paul or Chris Howard?