How long until the Hawks become a championship contender

[ATL Boy]

The Atlanta Hawks are in for another season of mediocrity, and other than watching the development of Dennis Schröder I really don't see much to look forward to this season: probably a 6-8 seed and a first round exit. I do have faith in Danny Ferry and I like what hes done so far by not committing long term to any player that can't be traded in a few years (Korver and Teague will have trade value), and I think that we're in a much better position now than we were when Sund gave Joe Johnson that contract.

We've had our fun these past few years watching the Hawks be that feel good team that almost upset the top seeded Celtics in the first round, or almost how we almost upset the top seeded Bulls in the 2nd round just two years later. The key word in all that however is almost, we've never been able to get anything done that has turned heads around the NBA. The Hawks have never reached the Conference Finals during their stay in Atlanta and even during the peak of the Joe Johnson era we've never really come close to a championship, and I'm sure that every Hawks fan thought the same as me: that we weren't a championship team with that Roster.

Al Horford's contract expires in 3 short years, he'll be near the end of his prime when it does expire. We have 2 really good raw young players that we just drafted and we can start over with the cap room experiment in 2 years. The Lakers' dominant era of the decade has ended (Western conference I know), the Celtics' dominant era of the decade has ended, the Bulls don't scare me as much due to the fact that Rose has to change up his high flying game in order to avoid future injury, the Pacers are up and coming, the Nets have gone all in for two seasons, and the Heat are a few years away from seeing their window start to close, and the Cavs are a year or two away from competing in the East's top tier. Let's not worry about the other West teams like the Rockets and OKC right now.

My question is: how long do you guys think it'll be before the Atlanta Hawks start turning some heads and are a legitimate championship contender? We haven't been one since the Bob Pettit days in St. Louis.

[Jamaaliver]

The Day Lebron leaves Miami. There'll be a huge hole left at the top of the Eastern Conference. Chicago and Indiana are currently next in line to the throne. (Brooklyn will be too old and capped out.)

If Coach Bud is as good as we think, and Dennis the Menace is developed properly we should be able to stay a top 3 or 4 team in the East.

Truth be told, I'd settle for a division winner and an Eastern Conference Finals appearance. Maybe a Coach of the Year award, a perennial All Star Player, ALL NBA First Team.

I just want us to actually be relevant and not get embarrassed every year when we play on National TV. A team I can get behind and be proud of. That Plays Hard, Plays Smart and Plays as a Team.

And I hope AL ends his career in a Hawks uni...on a Contender.

[MaceCase]

Long.......

I will give Ferry credit over Sund though in that when Sund locked into mediocrity he really LOCKED in, as in the general feeling was that the team would go to the grave with most of the longterm deals he gave out. With Ferry it seems that we can participate in the "what if" dance every new cycle of the moon or so. That flexibility gives the hope of jumping into contention sooner rather than much, much later but I still don't see it in the foreseeable future.

Ferry's roster moves all seem to have the look of being great for the team's goal of continuing to receive playoff revenue but they don't have the magical ability of increasing the trade value of the players he signed. We've already seen Millsap's value on a short deal for Utah, Kyle's descending deal sounds great but doesn't change the fact that he's an aging specialist and Teague will still be faced with the fact that he is a bottom 2nd tier PG in a league where nearly every team already has a veteran locked in long term or a young prospect developing at the position.

Not bad deals, not deals that will be difficult to get out of but not deals that will necessarily bring back a superior package or player either. So where does that leave the Hawks? Right where they've always been. Schröder is intriguing but he's a pure point guard in a league that is gravitating away from that type of lead guard and then historically you don't have much precedence of one leading their team to a championship anyway. The team still needs more talent, currently with Al, Louis, Jeffrey, etc. they are all near tapped out and close to their ceilings no matter the amount of roster tweaking that is done. We may see refinements on their games but an explosion is statistically unlikely so......until the team finds a player flat out better or COULD be flat out better the championship outlook is SSDD......but at least the periods where we can find such player(s) are more numerous and shorter in waiting periods.

