Zach Lowe was not a fan of the Hawks summer moves

[Guest]

So this, IMEO, did not rise to the level of needing a new thread.  Figured it aligned well with this BS-merchant's prior anti-Hawks moovs nonsense.

So after poo-pooing the moovs this summer, BSPN egg, Zack Lowe now says we talked about trading Howard to NO.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18496598/zach-lowe-anthony-davis-jrue-holiday-new-orleans-pelicans-nba

Quote

But they haven't committed to staying small, and sticking Davis at center. They worry about the physical toll it would take, and fretted after Davis picked up two quick fouls jostling with Dwight Howard two weeks ago. In the days that followed, Atlanta and New Orleans had exploratory talks about possible Howard trades before the Hawks pulled everyone off the market, according to several league sources.

It is unclear how interested New Orleans was, and there was not unanimous support within the team for acquiring Howard.

What in the actual fack does that paragraph mean.  "Held exploratory talks"?  Perchance one of our interns said to a 'Cans intern, "Aye man, y'all wanna trade us Davis for Howard?  Ha, yeah dat woulda been crazy, riiiite?"

Technically, that qualifies as "exploratory talks", right?

"Unclear how interested New Orleans was"?  Dafuq?  What in the actual feck, other than Davis, would the 'Cans have that we want/need?  Howard for Asik?  R U fkng kidding me with this crap?

Now all the national eggsperts are gonna follow this shat up with all the, "See Hawks are still blowin' it up, per Zack Lowe's article -er - my sources." and "Why did the sign Howard jus' to trade him?  Because, of course, Zack Lowe's sources are right."

It's an endless cycle all borne of this bullcrap article.

Heaven-forbid they start questioning Howard and basically shaking his confidence w.r.t. his role with the Hawks.  This is so maddening and it's all based on this BS "journalist" basically following up his own bullsh*t article from this summer with more bullsh*t and no one calls these idiots on any of it!!!!

Awright calm down, kg0Trump

[Plainview1981]

It sounds like the Hawks were close to a full blown rebuild to me.

[Guest]

32 minutes ago, Hotlanta1981 said:

It sounds like the Hawks were close to a full blown rebuild to me.

OMFG, no it doesn't.   It sounds like there's a bunch of lying a**, fact-bending eggsperts out there with high profile jobs.

[BigDog90]

1 hour ago, Hotlanta1981 said:

It sounds like the Hawks were close to a full blown rebuild to me.

They should have did it.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, BigDog90 said:

They should have did it.

And  take back middling players and  picks? 

Unless the Hawks were getting what they NEEDED in a trade, that makes no sense. @BigDog90 For a rebuild you need actually building blocks.

Would you be ok getting Patterson, Ross, Poetl and/or Toronto's late 1st for Millsap? What about  that says 'rebuild'

Example: At the trade deadline last season - the reported Philly offer for Teague  was Ish Smith(UFA) , Staukus (bust)  and pick #24 or #26,  is that better than the #12  we eventually got for Teague.

 

[BigDog90]

13 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

And  take back middling players and  picks? 

Unless the Hawks were getting what they NEEDED in a trade, that makes no sense. @BigDog90 For a rebuild you need actually building blocks.

Would you be ok getting Patterson, Ross, Poetl and/or Toronto's late 1st for Millsap? What about  that says 'rebuild'

Example: At the trade deadline last season - the reported Philly offer for Teague  was Ish Smith(UFA) , Staukus (bust)  and pick #24 or #26,  is that better than the #12  we eventually got for Teague.

 

I wouldn't expect a great return. NO didn't get a great return for CP3 but it put them in position to be worse to get AD that year rather than keeping CP3 until his deal was up and having a worse pick like ATL's that year to get Jenkins.

Nobody is going to give up a great pick for Millsap but keeping him definitely cost ATL a top 7 pick in this year's great draft. Watch Millsap leave for nothing and ATL have a non lottery pick after a 1st/2nd rd exit.

