Marty Burns, S.I says ------

[Gray Mule]

The Atlanta Hawks may be near the top of the eastern

conference in the coming season with the addition of

"Big Dawg."

There are two things that must happen if they are to

reach this goal. (1) They must stay healthy. (2) They

must find a true point guard.

Now, stop me if you have heard this before, but I thought

that the Hawks already had a point guard! Did I miss

something? While I will agree that Hawks must stay

away from the injury bug, I believe that between the raw

rookie, Dickau and the now veteran Jason Terry, the Hawks

had that position pretty well covered.

For a long time, the Hawks were too good to be bad and

too bad to be good, just stuck in the middle, making it

to the playoffs and then dying right there. We had to

go to the bottom in order to get to the top. We've

been to the bottom, rebuilt the team and are now on

our way to the top.

Minor adjustments are still to come, I'm sure, BUT we

are so much better than we were the last year of our

former coach's stay, there is no comparison.

Gray Mule