[azuresou1]

We won't contend until we have a legitimate superstar. It's as simple as that. You can have all the good players you want, all the right supporting pieces, but the evidence is CLEAR that you need need NEED a superstar to be a contending team. Here's to hoping German Chocolate is that superstar, but more likely his ceiling is a perennial All-Star PG. Which is not by any means bad, but it's also a far cry from being a real contender.

Another thing we could try to do is trade for a lotto team's pick, and hope that they win that tiny percent chance to get Wiggins. Milwaukee really wanted Teague, maybe Ferry can trade him to them for, say, Knight and the pick.

[DirtybirdGA]

Til my hair turns fully gray.

[Jamaaliver]

Pacers and Grizzlies give me hope.

They each have been top teams in the Regular Season the last couple of years and each made the Conference Finals last season. Neither with what I would call SUPERSTARS.

Indy's best players were the 10th pick and 17th pick in their respective drafts.

Before that they went to the Finals Conf with castoffs and has-beens (Jermaine O'Neal, R Artest, Stephen Jackson).

Memphis kept moving pieces for value before they walked away for nothing: trading Shareef for Pau, trading Pau for Marc.

With savvy, proactive moves and good coaching we can at least become a top 3 or 4 team in the league.

[theatlfan]

There is definitely some opportunity for some upward mobility, but as others have said, we have to land a superstar and we might as well be throwing darts if we're trying to put a timeline on that. We could have one in house (really think we should be talking about Horford more here - Schroeder and, to a lesser extent, Nogueira are the unknowns who are getting the flavor of the week treatment), but until we get well into the season, we really don't know.

Another thing we could try to do is trade for a lotto team's pick, and hope that they win that tiny percent chance to get Wiggins. Milwaukee really wanted Teague, maybe Ferry can trade him to them for, say, Knight and the pick.

No one is trading Wiggins at this point though. Any trade for a '14 1st will include protections from here on out. The best we can hope for is that either NJN implodes then we get really lucky or we miss out on the playoffs then get really lucky. BTW, we can't trade Teague to MIL until next year.

[azuresou1]

Yeah I forgot about the RFA offer/trade rule until after I posted. I do believe that a 2014 1st could be obtained unprotected - given the team was desperate enough for talent now. I think this would be true for a borderline playoff team that felt it could make it in with a talent upgrade.

Unfortunately, Milwaukee was one of the three teams I could see doing a deal like that (the other two being Minnesota and Washington) with us =/

[Jamaaliver]

Any trade for a '14 1st will include protections from here on out.

Agreed. I have a sneaking suspicion that the cost for acquiring a lottery pick (especially an unprotected pick) will start with AL Horford. I truly hope it doesn't come to that.

we have to land a superstar and we might as well be throwing darts if we're trying to put a timeline on that. We could have one in house

Yes. YES! AL is the one lottery pick in the last 20 years that actually panned out worth anything. Hopefully he picks up a few post moves from Elton and takes the next step to become a 20/10 franchise stalwart....

[Durins Baynes]

Pacers and Grizzlies give me hope.

They each have been top teams in the Regular Season the last couple of years and each made the Conference Finals last season. Neither with what I would call SUPERSTARS.

Indy's best players were the 10th pick and 17th pick in their respective drafts.

Before that they went to the Finals Conf with castoffs and has-beens (Jermaine O'Neal, R Artest, Stephen Jackson).

Memphis kept moving pieces for value before they walked away for nothing: trading Shareef for Pau, trading Pau for Marc.

With savvy, proactive moves and good coaching we can at least become a top 3 or 4 team in the league.

I've posted on this forum how I like the moves the Hawks are making, but they are moves which are designed to be a 45-55 win team with a modest payroll, so the team's direction is flexible, while the ownership stops bleeding money. It is a plan which is an absolute longshot to lead to contention, virtually impossible in fact. That's fine to me, because I think franchises goals vary depending on circumstances- and right now the Hawks need to keep building their brand and avoid financial disaster (they lost the most money of any team last year basically).

