AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2006 > July
July 2006
Deal delay drags on
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Patience is a virtue all you Hawks fans must have in surplus. Because here we are, nearly a month after the free agent negotiation period began, and there is still no completed sign-and-trade deal for Al Harrington and most of you are still here. Your perseverance in this matter is admirable. This is the second straight summer you’ve all had to wait like this (like I wrote last week, Joe Johnson wasn’t officially a Hawk until Aug. 19 last summer).
For certain, it’s beyond maddening for all involved. Well, almost all involved. But this second straight summer of seeming uncertainty will take a toll elsewhere. And follow me here, but I believe that the Hawks are treading into dangerously deep waters this summer by not consummating this Harrington deal sooner.
Because while players will always’come when their bottom line is money, and sometimes the dollars are so overwhelming a player can’t deny them. When building a team, though, a quality, playoff-hungry team, you need seasoned role players. And those role players are usually acquired during these dog days of summer. And while the Hawks spend months every summer to finish their major transaction, other teams are doing business at a pace much more conducive to an immediate transformation of both their roster and culture.
The rebuilding the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets embarked upon is already weeks into the making because they didn’t hesitate to make moves. They consummated them as soon as legally possible and began the transition process as soon as it was feasible.
Say what you will about the Pacers and this Harrington deal, the rest of their summer makeover hasn’t slowed down because this main affair has taken longer than they might have liked. The Milwaukee Bucks have quietly reshaped their roster with a series of shrewd moves (the latest reportedly the move of Jamaal Magloire to Portland for Steve Blake, Brian Skinner and Ha Seung Jin).
If the Hawks were a team in need of less tinkering - a playoff team already and one that needs only mild tweaking and not a drastic overhaul - I might not be as concerned. But after speaking with players, agents, team officials and people in general from other NBA teams, the one question they all have is what’s going on with the Hawks?
That’s code for what’s the deal with the ownership situation and what are they doing down there to fix that team? (And while few people are speaking about any of this and so much more on the record, rest assured that plenty is being said off the record.)
The ownership situation is what it is, which is a process that promises to carry on for the foreseeable future without a promising ending for all involved. But the fixing of the team, that’s something that can’t be disputed. That’s something that should have tangible results after an offseason of working the phones and studying every possible avenue for curing your own ills. Speedy Claxton was a huge step in that direction, whether you want to believe it or not. And that leaves the Hawks’ search for another big man as the last major move they need to make before moving on to seeing how their roster shapes up with training camp in sight. The remaining candidates are few - former Hawk Lorenzen Wright is the most attractive and sensible option out there and is very much a possibility.
But much like everything else about this Hawks offseason, patience is the word that you need to repeat 100 times per hour, per day, while watching these things play out.
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Bet on J.J. making U.S. team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s mind boggling to me that we’re entering the final week of July and there’s still no deal done on this Al Harrington sign-and-trade. But here we are, watching and waiting for the agreement to be completed.
As I discussed here last week, Indiana is the destination. But the details are still being worked out. I saw Hawks GM Billy Knight several times over the course of the weekend here in Las Vegas and asked what the hold up was and when he felt like something would be done. He told me that talks were ongoing and that when something was finalized, and only then, would he be ready to discuss it.
So, as of Monday afternoon, the deal has not been completed. When it is, the details will be available for you as soon as I can get them typed and posted on ajc.com.
In case you hadn’t heard already, Joe Johnson has turned heads in a major way during the U.S. national team training camp. He’s in some ridiculously great shape (he joked that he’s had months to work on his body since the Hawks’ season ended so long ago) and he’s shooting the ball as well as ever.
In talking to several people who are allowed in the gym for the entire practice session (the media is only allowed to watch the last 45 minutes or so of the workout), they’ve raved about Joe’s ability to play basically all over the floor.
One guy I like and respect said that Joe’s this team’s version of Ray Allen. And he said Allen, and not some of the other recent Team USA stars, was the U.S. player feared most by opposing international teams because of his deadly shooting ability and ability to play within the flow of the international game. He thinks Joe is this team’s Ray Allen. I thought that was an interesting comparison and one that seems to have plenty of merit.
And it’s no secret that Coach K and Jerry Colangelo are smitten with not only Joe’s game but his demeanor, professionalism and tireless work ethic (read about it in Tuesday’s story on JJ).
There’s no way he doesn’t make Wednesday’s trim to 15 players on the roster and I’m going to predict now that he’ll be among the 12 players that make the final roster for next month’s World Championships in Japan.
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Watching rooks, awaiting deal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like most of you, I’m still waiting for something to get done on this Al Harrington deal (none of us are as anxious as Harrington).
There has been nothing the past few days, all sides talking but nothing close to a deal. I wish there was something to report because honestly, I don’t want to have be talking about this into August. But until all sides get what they want, I think everything stays as is — ongoing negotiations.
That’s why this weekend’s trip to Utah for the Rocky Mountain Revue was a welcome change to the free-agent circus. At least there are some games to watch, although the officiating is so bad here that they’re making it tough to stomach even these glorified pickup games. There were 80 fouls in the Hawks-Mavs game Saturday night. It was “brutal” — as someone who sat near me repeated about 70 times during the game.
My quick impressions:
Marvin is a different guy. Salim is doing his thing,: He’s one of the best pure shot makers in the league.
And the rookies are, well, rookies. They’re going to struggle in their first taste. They can’t stop fouling. Both Shelden Williams and Solomon Jones have shown flashes of the things that got them drafted. But this game, even here, moves so much faster than what they’re used to; so watching them struggle doesn’t worry me one bit.
Now is too early to be passing lasting judgments on any rookies. Talk to me when the veterans show up for training camp and we’ll assess everybody again then.
