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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > July > 23
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Losing Childress an astonishing mistake by Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This summer was the test. The Hawks flunked. Are we surprised?
They couldn’t persuade the lesser of their two prized free agents to stay. They got outspent and outhustled by a team from Greece. Think about that.
An NBA-caliber player in the flower of his youth has chosen to play somewhere other than the NBA. It’s unprecedented, yes, but it’s also fitting. After this ham-handed non-negotiation, the Hawks should forfeit all claim to being big-league. They allowed something to happen that simply cannot happen.
Josh Childress isn’t a star — Rick Sund, the Hawks general manager, characterized him Wednesday as “a utility player” — but he’s precisely the sort of multi-tasker found on great teams. He’s a quick and clever sub who changes games. Having nurtured him for four seasons, the Hawks should have had some sense of his value. Alas, they wound up being penny-wise and pound-foolish. They dared Childress to leave. He took the dare.
This was Childress, speaking via conference call from Athens: “I wanted to get it done early … I was disappointed by the initial Hawks offer. They said, ‘Go out and find another offer’ … There was no urgency, no desire to get anything done.”
How could that be? The Hawks had no picks in the June draft. Sund and co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. had claimed the entire offseason focus was on keeping Messrs. Childress and Smith, but this disconcerted effort drove one Josh across the Atlantic.
Working a sign-and-trade wouldn’t have been the preferred course — Childress needed to stay here, period — but at least it would have yielded a return in personnel. This way the Hawks get nothing, and to twist the knife they must take a hit against their salary cap if they choose to retain his NBA rights. (Lon Babby, who represents Childress, was only happy to share that nugget with his media audience.)
This astonishing whiff comes not three months after the Hawks took the Celtics to Game 7 and this woebegone franchise began to buy back the good will lost over a decade of incompetence and indifference. This summer was going to be the time to consolidate precious gains, to prove to a suddenly rapt audience that happy days were here again. Instead we see that, in the serious-about-basketball department, the Hawks weren’t even a match for Greeks bearing gifts.
“After the Boston series, we thought things would get done,” said Childress, speaking of himself and Smith. “But I don’t think there was any commitment shown … We had a good run, we’d done everything we were expected to do, and we were put on hold.”
Sund noted that the Hawks offered Childress “more than market value,” but there comes a time when an organization that would win big has to spend what it takes to win big, even if it’s above market value. Sund wasn’t willing to do budge upward, not even after Olympiakos raised the stakes. Said Sund: “Going above the luxury tax with a team under .500 is probably premature.”
That’s the kind of small-minded thinking that has, over time, reduced the Hawks to irrelevance. After the pain and suffering of making all those lottery picks and watching them flail, the organization had cause to think this group might well win if kept intact. And now the Hawks’ fourth-best player is gone, and the third-best could follow.
For a few dizzying spring days, we dared to believe the Hawks were no longer the Hawks, that they were something better and brighter. Fooled us again.
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