AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2007 > March > 27
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Failing to register with people
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sorry it took me so long to get back here from Miami. But my postgame routine Monday took a detour to Ocean Drive (no, I wasn’t frolicking on South Beach until the wee hours with all those wanna-be model types, though they were swarming all over the place. I was taking in a late-night gabfest with a couple of friends who are connected with the Heat and Hawks.
We were having a gloves-off conversation about all things basketball when one of them said something that made my jaw drop. She was asking about the Hawks and what I thought was wrong with them (you don’t have the time to read it all and I’d need a six-month sabbatical to write it all) and I uttered the phrase, “since they lost Joe,” and she interrupted me by asking, “Joe who?”
Now she argued immediately that it was a temporary mental glitch on her part. She was quite embarrassed and insisted I didn’t use her name (so I won’t). She said that she had just totally blanked on the Hawks’ lone All-Star and captain, leading scorer and best player. And that’s entirely possible.
But it dawned on me that her overlooking of Joe is part of a much more significant issue around the league (one that we’ve all discussed here incessantly).
The Hawks just don’t register with people.
They lack a universal identity, a public persona and a real bonafide face of the franchise that people recognize. It’s actually pretty sad when you consider all the hard work that Joe Johnson has put in (All-Star, Team USA, etc.) to raise not only his own profile but that of his team. But being a controversy-free and relatively laid-back, quiet guy doesn’t excite many people in this “look at me,” Bling Bling world.
That’s not a knock on anyone involved, the basketball public or JJ, it’s just the truth. And I didn’t really start to analyze it until about 1:45 a.m. with the wind slapping my napkin up in my pineapple juice and all over my shirt (only I could find a way to muck up a late night trip to South Beach).
So as I was preparing to leave Miami this morning (and outside of LA, Miami is the hardest road trip to finish because you’re hoping for anything to cause you to spend at least another 24 hours in that spot), I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend forgetting Joe was even a member of the Hawks.
And to be clear about the person who did this, she’s as well-versed in the inner-workings of the league (from all sides, having worked in high levels within the league and for teams and even on other side of the business) as a person could be. So this wasn’t some basketball novice doing this. She knows this stuff inside and out, from a perspective most of us could only dream of having.
And that brings me to my final thought and the only tangible solution I can see to this thing.
The Hawks have entered that nasty netherworld reserved for only the most futile of organizations in professional sports. They’re working on their eighth straight season without a visit to the postseason (and there’s no NIT for the NBA). If Golden State finds its way to the playoffs this year, the Hawks will be the owners of the league’s longest playoff drought, which is instant fame for all the wrong reasons.
The only way they can cure this thing is to move heaven and earth (and perhaps a few unwanted and/or redundant pieces on the roster and within the organization) to make themselves a legitimate playoff team. Not a playoff contender but a team that from the start of training camp until the middle of April is playoff bound. I know that’s easier said than done (and if I knew exactly how to make it happen I wouldn’t be writing this, I’d be somewhere botching drafts, cuddling up to Kevin Durant’s mother at the Big 12 Tournament and jetting off to Europe to scout players I knew couldn’t change the fortunes of my franchise).
Admitting you have a problem is the first step in recovery, or something like that. And too many of these teams refuse to admit the obvious; that in order to be a postseason player decision makers have to have the guts to make the big moves that can improve a franchise now rather than waiting and trying, in vain, to do it over the span of time. That over time approach usually involves compound mistakes that set a franchise back more than it pushes it forward. If it works out, that’s fantastic for the franchise bold enough to take that chance. And so what if it doesn’t work out. The rest of us are going to pick your bones anyway, so you might as well go out swinging.
Nearly the entire league sat on its hands at the trade deadline this year, in an embarrassingly uneventful scenario in which no team truly changed it’s immediate future. That can’t happen again this summer, not if a team like the Hawks wants to be relevant again, here in the city of Atlanta and beyond.
Now, I’m done preaching (to the choir), at least for today. Leave your money in the basket.
