Hawks 2022 Presser
Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:10 pm
The cat wanders into the press room, and blinks in surprise that there are actually people here. He looks at one of his staffers, shrugs, and sits down behind the microphone.
"So, I suppose you are here to talk about the team again. There's really not a lot to talk about. We had another disappointing season last year when we lost in the playoffs. Yes, we lost to the eventual champs. No, that doesn't make me feel better. We've become like that OTHER Atlanta team, the Braves. We win the division every year but never bring home the big prize. It's getting tiresome."
"Obviously, after last season, it was clear that we didn't have enough firepower. We were kind of annoyed when Harland Ellinger's agent informed us they were going to decline his player option and enter free agency this off-season. We had managed our cap such that we had the space to add another star player and were hoping Ellinger would give us one more season to show him what we had in mind. Guess he had other plans. So we did what we had to... we adjusted."
"We took risks in the off-season. To start with, we didn't exercise our restricted free agency rights on Aaron Pastor or on Carlos Bergstrom so we would have enough money to send out two max contract offers during RFA. In restricted free agency, we landed James Gebhart from the Jazz and Tyler Ulis of the Celtics. We felt confident getting both of these great players would validate going over the cap to re-sign Ellinger and give us a backcourt that would be the envy of the league! And then... both players' deals were promptly matched. Back to the drawing board again."
"Going into Unrestricted Free Agency, we did some calculations. We knew teams would be all over Harland Ellinger, especially after he opted out of his player option for this year. We also knew that the cap space we had opened up in RFA wasn't enough to sign both Ellinger AND another max player. So we had to make some tough decisions. We cut our one defensive guard, Gil Gale, and one of our frontcourt players, Armand Haven. Even though it hit our cap with dead money to do so, it opened up just enough space for us to be able to let us fit a second max offer next to Ellinger's."
"We swung for the fences - we sent out a couple of big offers to some of the best players on the board. Gary Harris spurned us to go back to New York. Obviously, we were thrilled that Jayson Tatum took us up on our offer. But we were nervous as heck when Ellinger did not come back into the fold right away. Thankfully, once it became clear Tatum was on board, he did the wise thing and re-upped with us to take another crack at things. Shortly thereafter, we were able to bring back Bergstrom on a modest contract and re-sign Blake Griffin and Tyreke Evans at reduced prices. Pastor, of course, took the Rockets' money and ran to Houston. We can't blame him - they paid him much more than we were willing to."
"At the end of Free Agency, we were feeling good. We had our prized new free agent, we had Arthur Parish who had been a super-efficient scorer and rebounder as our third big man. We had Tyreke Evans back to give our wings depth. We had Matthew Willison waiting in the wings and were hoping this was the year he would finally take the next step in his development."
"Of course, Training Camp happened. Parish got fat and sassy and went from having a sky-blue-high potential to showing his true colors as a yellow-bellied coward. Evans had just as disastrous a camp. Willison not only didn't make the jump forward, he fell over backwards. Even new signee Pierre Jaco did poorly. But to top it all off, Tatum showed up to camp out of shape and boy are we happy we got TC insurance on him. While it was nice to see Aaron Donald and Andrew Baldwin step their games up, on the whole, for such a young team as we are, I was not happy to see the results of training camp. Where I thought we would be deep and dangerous, now we're going to be back with the pack clawing for a playoff spot."
"We'll start the season with an Ellinger/Randle backcourt. Andrew Aleman, who has been a steady backup for us, will probably be our third guard. I would have loved to bench Tatum for his offseason suckiness but since Evans was just as bad, Tatum will start at small forward. Carlos Bergstrom will be our backup wing. Aaron Donald will start up front for sure and we'll figure out whether Blake Griffin or Andrew Baldwin will be the fifth starter (and the one that doesn't start will kick Arthur Parish from his "third big" role to deep on the pine)."
"I'm ready to make some moves this season with the roster. We've been 'good' but not 'great' for too long. Training Camp showed me some guys on this roster need a wakeup call and if I have anything to say about it, expect the roster to look different come December 15th once I can start trading some of these slugs."
