Moving to a new location
AJC blogs are moving to a new technical platform. So check out Terence Moore’s new blog home and bookmark it.
Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > April > 30
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Management’s lack of patience hurt Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nine years.
That’s absurd.
During an era of parity in sports, which includes the NBA, where you can become significant out of nowhere with a couple of quick and bold moves, it took nine years for the Hawks to go from clueless as a franchise when it comes to reaching the playoffs to wherever they are now.
So where are the Hawks now? For one, they are preparing for a Game 6 on Friday night at Philips Arena during their ongoing first-round attempt to shock the Boston Celtics. There wasn’t supposed to be even a Game 5. The Celtics and their league-leading 66 victories during the regular season were expected by many to sweep their way past a Hawks team that won 37 games, the lowest victory total of anybody entering the postseason.
For another, the Hawks are where they should have been seven, six or at least five years ago. Back when they last made the playoffs, management joined its knee-jerk fan base and howling media (OK, I’m guilty) to fret over what they all considered to be an old and slow team. That Hawks team was good enough to reach the second round before dropping four straight to a New York Knicks bunch that eventually reached the NBA Finals. It’s just that, for longevity’s sake, the Hawks franchise needed a young and fast team that resembles the athletically gifted one that it has now in the playoffs.
We’re back to the absurd. It took all of those nine years, along with two different general managers, two different ownership groups and four different head coaches for the Hawks to reach this point.
The operative word here is incompetence regarding the Hawks’ botching of an otherwise decent plan. We mention as much, because if you wish to improve in the present and the future, you must learn from the past, and much of the Hawks’ past over the past nine seasons was brutal.
“Yeah, and if you look at it and if you go to [former Hawks general manager] Pete Babcock, he definitely would take back the trades that he did or whoever made those particular trades,” said Steve Smith, a Hawks broadcaster, who was among those slam-dunked by Hawks officials nine years ago after that Knicks sweep. He was the shooting guard on that “old and slow” team before it was dismantled for a rebuilding program that has lasted longer than Japan’s recovery from World War II. Added Smith, “People took us for granted. We were winning 50, 55 games a year. We were in the Eastern Conference, which was the Western Conference back then, the powerhouse conference.”
In fact, during the Hawks’ run to the playoffs with Smith in the latter 1990s, they were eliminated by the elite, ranging from Reggie Miller’s Pacers to Shaquille O’Neal’s Magic to Michael Jordan’s Bulls to Patrick Ewing’s Knicks.
Hawks management panicked anyway by unleashing a two-year purge that involved Lenny Wilkens, only the NBA’s all-time winningest coach, efficient point guard Mookie Blaylock, center Dikembe Mutombo, who was so “old” back then that he still is young enough right now to help the Houston Rockets in the playoffs, and consummate professionals such as Grant Long and Tyrone Corbin.
“If they would have kept that team together, we would have had a chance [for a championship],” Smith said. “When you look at my five years in Atlanta and the nine years I played in the East overall, Chicago won six of those championships.”
That’s Chicago, as in Air Jordan. Those Bulls were as potent as these Celtics are supposed to be now. Even so, these Hawks have been competitive against these Celtics for long stretches. Said Smith, when comparing his Hawks team to this one that is the youngest in the playoffs, “They’re definitely a lot more athletic. We just had more experience.”
Translated: Smith’s Hawks team was “old and slow,” but not enough for ownership and management to throw the franchise into a nearly decade-old funk.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Hawks/NBA
