Missed opportunities... How to aquire talent.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Right now, we're on the cap flexibility campaign. Fans have become desperately Bored because "we have never had this much cap flexibility and we want to see our team get somebody."

My contention is that while DFerry knows a lot about basketball, he doesn't know a lot about getting talent in Atlanta. Neither did Sund. BKnight knew what it would take but he just couldn't do it right. So let's discuss...

First. the main ways to acquire talent.

1. Free Agency

2. Trade.

3. Draft

4. Build your own. (player development).

Sund was just a caretaker. His whole program was to take care of what BK built.

Ferry is a visionary but understand, Ferry has never worked for a pro team that didn't have one of the best players in the history of the game playing for it. I mean, he's had Lebron and Duncan. As we're seeing right now, Lebron says come here and people come. Lebron says draft him and he's drafted. Somebody ask if you want to play with Duncan and the answer is heck yes.

That's different than what we have in Atlanta. Ferry is trying to get that superstar via FAcy. That usually doesn't work unless you overpay. He scoffed at tanking to the draft and with his recent trade of Bebe, we don't know about building your own.

It's instructive to look at the BK years... BK understood the market...

He overpaid for star talent (Joe Johnson)

He tanked for the draft.

BK's problem was that he was so caught up in his mantra that he couldn't make the right picks.

This leads to missed opportunities of the past..

NOT MISSED DRAFT PICKS.. we have talked about those ad nosiem.

But...Missed trades between BK, Sund, and Ferry...

1. Marvin Williams. BK's biggest Bust. Instead of waiting 7 years for some magic to happen, we should have traded him for something when he had value.

2. Josh Smith. Right about the turn of his second contract, we should have traded Smoove. I know that the ASG wanted him to be the face of the team but his value was high and his game was depleting. Actually, I would have like to see what this team could have been with Joe on it and Smoove traded for value. It's a shame that we just let Smoove fall by the wayside and got no value for him.

3. Joe Johnson. Yet again. 6 time allstar traded for a box of doughnuts. Next year is the year. IF Brooklyn doesn't go on a losing streak, then we've lost on that deal too.

4. The Crawford. I don't know if this was necessary. I felt that we kept Marvin over Crawford because Marvin was younger.

So here begins our poll of sorts...

What's the biggest missed opportunity that these Hawks have missed over the last 10 years??

Either FAcy, trade, draft, or player development.

I will say...

Not resigning Crawford and looking for a deal for Marvin.

1) Passing on Paul & Deron to draft Marvin.

That's easily the biggest one and will be one of the top misses in franchise history. While we may not have ever acquired Al Horford, a guy like Paul could've made JJ and Josh even better players. Even adding Deron would've given us a young and very good backcourt.

2) Not going after and signing Al Jefferson.

With the opportunity to finally get a big, talented center to play alongside Al Horford, this should've been a no brainer. Instead, we let one of the best centers in the game go to a division foe, and saw that team immediately vault over us in the standings. If Charlotte, led by Jefferson, vaults into the top 4 and wins the Southeast Division, fans have to chalk that up as a MAJOR MISS.

3) The Hawks not "going for it" just one time, by adding an MLE level talent and paying the Luxury Tax.

When you're a top 3 team in your conference, you have to at least shoot for a ring at least one time. The Hawks didn't do it. When you pay Joe Johnson all that money, and you don't add anybody else to help him, you get what you get. Probably could've used another quality big body or a small forward to bolster our bench. But we choose to roll with the minimum vet contracts of Hilton Armstrong and Josh Powell. Plus we started the season with Mo Evans on the team. Even a mid season trade for the "great" Kirk Hinrich wasn't enough.

Those are my top 3.

Edited July 24, 2014 by TheNorthCydeRises

[turnermx]

1) Passing on Paul & Deron to draft Marvin.

That's easily the biggest one and will be one of the top misses in franchise history. While we may not have ever acquired Al Horford, a guy like Paul could've made JJ and Josh even better players. Even adding Deron would've given us a young and very good backcourt.

2) Not going after and signing Al Jefferson.