Edited January 19, 2017 by BigDog90

[AHF]

10 minutes ago, BigDog90 said:

I wouldn't expect a great return. NO didn't get a great return for CP3 but it put them in position to be worse to get AD that year rather than keeping CP3 until his deal was up and having a worse pick like ATL's that year to get Jenkins.

Nobody is going to give up a great pick for Millsap but keeping him definitely cost ATL a top 7 pick in this year's great draft. Watch Millsap leave for nothing and ATL have a non lottery pick after a 1st/2nd rd exit.

The key with that is timing.  You deal during the offseason and are ready to be in the high lottery.  You deal at this point in the year and there is no AD type payoff because the team has already won too many games.  At this point, you need a solid return or you just finis your play.  Kind of pot committed right now.

[Bankingitbig]

9 minutes ago, AHF said:

The key with that is timing.  You deal during the offseason and are ready to be in the high lottery.  You deal at this point in the year and there is no AD type payoff because the team has already won too many games.  At this point, you need a solid return or you just finis your play.  Kind of pot committed right now.

Sorry, but we need a new front office... Wes Wilcox is in over his head and Bud should be focused on coaching. No one knows who has the final decision and they don't even know what the future plan. They just "wing it" every year without any true strategy. This past offseason was truly evident of that and now this regular season is evidence of it as well in regards to the whole "rebuild" fiasco.

[Thomas]

Believe their plan in the offseason was to improve rebounding and rim protection first and foremost. Think that was a legitimate strategy. 

[Thomas]

12 minutes ago, Bankingitbig said:

Bud should be focused on coaching

Will say that I agree and think everyone agrees on Bud just being the coach because even though he is a good one we are still complaining about the same things we were a couple of years ago. Rotations, late game decisions and plays after timeouts so he has his hands full improving on just that alone. 

[Bankingitbig]

9 minutes ago, Thomas said:

Believe their plan in the offseason was to improve rebounding and rim protection first and foremost. Think that was a legitimate strategy. 

Agreed, but they obviously didn't know what they were doing in regards to Horford and Millsap. They were being fickle on how much/how many years to offer Horford and he got annoyed with it and left. They should have had their minds made on if they were going to keep Horford or not well before the offseason and what they were going to do with Millsap.

Edited January 19, 2017 by Bankingitbig

[Sothron]

Howard is not going anywhere. It would be a PR disaster for the next decade for any future free agents if we brought back a home town hero as a free agent and traded him within his first year while he's playing at an All Star level.

[ATLSmith]

17 minutes ago, Thomas said:

Believe their plan in the offseason was to improve rebounding and rim protection first and foremost. Think that was a legitimate strategy. 

Yup.  Our defense is good as well. Need a couple pieces to improve our offense.

I wouldn't expect the Hawks to do much before the trade deadline but the draft and free agency are going to be very interesting.

[macdaddy]

We need more talent.   It's pretty simple.   If everyone shows up and plays their butt off then we look pretty good but when that doesn't happen or when the other team has their stuff together we can get exposed.   By this point of the season i wanted the starters to be Dennis/Tim/Prince/Sap/Howard.   That's the best talent.     With Delaney/Baze/Thabo/Scott/Hump off the bench.  But we haven't really invested in getting Prince to that point.   Scott has looked really bad so far too.  

[kurupt]

vor 1 Stunde, Bankingitbig sagte:

Agreed, but they obviously didn't know what they were doing in regards to Horford and Millsap. They were being fickle on how much/how many years to offer Horford and he got annoyed with it and left. They should have had their minds made on if they were going to keep Horford or not well before the offseason and what they were going to do with Millsap.

This has been proven to not be true. Horford could easily be playing on this team right now and the Hawks woulkd be a juggernaut. He did not want to, that was his choice.

The plan for this off-season was actually excellent. No one could have anticipated Horford leaving a situation he always wanted (playing alongside a true center and a true contender) and Bazemore and Korver (as a starter) falling off of a f***ing cliff.

[Bankingitbig]

2 minutes ago, kurupt said:

This has been proven to not be true. Horford could easily be playing on this team right now and the Hawks woulkd be a juggernaut. He did not want to, that was his choice.

