The Curse of 33-2

[Jamaaliver]

haha I actually talk to Willis a lot, he seems to be on the more optimistic side. This was Rowland.

The guy i cant stand is that SOARING DOWN SOUTH clown Broom. If you disagree with anything he says he blocks you from twitter.

YEESSSSSS!!!!!

The only local Hawks fan writer worse than Kris Willis is Josh 'friggin' Broom.

It's made worse, cause he is NOT a strong writer and his articles are extremely biased and skewed...I curse the day he joined HawksHoop and took his mediocre writing to the ESPN-based fansite. He is incredibly arrogant as well.

Rowland is a sharp tack, knows his stuff and is always open to reasonable debate.

Buddy Grizzard is one of my faves as well...though he is without a Hawks fansite for the first time in a decade.

[xccelerate]

Man we need Bret LaGree back. Hoopinion was my favorite blog.

[Jamaaliver]

Mark Bradley over at AJC excoriates new Hawks Owner Toney Ressler and team management for maintaining the status quo last summer:

Tony Ressler moved to buy the Hawks in the midst of their finest regular season and, upon taking ownership, made a mistake: He believed the status could remain quo. Ressler listened hardest to the administrators in place. He believed those administrators could keep doing it because they assured him they could.

...as the NBA trade deadline looms next week, we hear via ESPN that the “rock stars” are huddling to decide whether to break up the team. The Hawks have reverted to what they were before Danny Ferry took this franchise by the scruff of the neck — not nearly bad but not especially good.

The continuity on which Ressler banked has availed him little. Mike Budenholzer is a good coach, but not necessarily an ace roster-wrangler. Wes Wilcox was an able deputy to Ferry, but we ask again: Does Budenholzer/Wilcox inspire the same belief as Ferry/Budenholzer?

[Jamaaliver]

And now the Hawks, as ESPN suggested and everybody already knew, must ask and answer loaded questions. As in:

1. Is our team as constituted capable of doing anything in the postseason? Does anybody but Cleveland scare us in the East?
   
2. Do we trade Al Horford, whom we love but who has became part of the reason we can’t get a rebound, before he can leave as a free agent and leave us with nothing in return? Or do we throw everything into trying to keep him even though he’d be 35 at contract’s end?
   
3. If we trade Horford, can we hope to receive anything approximating his value to us?
   
4. A lot of teams want Jeff Teague, but do we trade him now? He’s not the league’s best point guard, but he’s in the top dozen. We have Dennis Schroder, but wouldn’t it be prudent to let this group try one more time before pulling the ripcord?
   
5. Atlanta actually discovered we existed last winter. Do we risk alienating those who just tuned in by trading Horford and/or Teague?
   
6. On the other hand, if we don’t believe we’re going anywhere in the foreseeable future, can we in good conscience stand pat? At what point do we admit that this year’s team isn’t last year’s team and never will be again?
   
7. Do we really believe Budenholzer, whose days and nights are occupied doing actual coaching of an actual team, has the time or the managerial experience to bring off a massive midseason course correction?
   
8. Remind me again. Why did we think buying out Ferry was such a good idea?

[Jamaaliver]

AJC Columnist Jeff Schultz puts in his two cents regarding what direction Hawks should go:

coach Mike Budenholzer must decide: Should he give his team’s core one more shot?

It’s easy to understand the “Break ’em up,” mentality. This season the Hawks are barely in fourth place in the East and are on pace to win only 46 games. They look too inconsistent to be a serious playoff threat, which isn’t to say that can’t change in the final eight weeks of the regular season.

But is this the time to bust up the core? I don’t think so. Some thoughts as we near the NBA’s trade deadline Thursday (3 p.m.):

• If the Hawks are going to trade Teague, Millsap, Horford or even Korver, there’s a strong possibility they will take an immediate step back in this system offense. Any upside of a deal would more likely be in the future, not this season...what’s the point of effectively blowing off the postseason?
• Should Budenholzer and general manager Wes Wilcox decide to radically change the team’s look, it makes sense to do it after the year, when more teams are resetting their rosters and therefore can get involved in trade talks. If the Hawks are going to trade one of their three main pieces (Horford, Millsap, Teague), Teague makes the most sense. When he’s aggressive, he’s great. The problem is he’s not always aggressive, and therefore he’s inconsistent
• Budenholzer was entrusted to continue what the Danny Ferry started. To this point, the jury is still out.

Here

[Jamaaliver]

Years later...most seem to be in agreement.

Listen, the Hawks were [never] close to championship-caliber. That 60-win Hawks team of 2014-2015 wobbled to a 17-11 record after the All-Star break and then sweated to eliminate a 38-win Nets team in the first round of the playoffs. The Hawks squeaked by the Wizards in the second round, even with John Wall missing three games, and then were swept aside by LeBron James.

Maybe that Hawks team wasn’t great but it did have four All-Star players. Now the Hawks have no All-Star players and, at the moment, have one of the worst rosters in the NBA. They also have no draft picks or developmental players to show for the departures of Millsap and Horford.

myAJC

The Hawks waited too long to acknowledge the obvious...their new owner got fooled into believing that the 60-win team he inherited would always be a 60-win team. Their new owner was convinced by the voices in his current [front] office that those 60 wins were their creation, as opposed to the exiled Danny Ferry’s.

Officially, the managerial pairing of Mike Budenholzer and Wes Wilcox lasted 31 months. That was plenty long enough to run Tony Ressler’s shiny new car into a ditch. Budenholzer is no longer president of basketball operations and Wilcox no longer the general manager, and thank goodness for that. But their 31-month reign of error has left a hole Travis Schlenk will need years to fill.

Ressler’s avowal on the day he took ownership – “What was working was Bud, Wilcox and (CEO Steve Koonin); I want to keep that working” – is among the most short-sighted in the annals of a franchise rarely known for its vision.

myAJC