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I am curious about some moves that have been made. Bud implemented a ball movement system with shooters that produced the ATL Hawks best season and was Bud's signature. On D he emphasized good D and getting back as opposed to crashing the boards for off rebounds.

Then Howard was brought in while Bud was in charge??????????? Makes no sense and seems a Ressler type call. Bud wanted to win now, but I really don't think Howard was his guy. Wilcox was demoted for wanting to rebuild by tanking at the deadline. Bud and Ressler wanted to win now.

We now have a team that doesn't play Budball well. No shooting and mediocre passing / ball handling.

Whomever is calling the roster shots moving forward needs to get with the coach's system and at least bring in some guys that can play D / pass / shoot.

I love Schroder but even he doesn't seem like a Budball point. Howard absolutely doesn't fit budball and nobody can shoot.

How did they let this happen when Budcox was running the FO?

tbhawksfan1 wrote:I am curious about some moves that have been made. Bud implemented a ball movement system with shooters that produced the ATL Hawks best season and was Bud's signature. On D he emphasized good D and getting back as opposed to crashing the boards for off rebounds.

Then Howard was brought in while Bud was in charge??????????? Makes no sense and seems a Ressler type call. Bud wanted to win now, but I really don't think Howard was his guy. Wilcox was demoted for wanting to rebuild by tanking at the deadline. Bud and Ressler wanted to win now.

We now have a team that doesn't play Budball well. No shooting and mediocre passing / ball handling.

Whomever is calling the roster shots moving forward needs to get with the coach's system and at least bring in some guys that can play D / pass / shoot.

I love Schroder but even he doesn't seem like a Budball point. Howard absolutely doesn't fit budball and nobody can shoot.

How did they let this happen when Budcox was running the FO?

That was my initial thinking then I remembered that Danny Ferry also wanted Dwight next to Horford. Millsap was the fall back plan.

Yeah, but that was also 3-4 year ago Howard. Still don't see Howard in Bud's system with no shooters and an average passing PG

That was my initial thinking then I remembered that Danny Ferry also wanted Dwight next to Horford. Millsap was the fall back plan.

Great point. It's even worse when you consider that Ferry's initial plan was to extend Josh Smith in summer 2012, trade Horford for Howard and use that pairing ton entice Chris Paul.

That entire core is the anti-thesis of 'Bud Ball'.

Jamaaliver wrote:

That was my initial thinking then I remembered that Danny Ferry also wanted Dwight next to Horford. Millsap was the fall back plan.

Great point. It's even worse when you consider that Ferry's initial plan was to extend Josh Smith in summer 2012, trade Horford for Howard and use that pairing ton entice Chris Paul.

That entire core is the anti-thesis of 'Bud Ball'.

Bud also wasn't the coach.

Team really needs a steady hand that can develop short and long-term strategies and stick to them.

jayu70 wrote:Bud also wasn't the coach.

Touche. And this is what drives me crazy when I hear the narrative that Ferry was a genius. He lucked into some solid moves because his grand scheme fell apart.

He deserves credit for that initial Millsap contract. But debits for attempting to build around Smoove and D12.

More from this deal here.

From the 2013 archives after Ferry took over:

Hawks Will Rebuild From Scratch

That said, Ferry is sticking to his plan. He’s going to be rebuilding basically from scratch, with nine players heading into free agency July 1.

NBA.com in 2013



I suspect any GM will essentially want to do the same.

No one wants to have to build a team on the decaying corpse of another exec's failed roster.

I suspect they'll move anything not nailed to the floor and even consider a new coach.

Great PH article

http://www.peachtreehoops.com/2017/5/23/15654962/atlanta-hawks-assist-numbers-drop-ball-movement

It would have helped our assist numbers if our wings weren't so bad shooting the ball. And Dwight.

Great PH article

http://www.peachtreehoops.com/2017/5/23/15654962/atlanta-hawks-assist-numbers-drop-ball-movement

And Dennis's turnovers. Some were inexplicably bad.

Budcox just can't GM. I think Howard was a move all parties agreed to. "Budball" never featured a dominant rebounder to begin with, and because of it, we constantly got abused inside ala Tristan Thompson(who kills everyone of course). Since were not going to have Horford coming back, we should have let Baze walk too. Adding shooters to replace KK and continue to have elite spacing for a guy like Howard should have been the first line of business if we were going to switch the philosophy up.

So why crash the boards when we're probably better off just getting back and playing defense. Plus, we were a pretty good shooting team back then, it probably wasn't a need to necessarily stick around for offensive boards. Can't throw all the shade on Resseler.

The evident mis-management of the teams assets has to fall on someone. In fact though, it falls on all of them. The FO has been awful and Ressler is responsible for those guys.

Handing the FO over to a very green Wilcox and Bud, who had only recently become a coach, was a terrible decision.

Until they bring in a GM that can compete with the best, the Hawks will remain a second or third tier team.

Geaux_Hawks wrote:Since were not going to have Horford coming back, we should have let Baze walk too

Fact is that letting Bazemore walk should have been decided before any Horford answer.
They knew that offering him a contract in the first day would make it harder to work on other cases.

The instant signing of Bazemore is one mistake, but I have another POV on it : don't get me wrong, it doesn't justify his signing to that kind of contract, but I'm pretty sure they decided to keep him because he was the funny guy with all the Bazegate things who makes people talk about the Hawks in a positive way in the media, and they needed it since the scooting report fiasco about Deng.

Same thing about Howard, part of the motivation is certainly bringing back him to his hometown to make the fanbase happy.

Which leads me to think that this scooting report fiasco brought even more bad decision.
The Howard signing is not a bad decision by itself, it's just that adding him to a good team with rebounding problem is good, this what a team trying to contend would do, but signing him if you loose Horford is just stupid.

If Howard was the target, if I had the choice, I would have let Baze walk, signed Howard and give the 141M Horford was asking instead of 136M, and keep Millsap because :
- the team would have been better, with more options
- there was the possibility to trade them later

Instead of that, the team doesn't work great, and you have overpaid players. And on top of that, Bazemore not playing at the value of his contract gave THJ the oppotunity to shine more than he should have, and increase his value to a point that he will be overpaid too.

Great work for sure...

Jamaaliver wrote:

jayu70 wrote:Bud also wasn't the coach.

Touche. And this is what drives me crazy when I hear the narrative that Ferry was a genius. He lucked into some solid moves because his grand scheme fell apart.

He deserves credit for that initial Millsap contract. But debits for attempting to build around Smoove and D12.

More from this deal here.

Don't forget that Ferry was on the verge to succeed : before the scooting report fiasco, he was talking with Deng and Gasol.
Had he brought one of them or both, the 60W squad would have been a true contender, with the possibility to rest the players and not enter the playoffs with lots of injured players.

It's unbelievable what this scouting report have created in bad decisions.

About the Smith-Howard combo, there's another reason : he certainly thought that both being good friend, Smith was his best chance to get Howard, then get Paul, better chance than trying to make it happen with Horford.
Not 100% of the decision, but sure he thought about that.

They made a MAJOR mess of it. And you're right that the Ferry situation came at a real bad time, but ASG was a ticking time bomb and it went off.

Another error was the post Ferry make-shift FO.

Seems the Hawks are trying to get it right with Schlenk. Hope he's the man to right the ship. A lot of work to do