And even more disappointing than Josh Smith and the Hawks being nowhere near terms on either a new contract or deal to send him elsewhere, a week into the month of August.

Even our so-called friends have taken the low road (Lang Whitaker of SLAM magazine fired off a salvo of his own a few minutes ago admonishing me for the hands-free approach to the blog the past few days).

But I’ll present you the same dilemma that I will to him and anyone else stressing these Hawks and their feared next move in a summer that will seemingly never end, can you handle the truth?

Can you handle the truth about how and why the Josh Childress situation melted down the way it did? (Botched negotiations forced him to consider an option no one expected and he pounced.)

Can you handle the truth about why the Josh Smith situation remains unsolved? (The Hawks want him at $9 million a year and Smith wants more, something along the lines of what Emeka Okafor, Monta Ellis and Luol Deng have signed for. And until one side is willing to bend, nothing will happen.)

Can you handle the ugly truth about your favorite team? (That right or wrong, the past four years the Hawks have become the team that spends basically the entire summer conducting business that shouldn’t take nearly as long but always does when they are involved.)

Some of you keep asking for updates when the ugly truth is there is no news to update. And that old adage about no news being good news doesn’t apply.

No news means that nothing has changed since last week, save for the release of the Hawks’ 2008-09 schedule (a brutal opening stretch will set the tone for the season, per usual).

Chop it up however you want, but NOTHING HAS CHANGED! The stalemate continues (or as one insider told me Wednesday afternoon, “nothing’s changed from July 1st until today”). For all the back and forth of the past couple weeks the sad truth is Brett Favre will have a new team before Josh Smith’s situation is resolved.

The Hawks are gambling with house money right now, have been since the playoffs ended. You judge for yourself if they’ve handled things right. Folks are going to continue to argue both sides but trying to find a consensus is pointless, because no one here seems willing to be swayed.

And why should you?

If you’ve been riding with a certain side to this point, there’s no sense in trying to switch sides now. Even if it has become painfully obvious that

As for my main man Lang, Mike, oldmike, some sense, JOE, ant banks and some of you other folks wanting me to comment on stuff written about the Hawks on other sites or just comment for the sake of commenting, I won’t waste your time analyzing someone else’s analysis of a situation everyone around here knows infinitely better.

The perceptions about the Hawks as a franchise have most certainly become a reality in cybersapce and to the talking heads that comment on such things. Writers, on air personalities and other “so-called” pundits from national publications haven’t wavered in their skewering of the Hawks from Billy Knight’s regime to Rick Sund’s new administration.

They are not feeling the Hawks and the way they do business.

Can you handle that truth?

As for the schedule, aside from that opening stretch it’s no more brutal than it has been in any of the past four seasons that I can tell.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the Hawks are ending yet another streak this season with their Dec. 17 EPSN game against the Celtics, the first meeting between the two since the playoff spat.

Six years between nationally televised regular season games is unfathomable. How the NBA and its network partners have been able to get away with that in one of the nation’s top 10 media markets is nothing short of stunning.

The schedule makers could have really spiced things up and had the Hawks open in Boston on ring ceremony night before an ESPN audience. That would have made for a crazy intense opening night for both teams.

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