S26 Hawks Presser
Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:07 am
The cat stalks into the Atlanta press room, bleary-eyed and obviously in a foul mood. In other words, exactly what the reporters in Atlanta have come to expect. The cat hops up onto the table, bats at the microphone until it screeches to make sure it's on, then clears its throat and begins to speak in a gravelly voice...
Before you all ask, yes I am QUITE aware we lost. Again. To the RAPTORS! Again. I swear, those darn Canadians always seem to rise up to punk my teams when we are on the cusp of greatness. That's three times now by my count they've derailed us as a number one seed. Am I happy to be out of their division? Not really. I'm still in their conference which means I still have to deal with them when it matters. Why couldn't they move to Vancouver instead of those darn Grizzlies?
But I digress. This offseason was one of the more active ones in recent memory. Our offense for the last few years was built on the wings - Carmelo and Rudy. We saw the writing on the wall with the tax man with Noah coming up for another extension, so I had to ship them out for cheaper assets. We're still not quite out of the woods yet but I'm working on it. Let's take them one at a time.
We have loved Rudy ever since we drafted him, but after inking him to a huge extension last summer, our cap flexibility was toast. I thought it was worth it, though, because I thought we could push over the top and be in the Finals again. But instead, we had a second round exit. Did I mention to the RAPTORS?!? With a core that was getting older - except Middleton - and no longer getting it done - not to mention expensive - it was time to move on. The Bucks have been chasing Rudy for quite some time, and when they approached us with the idea of trading for him, I was a little resistant. Trade talks went back and forth, and finally we came to an agreement that probably would have been better timed had we done it an hour or so sooner instead of swapping draft picks after making them. But, you know, hindsight. We were happy to bring in Draymond and Oladipo since they were talented, if still a bit raw, and a LOT cheaper than Rudy. I wasn't totally sold on the deal at the time - I'm still not, Dray and Dipo have to live up to the hype - but the Rudy deal was not about the way he had played with us. He's an elite player in this league and still in his prime. It was about the only thing I care about near as much as rings. Money.
Which leads us to the Carmelo trade. Melo was an expiring and getting ready for another big payday. Couldn't have that. We packed up Melo along with Jeff Adrien (who I have had a well-known love-hate relationship in his time here) and sent them to the Wizards for Gerald Green and Tyler Hansbrough - players who coud give us most of the same production Melo and Adrien gave us at a reduced cost. After both of them showed up a little to full of themselves - as well as donuts - to Training Camp, I'm having second thoughts about their ability to produce. Adrien had a great TC in Washington, Melo retained most of his explosiveness, and now we're looking at Green and Psycho T and thinking there's no way Green's option is getting picked up, so the good news is we're going to be freeing up some salary next year. We have let them know they better find a way to contribute or they won't be getting good references from us when they start looking for FA offers next offseason.
We had max cap space entering RFA thanks to those deals and we threw it all at Al Horford. Horford took one look at our offer sheet and went right back to Houston. Thanks, Al. At least Bojan Bogdanovic took 5 million per year to continue acting as our Gatorade boy, which he's done admirably for the last 3 years since we put him in during his rookie season and discovered he sucked. Maybe we will let him play in another 12 games before that contract expires! In all seriousness, we had expected him to finally have a jump in TC to start coming close to his potential and it didn't happen. He's running out of time and I'm running out of patience with him, but we're stuck for at least one more season before I can trade him, so we'll continue using his Gatorade fetching skills this year.
So we tried throwing our money at Spencer Hawes. For some reason, he told us $18 million per year wasn't enough for his services... then signed for $4 million with the Kings. Guess California has dropped their income tax rate into the negative percents or something. The good news of free agency was that we brought back Joakim Noah on a non-max contract - we looked around the league and realized only a half dozen teams had money to spend and most of them weren't in the market for a 30-year old center, so we gambled and won. We're happy about that. Our backup plan if Noah and Hawes didn't sign was Marc Gasol and we got him to sign as well, so that was a nice surprise. He and Pau have been eating a lot of soul food in Atlanta, though, and I'm a little dismayed both have ballooned to over 300 pounds. There's no way I need over 600 pounds of Gasol brother on this team. I have instructed the athletic trainers to only make salads available to those two.
We brought back Nate Robinson, but as expected, the TC gods decided to whack him with the ugly stick. And Hansbrough. And Gerald Green. And Marc Gasol. So when we saw that almost all of our veterans had cruddy camps, even the guys nominally still in their primes (29 and 30) we were not entirely pleased... until we saw our young players had showed great leadership and completely ignored the bad examples of their elders. With the strides they made, we feel we have a chance to compete in our new division and push back to the playoffs.
Which reminds me, anyone know of a good point guard available? We're looking at a team where our best 3 passers are all big men, and it's not like Nate has ever met a shot he didn't like. We will definitely be playing some unconventional ball this year and searching for ways to improve our team as we always do. I don't know how good we can be this season as we try to figure things out after trading away 60% of last year's starting lineup (and somehow only returning the starters that were Free Agents) but I'm interested to see which of these young guys can play. And it may be crazy, but I'm also curious to see how Daniel Randle handles his first action - it's so rare to find a guy his size that blocks shots like he can and has such a polished offensive game as a rookie... while he won't get a ton of minutes, he will at least be in the rotation occasionally so we can see just what we have.
