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The stars are aligning. It's the final wish of a leaving Commish... David Stern is taking the long walk... and in doing so, he has ask the powers that be that control the NBA draft lottery to show leniency on the Hawks. We are pulling our best imitation of the 1996-1997 San Antonio Spurs. With a bunch of make shift contracts and a bunch of Hurt players, Popp took over and led the Spurs to a losing second half... the prize for his elegant tank was TIM DUNCAN. Coach Bud was there to see how it worked.

Right now we are in the midst of our own riddle torn season. Bud seems to be doing an elegant tank...
Our prize...

JOEL EMBIID.

I know, I have been on the Jabari Parker bus this whole time. However, Parker may be the next Clyde Drexler or even Jordan... But nobody ever fault Houston for taking Olajuwon before Jordan.
Only Sam Bowie...
I like the athletic 7 footer with shot blocking timing, back to the basket moves, and real 7 footer size.
He's our TIM Duncan!!!
If this happens, Hawks fans will finally have something to thank David Stern for. His last wish as Commish!!!! He wants to see Atlanta be competitive.

(David Stern) "The ATLANTA Hawks? The Hawks are leaving St. Louis?"

parson wrote:(David Stern) "The ATLANTA Hawks? The Hawks are leaving St. Louis?"

More like this:

During his council of commishes meeting.. Cheif Commish David Stern speaks to his secret council.

Chief Commish David Stern: My fellow Commissioners, have we forgotten the lessons of history? However quickly these bottom dwelling teams can be contained, it's clear that they're becoming an epidemic. An epidemic that should be dealt with immediately. The only solution is a fixing the draft lottery again.

Commish Silver: Our situation gets worse every day. With the Lakers, Knicks, and Celtics all being losers, no one watches our games.

Commish Granick: Ticket and Merchandise Sales are dropping 15% every quarter. If we don't increase our team valuations they will be inadequate in less than three years.

Commish Allen : Three years? Our valuations are inadequate now!

Chief Commish David Stern: My fellow council members, as a league we continue to grow, and growth is painful. 65 million people watching our game cannot let our numbers fall.

Commish Allen: [interrupting] Chief Commish, this league is in chaos! For social order we need tighter reigns! Letting Free Agents build their own superteams have not worked, I say we stop the building of superteams!
Chief Commish David Stern: My fellow commishes, I was barely in my thirties when I put on this badge. When the time comes for me to take it off, please let me do so knowing that it still stands for freedom and not for oppression. Upon retirement, I will take the Long Walk... which every Commish takes, outside this league, into the Cursed Earth. There I will remain for the last of my days, alone and promoting the league to the common man. As I now take my walk to the Cursed Earth, I would like the council to honor *my* last order: Be leniant with The Hawks in the 2014 draft lottery, for this actions and their years of mediocrity. They have been a mystery to me. They have one of the biggest probable Media Outlets but they are probably the worst marketed and managed teams in History. I have thought about this greatly and they need a star player. Much like the Spurs did in 1997 when Poppovich pleaded to this council for a chance to make good on a superstar named Tim Duncan. I see the same possibility with this Hawks team.

Commish Allen: But we gave them top picks before and they squandered them on Marvin Williams and Shelden Williams.
Chief Commish David Stern: While it is true that we can’t make the pick for them. I believe that given the top pick.. they will make the right choice. Plus, it is also a tradition for the council to honor the last order of a retiring Chief Commish.
Commish Silver: We shall honor this one, Chief Commish Stern!!

I'm sorry but this thread is insane. The Lakers, Celtics and Knicks are al horrible which means 3 of the biggest franchises will be in the lottery. You have more of a chance of seeing the 1, 2, 3 if you believe in the silly conspiracy theories about the draft.

Rip2137 wrote:I'm sorry but this thread is insane. The Lakers, Celtics and Knicks are al horrible which means 3 of the biggest franchises will be in the lottery. You have more of a chance of seeing the 1, 2, 3 if you believe in the silly conspiracy theories about the draft.

I don't really think this was a very serious thread, it was more for the sake of being entertaining. I kinda enjoyed it.

The Hawks have been insignificant since they traded the rights of one Bill Russell.

You can count their accolades on one hand since then.

They traded for Nique, let Pistol Pete's arrival screw up a title contender; and Lenny liked Danny Manning over Nique.

We lost to 2 BOS teams in the playoffs.

Yep, one hand.

td00 wrote:The Hawks have been insignificant since they traded the rights of one Bill Russell.

You can count their accolades on one hand since then.

They traded for Nique, let Pistol Pete's arrival screw up a title contender; and Lenny liked Danny Manning over Nique.

We lost to 2 BOS teams in the playoffs.

Yep, one hand.

Sounds good until you get to the meat...

Atlanta had just lost Zelmo Beaty to the ABA. So they traded his rights to the SF Warriors for their first round pick. That pick became Pistol Pete. Pete's arrival saved a struggling franchise because the dude that scored 44 ppg came to a city that could not fill up the GA tech Arena. The Hawks annual attendance tripled because of Pete. So screw up a title contender??? When Beaty left, we had to do something.