"So, I suppose you are here to talk about the team again. There's really not a lot to talk about. We had another disappointing season last year when we lost in the playoffs. Yes, we lost to the eventual champs. No, that doesn't make me feel better. We've become like that OTHER Atlanta team, the Braves. We win the division every year but never bring home the big prize. It's getting tiresome."
"Obviously, after last season, it was clear that we didn't have enough firepower. We were kind of annoyed when Harland Ellinger's agent informed us they were going to decline his player option and enter free agency this off-season. We had managed our cap such that we had the space to add another star player and were hoping Ellinger would give us one more season to show him what we had in mind. Guess he had other plans. So we did what we had to... we adjusted."
"We took risks in the off-season. To start with, we didn't exercise our restricted free agency rights on Aaron Pastor or on Carlos Bergstrom so we would have enough money to send out two max contract offers during RFA. In restricted free agency, we landed James Gebhart from the Jazz and Tyler Ulis of the Celtics. We felt confident getting both of these great players would validate going over the cap to re-sign Ellinger and give us a backcourt that would be the envy of the league! And then... both players' deals were promptly matched. Back to the drawing board again."
"Going into Unrestricted Free Agency, we did some calculations. We knew teams would be all over Harland Ellinger, especially after he opted out of his player option for this year. We also knew that the cap space we had opened up in RFA wasn't enough to sign both Ellinger AND another max player. So we had to make some tough decisions. We cut our one defensive guard, Gil Gale, and one of our frontcourt players, Armand Haven. Even though it hit our cap with dead money to do so, it opened up just enough space for us to be able to let us fit a second max offer next to Ellinger's."
"We swung for the fences - we sent out a couple of big offers to some of the best players on the board. Gary Harris spurned us to go back to New York. Obviously, we were thrilled that Jayson Tatum took us up on our offer. But we were nervous as heck when Ellinger did not come back into the fold right away. Thankfully, once it became clear Tatum was on board, he did the wise thing and re-upped with us to take another crack at things. Shortly thereafter, we were able to bring back Bergstrom on a modest contract and re-sign Blake Griffin and Tyreke Evans at reduced prices. Pastor, of course, took the Rockets' money and ran to Houston. We can't blame him - they paid him much more than we were willing to."
"At the end of Free Agency, we were feeling good. We had our prized new free agent, we had Arthur Parish who had been a super-efficient scorer and rebounder as our third big man. We had Tyreke Evans back to give our wings depth. We had Matthew Willison waiting in the wings and were hoping this was the year he would finally take the next step in his development."
"Of course, Training Camp happened. Parish got fat and sassy and went from having a sky-blue-high potential to showing his true colors as a yellow-bellied coward. Evans had just as disastrous a camp. Willison not only didn't make the jump forward, he fell over backwards. Even new signee Pierre Jaco did poorly. But to top it all off, Tatum showed up to camp out of shape and boy are we happy we got TC insurance on him. While it was nice to see Aaron Donald and Andrew Baldwin step their games up, on the whole, for such a young team as we are, I was not happy to see the results of training camp. Where I thought we would be deep and dangerous, now we're going to be back with the pack clawing for a playoff spot."
"We'll start the season with an Ellinger/Randle backcourt. Andrew Aleman, who has been a steady backup for us, will probably be our third guard. I would have loved to bench Tatum for his offseason suckiness but since Evans was just as bad, Tatum will start at small forward. Carlos Bergstrom will be our backup wing. Aaron Donald will start up front for sure and we'll figure out whether Blake Griffin or Andrew Baldwin will be the fifth starter (and the one that doesn't start will kick Arthur Parish from his "third big" role to deep on the pine)."
"I'm ready to make some moves this season with the roster. We've been 'good' but not 'great' for too long. Training Camp showed me some guys on this roster need a wakeup call and if I have anything to say about it, expect the roster to look different come December 15th once I can start trading some of these slugs."