Before you all ask, yes I am QUITE aware we lost. Again. To the RAPTORS! Again. I swear, those darn Canadians always seem to rise up to punk my teams when we are on the cusp of greatness. That's three times now by my count they've derailed us as a number one seed. Am I happy to be out of their division? Not really. I'm still in their conference which means I still have to deal with them when it matters. Why couldn't they move to Vancouver instead of those darn Grizzlies?
But I digress. This offseason was one of the more active ones in recent memory. Our offense for the last few years was built on the wings - Carmelo and Rudy. We saw the writing on the wall with the tax man with Noah coming up for another extension, so I had to ship them out for cheaper assets. We're still not quite out of the woods yet but I'm working on it. Let's take them one at a time.
We have loved Rudy ever since we drafted him, but after inking him to a huge extension last summer, our cap flexibility was toast. I thought it was worth it, though, because I thought we could push over the top and be in the Finals again. But instead, we had a second round exit. Did I mention to the RAPTORS?!? With a core that was getting older - except Middleton - and no longer getting it done - not to mention expensive - it was time to move on. The Bucks have been chasing Rudy for quite some time, and when they approached us with the idea of trading for him, I was a little resistant. Trade talks went back and forth, and finally we came to an agreement that probably would have been better timed had we done it an hour or so sooner instead of swapping draft picks after making them. But, you know, hindsight. We were happy to bring in Draymond and Oladipo since they were talented, if still a bit raw, and a LOT cheaper than Rudy. I wasn't totally sold on the deal at the time - I'm still not, Dray and Dipo have to live up to the hype - but the Rudy deal was not about the way he had played with us. He's an elite player in this league and still in his prime. It was about the only thing I care about near as much as rings. Money.
Which leads us to the Carmelo trade. Melo was an expiring and getting ready for another big payday. Couldn't have that. We packed up Melo along with Jeff Adrien (who I have had a well-known love-hate relationship in his time here) and sent them to the Wizards for Gerald Green and Tyler Hansbrough - players who coud give us most of the same production Melo and Adrien gave us at a reduced cost. After both of them showed up a little to full of themselves - as well as donuts - to Training Camp, I'm having second thoughts about their ability to produce. Adrien had a great TC in Washington, Melo retained most of his explosiveness, and now we're looking at Green and Psycho T and thinking there's no way Green's option is getting picked up, so the good news is we're going to be freeing up some salary next year. We have let them know they better find a way to contribute or they won't be getting good references from us when they start looking for FA offers next offseason.
We had max cap space entering RFA thanks to those deals and we threw it all at Al Horford. Horford took one look at our offer sheet and went right back to Houston. Thanks, Al. At least Bojan Bogdanovic took 5 million per year to continue acting as our Gatorade boy, which he's done admirably for the last 3 years since we put him in during his rookie season and discovered he sucked. Maybe we will let him play in another 12 games before that contract expires! In all seriousness, we had expected him to finally have a jump in TC to start coming close to his potential and it didn't happen. He's running out of time and I'm running out of patience with him, but we're stuck for at least one more season before I can trade him, so we'll continue using his Gatorade fetching skills this year.
So we tried throwing our money at Spencer Hawes. For some reason, he told us $18 million per year wasn't enough for his services... then signed for $4 million with the Kings. Guess California has dropped their income tax rate into the negative percents or something. The good news of free agency was that we brought back Joakim Noah on a non-max contract - we looked around the league and realized only a half dozen teams had money to spend and most of them weren't in the market for a 30-year old center, so we gambled and won. We're happy about that. Our backup plan if Noah and Hawes didn't sign was Marc Gasol and we got him to sign as well, so that was a nice surprise. He and Pau have been eating a lot of soul food in Atlanta, though, and I'm a little dismayed both have ballooned to over 300 pounds. There's no way I need over 600 pounds of Gasol brother on this team. I have instructed the athletic trainers to only make salads available to those two.
We brought back Nate Robinson, but as expected, the TC gods decided to whack him with the ugly stick. And Hansbrough. And Gerald Green. And Marc Gasol. So when we saw that almost all of our veterans had cruddy camps, even the guys nominally still in their primes (29 and 30) we were not entirely pleased... until we saw our young players had showed great leadership and completely ignored the bad examples of their elders. With the strides they made, we feel we have a chance to compete in our new division and push back to the playoffs.
Which reminds me, anyone know of a good point guard available? We're looking at a team where our best 3 passers are all big men, and it's not like Nate has ever met a shot he didn't like. We will definitely be playing some unconventional ball this year and searching for ways to improve our team as we always do. I don't know how good we can be this season as we try to figure things out after trading away 60% of last year's starting lineup (and somehow only returning the starters that were Free Agents) but I'm interested to see which of these young guys can play. And it may be crazy, but I'm also curious to see how Daniel Randle handles his first action - it's so rare to find a guy his size that blocks shots like he can and has such a polished offensive game as a rookie... while he won't get a ton of minutes, he will at least be in the rotation occasionally so we can see just what we have.