AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2007 > July > 30
Monday, July 30, 2007
Does the game even exist anymore?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After two solid weeks of CNN-esque sports coverage the question hit me late Sunday night: does the game even exist anymore?
It’s a rhetorical question, of course. But with the steroid/performance enhancement era in full swing in basically every pro sports endeavor, what do we have left? No one escapes suspicion these days, whether there is any legitimate reason to suspect them or not. And if guys aren’t being accused of “cheating” the game they are being accused of doing something even more heinous (Tim Donaghy, Adam Jones and Mike Vick to name the three most prominent names).
That’s why I’m fighting the power today with an overdose of pure basketball. I promised to give you Part II of my summer league Wrap (it) Up. That’s the last time we all talked strictly basketball and were able to enjoy our the frivolous nature of these things that we take way too seriously sometimes.
I’m here to do my part today in refocusing your attention on basketball. I don’t care that we’ve already pounded these topics into dust. So get your hammers out again so we can pound them some more:
Part I (an epic even longer than I intended) finished with Josh Smith, so I won’t belabor that issue much longer. But I will update you all on a few details that have trickled out since then. A grim picture was painted about the prospects of Smith and the Hawks agreeing on a contract extension before the Halloween deadline (and I still don’t believe a deal will be struck by then), but the Hawks did make a solid offer ($9 million a year over five years) and they did have the entire ownership group in agreement on extending such an offer to Smith (who is a franchise cornerstone regardless of all the opinions about him to the contrary). It doesn’t sound to me like the two sides are terribly far apart on the number (I’d guess roughly $10-15 million over the life of the deal), but that’s just me guessing. What I can tell is that both sides appear willing to play this season out and see where they stand next summer - when Smith will be a restricted free agent and the Hawks will have the right to match any offer he receives from another team. I don’t think it’ll be nearly the soap opera some people have forecasted it to be, but I do think it will be a situation that needs to be monitored closely.
Another topic of interest leftover from the June draft is who or what put the kibosh on that rumored (and that’s all it was) deal that had the Hawks acquiring Amare Stoudemire in a three-team deal with Phoenix and Minnesota. My digging has yet to produce anything other than flat denials from every corner about the seriousness of the Suns’ to even deal their first team All-NBA center. I thought it was crazy at the time and I still think anybody willing to part with that type of talent for anything other than say a Dwight Howard (the only other young big man, to me, in Stoudemire’s category) is lunacy. But for the record (and for the last time), Stoudemire was not coming to Atlanta (no matter how sweet it sounded in theory and no matter how much the Hawks or their fans wanted it to happen).
Speaking of value, one of my many conversations in Salt Lake City centered on the value of another Stoudamire … Salim. The third-year shooting guard would appear to be the odd man out in a backcourt playing rotation that now includes a rookie guard (Acie Law IV) that can swing between both the point guard and shooting guard positions. But I was told that to assume anything regarding Stoudamire would be a mistake. In a league where shooters have always been valued above and beyond any other specialist, Stoudamire’s the Hawks’ deadliest pound-for-pound (or should I say minute-for-minute?) threat. Figuring out how to use him falls on the coaching staff. They’ll have some tough decisions to make about how to utilize this guy. But there’s no doubt the Hawks need another outside shooter to help take some of the scoring pressure off Joe Johnson. Stoudamire and Hawks coach Mike Woodson have to find some common ground in their relationship (which was considerably better after the February trade deadline compared to what it was before that time). I dig Salim’s free spirit and his attitude toward the game, dude is a perfectionist and strives for such when he’s on that floor. I admit he’s one of my favorite cats, quirks and all, on this team the past two years. I sat out the deadline with him in February and witnessed his anguish. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen, if he was going to be traded or not. But he vowed that day, when it finally hit him that he wasn’t going to be traded, that he was going to play his guts out no matter what happened. And if you go back and study the remainder of his season that’s exactly what he did.
Wait a minute … you hear that? Sounds like crickets. Or the Hawks’ activity (or lack thereof) on the free agent market this summer. I didn’t expect the Hawks to be terribly active on the free agent scene this summer. But I haven’t been able to find any potential free agent the Hawks have courted this summer. I had a feeling after watching the summer league games that the 14 players the Hawks have under contract would be the 14 they’d go to work with at training camp. It’s not rare for a team to be quiet in the offseason, particularly when they feel they’re at a point with their core players that allows them to concentrate solely on the growth and development of those guys. And every update I’ve received indicates that guys like Josh Smith, Marvin Williams, Josh Childress and the like are working like crazy in anticipation of this season being the one that finally puts the Hawks back on the proverbial map. But crickets?
Finally, and there will be more on this in a story I’m working on for later this week, what do the Hawks do with all these point guards? I know it sounds like a ridiculous question for a team that’s spent the better part of the past three seasons trying to find an answer to that question (I’d make my obligatory Luke Ridnour comment here but I’ve moved on, ha). We had a poll here on ajc.com a couple weeks back asking what the Hawks should do. And the voting was overwhelmingly in favor of starting rookie Acie Law (a noble suggestion for sure, but reasonable … I don’t know about that just yet).
The fact is the Hawks have some serious cash invested in Speedy Claxton ($6 mil-plus), Tyronn Lue ($3.5) and Anthony Johnson ($2.6). If any moves are made by the Hawks in training camp (and that’s a very good possibility), I expect it to be one of these guys being moved to make room for the rookie, who projects as the full service point guard that the Hawks have not had. I asked one of my dinner companions in Salt Lake City what they would do with all those guys and he made quick work of it. “For that team, with the young guys they’ve got piled up on the wings, they need to find out first if Speedy is healthy and if he can play the way he did before last season,” he said. “If he’s ready to run and ready to run that team, then he’s your guy with Acie backing him up and [Lue or Johnson] as the third guy. You’ve got to have a security blanket with an injury-prone veteran and a rookie. The bottom line is this, if Speedy’s not ready for the starting job, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to move him and go with those other guys. But they’ve got to get that spot cleaned up if they have a chance to fight for a playoff spot.”
Figuring out who to move and for what is why Billy Knight and his front office crew make the big bucks we don’t. They’ll have to decide which guy fits best from a chemistry standpoint and likely from a financial standpoint. The money spent on Claxton (who has three years left on his deal) makes it tough to think about trading him. That said, I don’t think there is a sacred cow among the veterans. Special attention needs to be paid to these guys come training camp.