Lenny didn't pick Danny. Babcock picked Danny. His reasoning was that we must not let our stars get old on us. Babcock didn't want to negotiate a higher deal for Nique. So he traded him to the Clipps to take a shot at Manning. The Clipps loved the deal because Manning wasn't staying with them. For us, it was a true crap shoot that we lost.

All three times Boston beat us in the playoffs, they were supposed to. The first time however, we really had a strong shot and blew it.

Our history does suck but there's reasons for everything. The biggest failure of this franchise was picking Marvin Williams with the highest pick in modern History. That 2005 draft was stacked. Marvin Williams was a bench rider with nothing to his game. We bought the Roy Williams Smoke up our butt.

diesel50 wrote:

td00 wrote:The Hawks have been insignificant since they traded the rights of one Bill Russell.

You can count their accolades on one hand since then.

They traded for Nique, let Pistol Pete's arrival screw up a title contender; and Lenny liked Danny Manning over Nique.

We lost to 2 BOS teams in the playoffs.

Yep, one hand.

Sounds good until you get to the meat...

Atlanta had just lost Zelmo Beaty to the ABA. So they traded his rights to the SF Warriors for their first round pick. That pick became Pistol Pete. Pete's arrival saved a struggling franchise because the dude that scored 44 ppg came to a city that could not fill up the GA tech Arena. The Hawks annual attendance tripled because of Pete. So screw up a title contender??? When Beaty left, we had to do something.

Lenny didn't pick Danny. Babcock picked Danny. His reasoning was that we must not let our stars get old on us. Babcock didn't want to negotiate a higher deal for Nique. So he traded him to the Clipps to take a shot at Manning. The Clipps loved the deal because Manning wasn't staying with them. For us, it was a true crap shoot that we lost.

All three times Boston beat us in the playoffs, they were supposed to. The first time however, we really had a strong shot and blew it.

Our history does suck but there's reasons for everything. The biggest failure of this franchise was picking Marvin Williams with the highest pick in modern History. That 2005 draft was stacked. Marvin Williams was a bench rider with nothing to his game. We bought the Roy Williams Smoke up our butt.

n a year too late


You left out the jealously of Hazzard and Pogo Joe deflecting to the ABA. Bringing in Cotton a year too late and still missing with David Thompson and the Human Eraser.

I think last week was the 20th anniversary of that trade, I think the AJC had a little pic gallery on it. As a milestone geek I thought about bringing it up, but it was just a dreadful time.

DirtybirdGA wrote:I think last week was the 20th anniversary of that trade, I think the AJC had a little pic gallery on it. As a milestone geek I thought about bringing it up, but it was just a dreadful time.

Our history thus far is not glamorous. It's actually pretty terrible.

The saddest part of this trade is that, if I'm not wrong, it happened when ATL had the best record in the Eastern Conference, and that they were playing really good basketball.

A trade like that when you are sure your team is going nowhere... maybe, but when you're the best team in the conference...

Anyway, we are slowly taking a good lottery spot, if one Eastern team can take the 8th spot.
ATL has 26W
DEN and NOP are now at 27 and 26W, which leaves UTA, SAC and LAK at 22W in the West
DET, CLE and NYK are at 24W and NYK don't have pick, so they can only play for a playoffs spot and push ATL in the lottery.
It's hard meanwhile to know if DET and CLE are trying to win

If NYK take the 8th playoffs spot, ATL would have the 10th worst record, or lower as DET and CLE have a 2W difference, and BOS, UTA, SAC and LAK have a 4W difference while winning 3W more than ATL on the last 10 games...

Embid has back issues



Joel Embiid will fly to California on Monday morning to see a back specialist.

Embiid has been out since last week's loss to Oklahoma State.

‘We wanted to get a second opinion and wanted to send him to the very best authority,” Self said following the game according to Gary Bedore of KUSports.com.

“Hopefully we get real positive news. Hopefully he can be on the practice floor very very soon. We will not put him out there just because he feels better but because the doctors says it’s time to get back out there. Hopefully it will be real soon, if not we’ll sit him a little longer. We still don’t think it will affect (his participation in) the NCAA tournament in any way.”

PandaKidd wrote:Embid has back issues



Joel Embiid will fly to California on Monday morning to see a back specialist.

Embiid has been out since last week's loss to Oklahoma State.

‘We wanted to get a second opinion and wanted to send him to the very best authority,” Self said following the game according to Gary Bedore of KUSports.com.

“Hopefully we get real positive news. Hopefully he can be on the practice floor very very soon. We will not put him out there just because he feels better but because the doctors says it’s time to get back out there. Hopefully it will be real soon, if not we’ll sit him a little longer. We still don’t think it will affect (his participation in) the NCAA tournament in any way.”

Yep, I just saw that. It's looking bad for this draft.
If Parker stays at Duke (CAA Sports) and if EMbiid stays at Kansas because of the bad back... or if he goes into the draft and pulls a Loren Woods... This draft will actually Suck.

Wiggins is good but not a guy who will be great.
Smart is going to be the truth... but he's a PG.
Exum is a failure waiting to happen.
By the time we pick, the pickens will be slim.

Ehh Sullinger had back problems, and if he stays healthy, most teams would love to have him right now