CP War Hawks wrote:I'm generally pro Schlenk but he's made some poor decisions along the way. Him trying to find vets/coaches to baby sit the younger guys, and overpaying his pet projects like Hunter and Collins is not doing the team any favors.
I like what OO brings to the team, but he's not fit to be the long term starter unless he take steps on offense. It's too many long, skilled bigs coming into the league that can simply engulf him rn.
They are built very close to being a tax payer but hardly playoff contenders two years running. The team has hit a wall, I don't blame Ressler not paying the tax just to barely get the sixth seed... I don't mind young talent in the front office like Fields and Korver. If this is what it takes to build around Trae correctly than I'm for it. All of this does seem like a failure waiting to happen, but I can give them the opportunity to make transactions through the off season.
Lots of things to react to, but I will use your post to try to balance some things:
- regarding coach choice, I agree that he made a mistake, especially extending Nate for so many years.
- regarding players contract, I'm not agreeing because: no contract on this team are bad, they were good (Huerter) to average (Collins). Yes I see Collins has averages, because we all saw he can gives 20/10 a night while defending enough, and a player like that at 25M/year with Salary Cap increasing each year and a lot more soon, is not a bad contract.
What I don't like is that Collins should have been signed for 110 instead of 125 before entering F.A. (he had 90/4 so 22.5 a year, and got in the end 125/5 so 25. I would have offer 110/5 after the 90/4 instantly, because the 100M threshold is certainly a psychologic barrier, and he was "allowed" to ask for more because of his individual stats after playing, like Trae, in a "empty team", which could be avoided.
More important, thee contracts should not have been a problem in a franchise where the owner was ready to pay the Luxury tax to be a contender, not just saying he's ready.
If Ressler hadn't say that, maybe Schleck would not have agree to these contracts.
The problem I see with Fields is that it doesn't look like his real idea to trade for Murray, but being pushed by Nick Ressler, and if you add that Nick Ressler is supposed to be close to Trae, it is easy to imagine that this Murray just came from Trae asking for another ball handler after the MIA series, talking about that with Nick Ressler, who asked it to Fields.
Trae is also supposed to want Capela staying here absolutely, I hope it's not because Capela is nothing offensively without Trae feeding him, and not asking for a lot of shots or a different role (Collins...)
It's only some possibilities, but I can't ignore there's a great chance that it's all due to Nick Ressler+Trae, more than Nick Ressler only.
In the end, I was fearing after the MIA series they would overreact, and they did it, but I would never have expected that one of the main guy in this case would have been the 27 (certainly 26 last summer) years old son of the owner.
This team needs a C that can shoot 3s, I won't change my view on it, to have the possibility to play both PF and C able to shoot 3s (not the whole game, but when you need). They need shooters to spread the floor and make things easier for Trae... and they needed a better coach.
And this was not impossible to get, but not if you want to stay below the Tax threshold.
And no, John Collins who is in all the best lineups of ATL (and among the best lineups of the league), more than any other ATL players, they want to trade him... after trading Huerter just to save money.
This is purely incompetence at high level. No, it's a young front office that want only players they signed themselves and not signed by the previous guy (except the franchise Star), and it's an ego problem.
It's a mess like I've never thought it would be