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Friday, August 19, 2005
Knight emerges as biggest winner in Hawks dispute
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Billy Knight is free to do anything with the Hawks he wants. He’s that powerful. He’s so powerful that he just became the first general manager in the history of sports to fire an owner.
Knight won more than a slap-fight with Steve Belkin. Knight won the sort of approval that few GMs ever get. The remaining Hawks’ owners speak of Knight more glowingly than corporate Time Warner has ever spoken of John Schuerholz, whose team has won 13 consecutive division titles. Knight, lest we forget, presides over a club that won 13 games.
“It speaks to Billy as a person that he was willing to step up and say, ‘No,’ ” Michael Gearon Jr. said Friday. And now the one owner who doubted Knight is being bought out, which is probably a good thing. Knight knows way more basketball than Belkin, and Knight is moving with bold dispatch to replace a rusty old roster with a shiny new one. But with the lone dissenter gone, somebody still needs to ask: What if Knight’s wrong?
“Then I get fired,” Knight said. “That’s the way it goes in this business. You get fired for being wrong. Sometimes you get fired for being right. I drafted the rookie of the year [Pau Gasol] in Memphis and still got fired.”
Publicist Arthur Triche labeled Friday as “a glorious day for the Atlanta Hawks,” and the man of the moment wasn’t the incoming Joe Johnson or the exiting (and absent) Belkin. The loudest applause heard inside Philips Arena â€â€? albeit from invited Atlanta Spirit employees, hardly a bastion of impartiality â€â€? was for the GM who wouldn’t shake hands.
The Hawks are treating the Phoenix Suns’ fourth-best player as if he’s Kobe Bryant. The holdover owners believe Johnson can play point guard because Knight says he can play point guard. (Never mind that Johnson has averaged 3.2 assists over 323 NBA games.) They believe a team of midsize players can win because Knight, who’s 6-foot-7, likes 6-7 guys who can move between positions. Here’s this from Gearon: “Billy could be revamping what people’s vision of a basketball team is. Who says you have to have a 6-3 point guard and a 7-foot center?”
From a harmonic standpoint, it’s nice to have this long-addled organization believe in something and someone. On a more pragmatic note, it would be nicer still if the Hawks had more to show than 13 wins (against 69 jaw-dropping losses). “It’s still early,” Knight said. “I’ve only been doing this for two years. I still have to get more players.”
And if he can’t get them, it won’t be because his ownership gummed up the works. What’s left of Atlanta Spirit LLC believes Knight, whose nickname as a Pitt Panther was Moonie, has indeed hung the moon. “They see what I’m trying to do, and I appreciate their support,” Knight said. “It’s unusual, but what they’ve showed and done for me speaks volumes.”
Said Gearon: “You’ve got to have somebody you challenge and support. You empower somebody and see his dream, and then you challenge him: ‘You want this guy? OK, why do you want him?’ And then you support him.”
Say this for Knight: He knows his mind. Last summer some of his owners kept pushing him to raise his offer to the free agent Erick Dampier, but Knight insisted the journeyman center wasn’t worth more than $50 million. So Dampier signed with Dallas for upwards of $70 million. Said Knight: “I’m going to get the guys I want. I’d rather save some money and move on to the next guy.”
The next guy, as we now know, was Joe Johnson, whom Knight values at $70 million, plus Boris Diaw and two No. 1 draft picks. For the Hawks’ sake, Johnson needs to be really good. For Billy Knight’s sake, Johnson needs to be magic.
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