I’m headed to Vegas later this week for the national team training camp where Joe Johnson is bidding for a spot on the 12-man roster for the World Championships. I’ll post daily from Vegas on the goings on there. It should be interesting. And maybe by then we’ll get some movement on the sign-and-trade for Al.
Hawks owners must end feud
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Since no one else seems willing to say it out loud, let me be the first to blurt out the obvious. Is there any way these feuding Hawks owners can figure out a way to end this legal mess now before it gets any more ridiculous? Don’t laugh. I’m serious. They could scrap the rest of this multimillion dollar court drama and iron this thing out before they make an even bigger mockery of this franchise than they already have. It’s the only way to preserve whatever shred of dignity this operation might have left.
Because this current feuding constitutes one of the nastiest divorces in the history of professional sports, and it’s already a strong contender for the worst of all time without an end in sight.
Seriously, when can you remember ownership of any team in any sport fouling things up like this? It’s beyond embarrassing to the fans, however many of you still identify yourselves as such. For nearly 12 months now we’ve heard that that the ownership mess has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of either the Hawks or Thrashers. But as we all found out last week, that is nowhere near true.
And how would you like to be Al Harrington these days? You play your guts out for two years under trying circumstances and this is your reward. I’ve talked to him every day since the free agent negotiating period began and he’s far from happy with what’s going on but refuses to make any negative comments, public or otherwise, about the organization. It’s a much more honorable disposition than most of us would have were we in his position.
That’s why I wrote here nearly a year ago that these players, coaches and other foot soldiers should not be held solely accountable for their shortcomings on the court the past two seasons. The problems within the organization came from above all of their pay grades.
Some of you scoffed at my defense of the worker bees but perhaps now you realize what was clear to me from the first day I set foot in Atlanta: You can’t have a winning team with dysfunctional leadership. And that leadership starts at the top and flows south.
That said, I’m not even interested in picking sides in this ownership feud and I would caution all of you against doing so as well, because what’s going on right now is so not about the fans of this team. If it were, someone would have stepped up, ended this nonsense a long time ago and allowed these teams the freedoms and necessary resources to pursue the type of success needed to fortify a fan base in today’s ultra-competitive pro sports environment.
Handcuffing the Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A ruling Thursday by a Maryland judge in the ongoing Atlanta Spirit ownership battle would bar the partnership from signing new players to contracts of more than a year while the legal battle continues.
For the Hawks, the verdict from the bench doesn’t affect their ongoing negotiations with free agent guard Speedy Claxton. But it could hamper their ability to get maximum value in a likely trade for forward Al Harrington.
The Thrashers have already signed free agent center Steve Rucchin. But the judge’s decision may make it difficult to lock up a long-term extension for goalie Kari Lehtonen.
How badly will this ruling hurt the competitive abilities of both teams?
Or are the only winners here the lawyers?
NBA’s draft system stinks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nothing makes me laugh harder than draft grades the morning after the draft. Call me back in two or three years when we can see exactly what some of these so-called genius decision makers did on draft night. For the record, I don’t think this draft was nearly as weak as some people projected it to be. It was far from the deepest in NBA history. But there are several players who could end up being quality NBA players.
I’ve actually saved my venom for someone else, or something else. The NBA’s age limit rule is officially the biggest waste of time since the dress code was introduced. So there’s an age-limit rule for American teenagers but if you’re an international reach … excuse me, prospect, then it’s fine for you to enter the draft. If the league was truly concerned about players entering before they were ready, they’d have come up with a rule with more teeth.
But to see Bargnani go No. 1 overall with such limited experience cracks me up. What if he ends up like Kwame Brown in his first few seasons, will we all be panning the international game the way we do the grassroots system here in this country? What if Thabo Sefolosha, Saer Sene, Oleksiy Pecherov, Sergio Rodriguez and Joel Freeland can’t play? What if these guys suffer the same fate as Ndudi Ebi, Travis Outlaw and other domestic projects that years after the fact are either no longer in the league or still struggling through the formative stages of their careers? Who do we blame then? Who gets taken to task for these errors of judgment by the teams that drafted them.
What’s worse is the draft makes a mockery of the message the NBA, college coaches and the rest of the sanctimonious portion of our population tries to sell to young players in this country. They’re told the longer they stay in school the better their chances of becoming NBA players and immediate contributors. But what must Michigan State’s Paul Davis be thinking these days, knowing that he could have bolted college three years ago and had a better chance of being a first round pick than he did Wednesday night (when he fell to the Clippers in the second round)? I’m willing to wager David Stern’s 2006-07 salary that Davis plays more meaningful NBA minutes sooner than Freeland, who according to the draft night profile on ESPN was discovered bagging groceries at a London market before taking up the game.
The system just stinks. International prospects can be drafted and then left overseas (so as not to count against a team’s payroll) until they’re either ready to play or it’s financially doable for the NBA team that owns their rights. U.S. players don’t have that luxury. Theirs is a much more cutthroat existence.
Now that I’m done ranting about the draft let me go ahead and get to free agency. The Hawks dove in head first Saturday, offering Sam Cassell a reported two-year, $13 million deal (I was told Sunday that they actually were willing to up as high as $16 million) only to see Sam-I-Am turn them down to stay in LA. Next up is Speedy Claxton, who is younger, probably a bit cheaper per season and probably a much better fit for the future beyond the 2006-07 season. The only thing left is to get a deal with Speedy done as soon as possible, I’m hoping it’s wrapped up before the middle of the week. And then they can move on to the business that is sign-and-trading Al Harrington for some much needed help (another PG and another big). This also could be completed before you’re done feasting on those 4th of July leftovers.