The plan for this off-season was actually excellent. No one could have anticipated Horford leaving a situation he always wanted (playing alongside a true center and a true contender) and Bazemore and Korver (as a starter) falling off of a f***ing cliff.

Ummm no nothing has been proven. In fact everything that has been reported states the opposite.. We lowballed Horford thinking he would take it and probably didn't offer the fifth year initially (as all reports indicated). This pissed him off and he probably didn't feel valued. Then we were scrambling trying to get him to stay and offered him more.. Kevin Arnovitz reported that "we were at his house" and he was close to signing then, but ultimately decided against it. Meanwhile, for whatever reason we went ahead and signed Baze and Howard. Based on Horford's petty reaction of quickly promoting green and based on his sister (who I despise) stating over and over that "there is more to it than we know". This leads me to believe that he truly was intending on staying in Atlanta, but the front office did a HORRIBLE job in executing and weren't well prepared.

Now, I have no idea if Dwight played into Horford's decision at all. But if it did, then it baffles me how a front office wouldn't talk to a key free agent that they want to resign about the direction of the team to make sure all parties are in agreement.

[Guest]

There is absolutely nothing out there that suggests anyone here did a "horrible" job on the Horford deal.  Even if you think there is, there's just as much out there that suggests he made up his mind before the season was even over.

For you to come to the conclusion that anyone on our side dropped the ball suggests you had a finger on the scale when you weighed out all the unconfirmed reports around what did/didn't happen.

[macdaddy]

11 minutes ago, Bankingitbig said:

Ummm no nothing has been proven. In fact everything that has been reported states the opposite.. We lowballed Horford thinking he would take it and probably didn't offer the fifth year initially (as all reports indicated). This pissed him off and he probably didn't feel valued. Then we were scrambling trying to get him to stay and offered him more.. Kevin Arnovitz reported that "we were at his house" and he was close to signing then, but ultimately decided against it. Meanwhile, for whatever reason we went ahead and signed Baze and Howard. Based on Horford's petty reaction of quickly promoting green and based on his sister (who I despise) stating over and over that "there is more to it than we know". This leads me to believe that he truly was intending on staying in Atlanta, but the front office did a HORRIBLE job in executing and weren't well prepared.

Now, I have no idea if Dwight played into Horford's decision at all. But if it did, then it baffles me how a front office wouldn't talk to a key free agent that they want to resign about the direction of the team to make sure all parties are in agreement.

I'm not sure what 'based on Horford's petty reaction' is referring to.   Are you saying we signed Baze and Howard based on that?   They were already signed.   I think we signed Howard, went to Horford to offer him a deal to play with Sap and Howard.  He said 'not enough money' even though he wanted to leave anyway.   We went back and said here's more money but we're trading Sap and he said 'i'm going to the C's'.   

[Guest]

1 hour ago, macdaddy said:

We need more talent. 

Quite simple really.

[Bankingitbig]

8 minutes ago, kg01 said:

There is absolutely nothing out there that suggests anyone here did a "horrible" job on the Horford deal.  Even if you think there is, there's just as much out there that suggests he made up his mind before the season was even over.

For you to come to the conclusion that anyone on our side dropped the ball suggests you had a finger on the scale when you weighed out all the unconfirmed reports around what did/didn't happen.

I think going into the offseason with a plan of signing Horford, who you can pay the most out of any team and who you can offer more years than anyone else, and failing on that plan when Horford never gave any indication that he wouldn't resign, can be classified as "horrible" execution. I think going from a 60 win team only two seasons ago and replacing 4 out of 5 starters with Prince and a 2019 1-10 protect first round pick can be classified as horrible management. Now, I understand they were somewhat unlucky (having to choose between Carroll and Millsap), but eventually they have to take some responsibility.

In regards to the "finger on the scale", I actually wasn't a big supporter of signing Horford to a 5-year max deal and I have actually defended FO's decision to resign Baze (I think the market somewhat justified it based on last year's performance)... But I just want some damn direction and a front office that is decisive/well-prepared for all scenarios. I think it is pretty clear that there is no real direction from our front office (signing Howard, not knowing what to do with Paul) right now and we don't even know if we have a final decision maker.