About Terry from espn

[codyatl]

Wednesday, August 7

Hawks should deal Terry for real two guard, too

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By Chad Ford

ESPN.com

Editor's note: ESPN Insider's Chad Ford breaks down what last season's NBA lottery teams need to do to get to the playoffs. ESPN.com's "Fixer-Upper" series continues with the Atlanta Hawks.

Phoenix has the Suns, but it will be the Atlanta Hawks that will attempt to rise out of the ashes this year.

After pulling out a blockbuster trade that infused the team with youth on the front line, the Hawks had high hopes last season. But an injury to Theo Ratliff in training camp was more than a foreboding sign. Only three players -- Nazr Mohammed, Jacque Vaughn and Hanno Mottola -- suited up for all 82 games. Ratliff went on to miss 78 games. Chris Crawford missed 74. Alan Henderson missed 55. Dion Glover missed 25. Toni Kukoc missed 23 games.

Finally, Hawks coach Lon Kruger has the players. But will they stay healthy?

In the end, the Hawks led the league with 319 player games missed. It can't get much worse than that, can it? For now, the Hawks are cautiously optimistic. They point to teams like the Celtics and Nets who came back from injury-marred seasons to compete for the Eastern Conference championship.

For once the team seems to have all the goods. They have three prolific scorers in Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Glenn Robinson and Jason Terry. They have a huge frontcourt when you pair Rahim together with Ratliff and Mohammed. And after a year of Vaughn jokes, the team finally has a franchise-type point guard running the show in Dan Dickau.

How giddy are the Hawks about the upcoming season? The team announced an unprecedented playoff guarantee for full season-ticket holders for the upcoming season. And that was before they traded for Robinson. Should the team fail on its pledge to participate in the playoffs, full season-ticket holders will receive a check for $125 per seat.

Of course, given the Hawks' attendance last year, it's not as big of a risk as it seems. The Hawks ranked 27th in the league in attendance last season pulling in a paltry 12,344 fans per game. Fan interest is waning and the Hawks have to do something now -- while the East is still in a funk -- to capitalize on all of the talent they've assembled.

Will this be the year that the Hawks return to the playoffs? ESPN.com poured over depth charts, trade rumors, salary-cap information and even sought the advice of a few NBA general managers to give you the five things the Hawks must do to get back to the playoffs this season.

Terry

Step 1: Move Terry while his value is still high.

Terry can light it up. No question. But name one 6-foot-2 shooting guard not named Iverson who has been successful in the league. Terry is no Iverson. Can he ever be a point guard? The Hawks still wonder. Though he showed progress late last season, most of the time the team was content to let Vaughn run things. I love Jacque, but that tells you something. The difference between the Hawks' play when Terry switches from the two to the one is palpable. With Dickau, the team now has a true point guard with a solid outside jumper. The problem is that the team can only play them on the court in limited stretches. If Terry plays the point, team chemistry and Dickau's development suffer. If Dickau plays and Terry sits, the team loses its second (now likely third behind the Big Dog) scorer. If they play together, defenses will gorge on a team that already ranked 25th in the league in points allowed. The Hawks already have plenty of scorers with the addition of Robinson and Dickau. What the team needs is an athletic, defensive-minded two guard who doesn't need the ball to make an impact.

There are plenty of decent candidates. The Wizards' Richard Hamilton gets it done at both ends. Denver's James Posey is available and the Nuggets are in desperate need for some backcourt scoring. But the best fit may be the Pacers' Ron Artest. It won't be easy to pry Artest away from the Pacers. He's a tenacious defender, always plays hard and showed an emerging offensive game last season. But the team is backlogged with swingmen. Al Harrington will likely get the starting nod at the three. The team is trying to find big minutes for Jonathan Bender, and Ron Mercer will be backing up Reggie Miller. If the Hawks were willing to take Austin Croshere off their hands, they might be able to make a deal. The Pacers were disappointed in rookie Jamaal Tinsley's ability to score from the point, and Terry, for all of his faults, can do that. To make the deal work cap wise, the Hawks would have to send Alan Henderson back to Indiana. While his contract is outrageous, it expires two years before Croshere's does.

There is NO WAY, I repeat, NO WAY I would trade terry to the pacers and have him kill us every yr. Plus we have to eat crosheres contract. They say we need a dynamic defensive 2 gaurd but don't we already have that(maybe) in DJ?? He showed last yr that he could be a good defender. I am content to go into the season just like we are now.

[Guest]

ANd Dolfan emailed Chad Ford and he backed off his comments like

the coward that he is....Well I I I I...really da da da didn't watch

that many games.

Yeah that's what I thought Chad Ford=)

[hds428]

Just more fuel to the idiotic anti-JT fire. I feel for the poor stupid shmucks who buy into this crap fueled hype machine. I can't decide which is funnier, the myopic beat wirter who has admitted to never watching more than a handful of Hawks games (yet has the solution to all of their woes) or the Lay-Z-Boy GMs who eat this crap up by the spoonful. It's gotten to the point where all the anti JT posts are pure comedy on the same level as early hawksfreak posts, just the same rhetorical garbage with the same points constantly rehashed over and over and over and over and over. Its just sad.

[Gray Mule]

This is the same thing that was said before. The

statement about the Hawks being content to let Vaughn

run the team from the point is, I believe, a direct quotefrom his article two or three weeks ago.

S.O.S {Same old stuff} that he later partially retracted.

He didn't even bother to change it. Guess we didn't

really tell him anything that he would listen to.

Gray Mule

[chillzatl]

He gets so much flack around here. In his previous comments about the Hawks all he has ever said was that "Terry STRUGGLED at the point last year". After many of us here sent him emails ripping into him and pointing out the progress that JT made in the 2nd half. Now he's saying "he showed progress". As far as the Hawks are concerned, he doesn't follow them enough or watch them enough to make his own, informed opinion. He's going on what he reads from others. You need no more proof of this than seeing how he has changed his stance on JT's improvement over a months time.

He posts some interesting information and opinions. But take everything he says regarding the Hawks iwth a grain of salt. He just doesn't follow the team close enough to have his own opinions and his insiders obviously aren't inside enough to help him in that area.