With the opportunity to finally get a big, talented center to play alongside Al Horford, this should've been a no brainer. Instead, we let one of the best centers in the game go to a division foe, and saw that team immediately vault over us in the standings. If Charlotte, led by Jefferson, vaults into the top 4 and wins the Southeast Division, fans have to chalk that up as a MAJOR MISS.

3) The Hawks not "going for it" just one time, by adding an MLE level talent and paying the Luxury Tax.

When you're a top 3 team in your conference, you have to at least shoot for a ring at least one time. The Hawks didn't do it. When you pay Joe Johnson all that money, and you don't add anybody else to help him, you get what you get. Probably could've used another quality big body or a small forward to bolster our bench. But we choose to roll with the minimum vet contracts of Hilton Armstrong and Josh Powell. Plus we started the season with Mo Evans on the team. Even a mid season trade for the "great" Kirk Hinrich wasn't enough.

Those are my top 3.

For 1) Marvin never developed in an "offense" that featured JJ Iso Ball. Woody was an inept offensive coach that made a player like Diaw his SG! His offense was give the ball to JJ let him go to work and everybody else stand around. No movement of the ball or players cutting.And Marv was a 3 and D specialist by design early in his career. He is no Chris Paul or Williams, but those guys for whatever reason have never gone past the 2nd round themselves. They got just as far as Marv did.

For 2) al jefferson failed to take the Bobkitties past the first round. A black hole on offense that has to be masked defensively. He wouldnt be the difference for us because he doesnt have the all around game Sap or Horf have.

3)adding MLE talent to the JJ team wouldnt have helped offensively, the system relied too much on JJ and the scheme made most players look bad because it wasnt designed to involve every player on offense

Edited July 24, 2014 by turnermx

[Wretch]

For 1) Marvin never developed in an "offense" that featured JJ Iso Ball. Woody was an inept offensive coach that made a player like Diaw his SG! His offense was give the ball to JJ let him go to work and everybody else stand around. No movement of the ball or players cutting.And Marv was a 3 and D specialist by design early in his career. He is no Chris Paul or Williams, but those guys for whatever reason have never gone past the 2nd round themselves. They got just as far as Marv did.

 

There is a lot of truth in what you're saying here.  Some if it, I argued people to death back in the day.  But, let me say this first though.  The misstep of drafting Marvin over Paul/Deron is not debate worthy.  People questioned that decision even as it was being made and confused almost everybody.  

 

Judging them on how far their teams went in the post season is a little short sighted and a very slanted way to try and make a case.  You're talking team makeup, coaching, chemistry that have far more to do with their TEAM'S success than what they provided individually.  To be fair, you have to contrast what their presence would have meant to the Hawks vs. Marvin.

 

Pairing one of those PG's with all those guys who could run the floor and fly plus the nightmare of a big shooting guard that can hit from anywhere on the court - it's an infinitely more desirable scenario than crowding our wing with another damn forward.  I mean...there's just no way in any universe, with any number of variables, in which you can rationally argue against that.  Not to mention that you also have the option of packaging a Deron/Paul vs. packaging Marvin.  There's just so many ways that drafting Chris Paul or Deron would have been a much better decision for us.

 

I do agree 1000% though that we were doomed with whatever we chose because of Mike Woodson.  I believe he, and his ISO "no offense" nonsense, was largely responsible for the lack of development in Marvin & Smoove.  In Marvin's case, a guy who already had a tendency to defer and disappear was only going to become more insignificant in a playground offense where whoever wanted to shoot COULD shoot.  Which also, as we all very well know by now, was "Bad" Josh's dream come true.

[Diesel]

I don't know how people can overlook the fact that while a team like Chicago could not sign Carmelo...he DID actually go there and meet with them.  Players like that won't even talk to us.

 

 

 

There is some serious homerism going on for people not to see the difference here.  We have to get better to attract better.  I'm not saying we won't get better, but if we're not rebuilding, then we are leaning on trades and free agency.  For this franchise, that's taking a very high risk route to improving that, if we're being honest, doesn't look promising.

 

Personally, I wonder how long before the buzz wears off.  When will people sour on this regime?  What are people's expectations for making the ECF's?  Or are we just gonna keep singing "Rome wasn't built in a day" for the next 10 years...as we continue to piddle around in the middle?