The Pacers and Grizzlies should not give you hope. Neither is a real contender exactly to start with. The Grizzlies don't make it out of the 2nd round if Westbrook is healthy (and maybe not even the 1st if Blake doesn't hurt his leg with 3 games to go), and their best guy is absolutely a superstar- he's a top 10 player. The Pacers are a 50 win team who has had a lot of playoff luck, and whose claim to fame is "we give the Heatles trouble because of match ups, then they get serious and beat us". With Derrick Rose back and the new Nets I doubt the Pacers make it out of the 2nd round. Neither of those teams was or is winning a title. The Pacers also obviously have more talent than you guys (something I don't say lightly), though Horford this season might be a better player than their best player.

The Grizz got Conley at the top of the lotto, and he's one of their best players. They got Marc Gasol by trading his brother (who was a top 3 pick from the lotto). They also previously had Gay (a top 10 pick). The Pacers got George top 10. They've been a bit lucky, and gotten some good players with fortunate circumstances (Hibbert falling, West getting stiffed in a year when few teams had cap space, etc), however they're still a team who isn't winning a title, and really have no prospect of winning a title from internal improvement.

The 2004 Pacers are similarly not a great example, as a breakdown of them shows that much of their talent was accumulated from lotto talent of from rolling over lotto talent into new talent over the years. Take JO for instance- they got him by trading an all-star big (a fringe one technically, although he made a team once). The Pacers in the early 2000's (who weren't a contender except for maybe 2004) are a weird case- they had lotto assets originally over the decades, and gradually swapped them for other assets, slowly trying to get better and better assets. It wasn't enough, but it did give them a contender type team eventually. I don't think the Hawks have that sort of timeframe though.

The short version is that contenders in the post-99 period almost all assemble teams with lotto talent (at least top 10, usually much higher), either by drafting guys to play for them (e.g. The Thunder), and/or trading lotto assets for players (e.g. The Celtics in 2008). There are virtually no exceptions, and the exceptions are inherently flukes you can't copy (either because of one off circumstances that fell your way, or the team being assembled in the pre-99 CBA environment). The good news is you have a top lotto guys to build around- Horford. The bad news is that's not the best player on a title team, and contention in the near future is not realistic. However if the Hawks can win 55 games on a modest payroll in 2015 I'll call this a success. After that they have to hope they can stock the team with home-run mid to late first rounders (Nogs and Shroeder already look like good examples of the sort of good scouting you need), and luck out a lot. I doubt it happens, but winning some playoff games and building credibility with fans back up is the prudent course at this stage (and it's obviously what they're doing anyhow).

[Juicyjcant]

I don't think you need a superstar, you need at least two players who at least play up to the level of a superstar. Even playing against a 7 game series vs a LeBron for example, you can't have just one dude who is near his level, you need two. And that's assuming it is LeBron by himself, when you add guys like Wade and Bosh, the talent for the heat gets too overwhelming for most teams.

Another asset that can't hurt is a legitimate and elite ~7ft big man. Maybe in this day and age when there aren't a lotta guys capable of handling mass in the paint, it could be something that can tip the odds in your favor if a team can't necessarily draw in superstars through free agency. It also helps a lot with drawing fouls for smaller market teams against teams like the *%)$*%& lakers and knicks in the regular season. Random but I really wonder how Bynum is going to turn out, before his injury I thought he was clearly the best big man in the game who could stay on the floor late and hit free throws. If he stays healthy enough to play 60% of the season and the playoffs, that is going to be a huge huge addition for the cavs.

And I don't understand why there are superstar calls, that is one of the stupidest practices in professional sports. Just ref the game fairly all the way through... seems like such an obvious thing to do especially when you see that players aren't allowed to even brush their hands on stars like kobe and melo throughout the game and when the game is on the line.

[Durins Baynes]

This may be a question of how you're defining a "superstar", but I can't think of any recent contenders that didn't have star power (top 10-15 type guys at least).