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Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Hawks reflect Knight’s failures
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
To see how far the Hawks haven’t come during their journey from self-inflicted implosion to wherever their slew of bosses say this franchise is headed, just study the other guys Wednesday night at Philips Arena.
After doing so, you’re allowed to scream as loudly as you wish.
Those other guys are the Utah Jazz. In 2003, the year before Hawks general manager Billy Knight did the right thing by blowing up the messy roster that he inherited, the Jazz prepared to go from sweet to sour notes on the court after the retirement of John Stockton and the departure of Karl Malone. If you combine those losses to the Jazz’s stated goal of rebuilding, you had their version of Knight ousting the likes of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Jason Terry, Boris Diaw, Antoine Walker, Rasheed Wallace, Theo Ratliff and Al Harrington.
The thing is, while the Hawks are now closer to the cellar than the penthouse of the Southeast Division with the NBA’s worst overall roster not in Philadelphia, the Jazz are roaring among the elite at 18-7. Not only that, the Jazz have a three-game lead in the Northwest and a future as bright as the Hawks’ is cloudy.
Why the contrast? Well, here are the CliffsNotes: The Jazz get it right more often than not when it comes to drafting, and the Hawks don’t. You also have that gambling thing. The Jazz aren’t afraid to seek the big payoff at the roulette wheel (Mehmet Okur and Carlos Boozer), and Knight prefers the nickel slots (Speedy Claxton and Lorenzen Wright).
To be fair, the Jazz had a shot to build walls and a roof around a solid foundation named Andrei Kirilenko. It’s just that the Jazz also had the guts and the wisdom to add paneling by giving $50 million to Okur and $68 million to Boozer as free agents. Now the three comprise one of the league’s most potent frontcourts.
In contrast, the Hawks don’t have one of the league’s most potent anything. Knight is so obsessed with not overspending on players that only the Charlotte Bobcats have a lower payroll than the Hawks’ $45.6 million. Plus, the Hawks are nearly $8 million under the salary cap, which means they have the money. They just don’t like to spend it.
It shows. Beyond Joe Johnson, the Hawks’ only legitimate star, at least five of their 12 players are marginal by NBA standards. Royal Ivey. Matt Freije. Cedric Bozeman. Esteban Batista. Solomon Jones. The Hawks also haven’t a starting point guard (again). Instead, they use a couple of career backups in Tyronn Lue and Claxton in that role. Josh Smith remains a project, and several of his teammates are constant reminders of what the Hawks should have done in past drafts but didn’t.
For instance: The Hawks made Shelden Williams the fifth pick in this year’s draft, and he has yet to impress. In fact, he has yet to do anything worth mentioning. That’s opposed to Rudy Gay, just named the Rookie of the Month in the Western Conference. He was picked in the draft by the Memphis Grizzlies — you know, right after the Hawks picked Williams.
Then there was the 2004 draft near the start of the Hawks’ rebuilding. They took Josh Childress, which was OK, when they could have selected from among Luol Deng, Al Jefferson and Andre Iguodala, which would have been better.
No, I didn’t forget about 2005. I saved that draft for last. That’s when the Hawks took Marvin Williams instead of Chris Paul, the starting point guard that they still need and the former Wake Forest whiz who eventually was named Rookie of the Year for the New Orleans Hornets. Anyway, the Hawks also skipped over somebody else in that draft. We’re talking about Deron Williams, among the league’s most efficient point guards, and guess who was omniscient enough to get him?
If you mentioned the Jazz, you may scream a little louder.
That said, the Hawks still have a chance to get it right. Come this summer, you’ll have stellar point guards Chauncey Billups and Mike Bibby as free agents. You’ll also have Vince Carter, Darko Milicic, Gerald Wallace and Rashad Lewis, all considerable talents, all available at the right price to turn the Hawks into something in the vicinity of the Jazz. Or at least farther away from resembling the Hawks.
Permalink | Comments (100) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Georgia’s ‘Natural’ was plucked off the farm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Cecil Travis died the other day, a man of the soil, and his story should not be allowed to die with him. If there ever was an actual “Natural,” as created by Bernard Malamud, he was your man.
Cecil was discovered by accident, and the story involved a bulbous character about Atlanta named Tubby Walton. Tubby’s dimensions corresponded to his name, and he was a man of multiple ventures as well. One, he ran a cafe, until he found he was giving away more meals at the back door that he was selling up front. Then he created what he insists was absolutely the first baseball school, which he modestly called “Tubby Walton’s Baseball University,” whose campus was a “skin” diamond and a chicken wire backstop. Tubby also managed a semipro team known as “Tubby Walton’s Firecrackers,” and on the side, was a roving baseball scout, known as a “bird dog” in those times.