 

The "future"  Ferry's building can't get here soon enough for me...

 

This is what was so wrong with the BK approach.

 

BK succeeded in getting one guy with superstarlike talent to come to Atlanta.  However, he got hung up on Marvin Williams during the 2004 draft.  ASG got Hung up on Josh Smith during his career.   BK set out to prove that Williams wasn't a mistake.   We missed opportunities to take advantage of their value and trade them.

We could have added another star with Joe.  Joe Begged for help while he was here. He wasn't saying give me temporary help, he was saying give me some allstar talent.

Enter Bibby.  He finally answered our longtime need for a PG.  He did good for a minute but we let him get old on us.  Enter Jamal Crawford.   We took him because he was fading.   He turned out to be a very good pickup.  But when it was time to reup him, we resigned Marvin instead.  Then we were forced to give Joe "the contract".   Some think that Joe couldn't draw players...  He took Deron from his hometown of Dallas to play for the Brooklyn team.  He made KG and Paul Pierce (mortal enemies) happy to be his teammates.

 

The problem is that sometimes, we make mistakes and because of our egos we don't want to do what's right to correct them.

 

Enter Ferry.  Like BK with Al Harrington or Jamal Crawford, Ferry has gotten a hold of a good FA for cheap...  The question is what will we do?

[TheNorthCydeRises]

For 1) Marvin never developed in an "offense" that featured JJ Iso Ball. Woody was an inept offensive coach that made a player like Diaw his SG! His offense was give the ball to JJ let him go to work and everybody else stand around. No movement of the ball or players cutting.And Marv was a 3 and D specialist by design early in his career. He is no Chris Paul or Williams, but those guys for whatever reason have never gone past the 2nd round themselves. They got just as far as Marv did.

For 2) al jefferson failed to take the Bobkitties past the first round. A black hole on offense that has to be masked defensively. He wouldnt be the difference for us because he doesnt have the all around game Sap or Horf have.

3)adding MLE talent to the JJ team wouldnt have helped offensively, the system relied too much on JJ and the scheme made most players look bad because it wasnt designed to involve every player on offense

1) Nothing stopped Marvin from developing his game on his own. I'm not a Marvin basher. But I accepted what Marvin was a long time ago. The facts are that the "scouts" touted Marvin to be "James Worthy with a jumpshot", when in fact Marvin had no outstanding skills whatsoever. He was solid all-around, but didn't have an outstanding strength to his game. And he wasn't even the go to guy in college. Scouts simply jumped the gun on Marvin's potential.

Marvin is essentially a non clutch shooting version of Robert Horry.

2) The Bobkitties were a 21 win team before Jefferson got there. They increased their win total by 22 games last year, the 3rd biggest win increase in the league. To dismiss what that team did as nothing, is simply being a hater.

A Jefferson - Horford frontline would've been a blessing to the Hawks. It would've enabled the Hawks to play a wide variety of ways on offense and defense. Most of all, you'd preserve Horford a little, when we faced bigger centers.

The problem with adding Millsap over Jefferson, is that Millsap gives you more of what this team already has .... a PF. What we don't have, is adequate depth at center. With Jefferson at center, Horford could play both PF and C, enabling him to really expand his game.

3) Adding an MLE talent wouldn't help that Hawks team offensively, but people are now talking about Kent Bazemore being a 6th man type of scorer for this year's team?

Hmmmmm. Let's see. We got Lou Williams for the MLE. And we used a 5 million dollar trade exception to get Korver, which is essentially an MLE type of payment.

How dangerous would a JJ - Jamal - Korver outside shooting trio would have been? As much as people complained about JJ, he was NOT a ball hog. He was a very willing passer. He couldn't have averaged 5 assists in his career as a Hawk, if he weren't willing to pass.

And here's something that people can never take away from Woody. The record of the Hawks improved in each of the 6 years that he was the coach. He just couldn't get us past the 2nd round. Trust and believe though .. we could've had far worse coaches here than Woody. At least Woody played to the strengths of the team, even if he was reluctant to make adjustments.

Edited July 25, 2014 by TheNorthCydeRises