Two of their key players, Josh Smith and Josh Childress, are restricted free agents and must be re-signed; the price tag for both could be huge.
Hawks coach Mike Woodson and his staff have contracts that end June 30, and Hawks general manager Billy Knight is in a similar situation, with the team holding an option on his contract for next season.
"I don't know what to do with myself, man," Horford said Monday as he walked down a corridor to his car. "I know we lost, but I just don't know what to do with myself. You're just done.
"Obviously, you know the season is going to end at some point. But in school, you kind of knew what you had going on next. Here you're done and you're just ... done."
Keeping a nucleus together for next season, and possibly another run to the postseason, is the only thing on the minds of the players.
"I hope everything works out for the best," Horford said. "You know the NBA is a business. And you never know what the guys are thinking. But if it were up to me, we'd have everybody back. We might have to make an addition or two. But at the end of the day, I feel confident with the guys that we have. We have good chemistry, and we got good results. And you just don't want anything to mess this up."
"You don't spend as much time in this organization as we have and not feel like there's work to be done," said Smith, who finished the regular season as the Hawks' second-leading scorer and rebounder and their leader in blocks and steals, and he was sixth in the voting for the league's Defensive Player of the Year award.
"What we can't control is how things play out from here. All we can do is let the process work itself out."
Not being able to control his future, Childress said, is the only tough part of the process.
"It's a management decision," Childress said. "And it basically comes down to a decision of what direction the organization wants to go in. Do you want to start fresh again? Or do you want to work with what you have, add a few pieces and keep it going? That's something I can't control, and nobody in this locker room as players can control. It's a managerial decision that has to be made above us."
Woodson said Monday that the Hawks' first step toward getting back to the playoffs next season is to make sure Smith and Childress are kept in the fold.
Link