“I had this ol’ boy in my university named Leroy Waldrop,” Tubby told me, “from out in Clayton County. Leroy told me one day, ‘Mistuh Walton,’ they’s a boy out in my county that can hit anybody.’
” ‘Ain’t nobody can hit anybody, Leroy,’ I said.
” ‘This boy kin, Mistuh Walton, but he can’t get away. His daddy’s got him plowing.’
“I thought about it — a lot of good ol’ boys come off the farm. So I told Waldrop, ‘Get that boy up to the university by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning, and I’ll put him on scholarship for a spell. Well, lookuh heah, he showed up wearing white duck pants and tennis shoes and an old cap. I tole him to get a bat and let’s look at his swing.
“He picked up the first bat he come to, never looked at the name, if it was Foxx or Simmons or Ruth, like all the fancy hitters did. I had this old boy put there pitching, just got out of prison, and he was mean. He threw the first pitch, and this lean ol’ plowboy hit a line shot to left field, and he kept hitting ‘em, no matter what that old boy threw. Knocked him down, he got up and hit another line drive.
“Well, I decided I’d better drive this boy out to his house and talk to his daddy personally. When we were driving up the hill to his house, I remember he said, ‘Mistuh Walton, see if you can get Pa to let me plow and play baseball, too.’ “
As luck would have it, Tubby just happened to have a baseball contract in his pocket. Cecil’s father was sitting on the porch. He was a school teacher and farmer as well. “I’d never signed anybody before that could read and write,” Tubby said. “Mr. Travis took that contract and started reading it while he rocked, and he never looked up till he finished. I’d never seen anybody read one of them contracts before.
“It sounds like he’d be joining the chain gang,” Cecil’s father said.
“Yeah, but they’ll pay him for his work,” Tubby said. So Mr. Travis signed, Tubby got $300 from the Chattanooga club, and Cecil never got a dime. Never mind, all he wanted to do was hit and get away from that plow.
After Cecil got to Chattanooga, he kept hitting line drives, piling up batting averages of .429, .362, .358. Then Washington called him up to fill in for Ossie Bluege, the third baseman who was injured. In his first game, Cecil got five straight hits. When he came back to the Senators to stay, he strung together a series of well over .300 averages until 1941, when he struck gold. While Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were stealing all the headlines, Cecil was making all the hits, 218 of them, leading the league. Then, his most promising seasons ahead of him, four of them, were spent in the World War II infantry. And when he returned from the battlefront in Europe, the magic was gone. Nothing came “natural” any more. After he retired from the field, he scouted for the Senators for several years, but sad to say, he never came up with a matching “natural.”
Say this, he still retired with one of the more remarkable statistics in the book: In 4,914 times at bat in the American League, Cecil Travis struck out only 291 times.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Deion Sanders brokered the peace process between Terrell Owens and DeAngelo Hall. He hopes to work his way up to Israel and Hamas.
9: Deion Sanders (along with Marshall Faulk), by the way, pretty much accused Michael Vick of quitting on the Falcons when he left the Dallas game with a minute remaining down by two scores after suffering a groin strain. This after Vick threw four touchdown passes to keep his team in the game. Thought you’d be interested in that insight.
8: Deion Sanders - peace broker? Is this the same guy who got into a slap fight with Andre Rison during pass coverage, then raised his hands in mock victory? Is this the same guy who went through his athletic career with an it’s-all-about-me attitude. So far as I know, he never spit on anybody, but some of his actions screamed as much. And he’s teaching others about class?
7: Something is wrong when Joe Johnson is sixth in the NBA in scoring and he’s only ninth among Eastern Conference guards in All-Star voting.
6: If you’re a Knicks fan, are you upset if David Stern decides to suspend Isiah Thomas? Or do you just change the locks while he’s gone?
5: Whether you agree or disagree with the fines and suspensions levied by Stern, he is acting the way a commissioner is supposed to act. As opposed, to say, the muppet running baseball.
4: Tom Brady apparently has broken up with Bridget Moynihan. I know this because I went to ESPN.com, looking for hockey scores. This apparently is considered such a big deal that ESPN.com’s page 2 is running a poll on who should be Tom’s next girlfriend. I voted for Dan Patrick.
3: I lived in the Bay Area and covered Stanford for two years. Academic-roadblocks notwithstanding, it should be one of the best jobs in the country. But if you believed Greg Knapp was a bad candidate, how about the guy Stanford ended up hiring: Jim Harbaugh. He has never coached or recruited at the 1-A level (he has been coaching at 1-AA University of San Diego) and last year had a DUI arrest. Congrats Jim. Now go Beat USC.
2: Ten bucks says somebody turns down the Alabama job to take the San Diego job.
1: Got an e-mail Monday asking me to participate in a conference call today to learn about “one of the most significant announcements in Arena Football League history.” Can somebody monitor it for me?
Permalink | Comments (35) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
