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Thursday, June 21, 2007
Don’t gripe if Hawks draft Horford at 3
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Just because the Detroit Lions drafted dud wide receivers in years past doesn’t mean Calvin Johnson will be a similar dud. Just because the Hawks should have taken point guards with their first picks of previous drafts doesn’t mean they should take one this time.
Mike Conley Jr. is a fine player who was, over the three weeks of March Madness, the NCAA tournament’s MVP. Conley is a point guard, and the Hawks, as the world knows, still lack one of those. But the guess is that they won’t make Conley the draft’s No. 3 selection, and they might not make him the No. 11 even if he’s available.
The belief here is that the Hawks will keep the No. 3 pick and spend it on Al Horford. And before you start screaming, “Another forward!”, be advised that Horford isn’t a replica of any current Hawks player. He’s a polished power forward who’s close to being a center. He’s not quite Tim Duncan, but he surely has elements of the splendid Spur about him.
Horford can shoot — he improved his jumper hugely from Florida’s first title run to its second — and can rebound and block shots, and mostly he can pass. Like all those delightful Gators, he knows how to play. Brandan Wright could well develop into a Horford in two years’ time, but Horford is already there. In a draft where there’s a gap between the top two players and everybody else, Horford seems clearly the best of the rest.
He can bring to the Hawks what Billy Knight, thinking wistfully, hoped Shelden Williams would. And if you’re thinking Horford would simply wind up playing behind Josh Smith at power forward — obviously you’d want a dead solid starter from such a lofty slot — remember that Smith will be a free agent after next season and could be packaged, perhaps with the No. 11 pick, in a trade for a seasoned point guard. (Mike Bibby, maybe?)
Even if Smith and Horford wind up on the same roster, they aren’t necessarily overlapping talents. Horford can work with his back to the basket. Smith can play small forward. (Stop me if you’ve heard this, but Knight likes guys who can man multiple positions.) And no, Horford isn’t a point guard, but there’s a greater issue: If the Hawks didn’t feel Marcus Williams, whose body and skills were more suited to the NBA than Conley’s, was worth the No. 5 pick last year, why would they believe Conley is worth the No. 3 this time?
Conley is 6 feet 1 and 175 pounds. He didn’t make more than two treys in any game last season. Back when Knight and I were on speaking terms, he told me, “So many possessions in the NBA wind up with the ball in the point guard’s hands with five seconds on the shot clock.” For that reason, I always believed he preferred Deron Williams — who’s bigger and stronger and who shoots better from distance — to Chris Paul. (Stop me if you’ve heard this, but Knight wound up not taking either.)
For that reason, I believe there’s a guard who could well be available at No. 11 who fits what Knight wants more than Conley, more than Acie Law. Javaris Crittenton is, depending on which listing you trust, 6-4 or 6-5. He’s very strong. He shoots the trey effortlessly. He’s not yet a polished distributor, but he shows signs. Is he ready to start for an NBA team? Not in Year 1, but he’s capable of doing as Jarrett Jack did in Portland, working as a sub for a season before taking over.
I don’t know that Horford and Crittenton would put the Hawks in the playoffs next season, but they would in 2009 and for several years beyond. Drafting Horford and dealing for Bibby would have greater immediate impact, but if the Hawks are serious about wanting to keep all their young players, taking this big forward and this big point guard would be, ahem, big steps forward.
Permalink | Comments (140) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
There’s no replacing Larry Munson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The question of the day — ‘Who’ll be the next Munson?’ — is fun to ponder but utterly off-point. There’ll be no next Munson because no radio announcer will ever again mean to any audience what Larry Munson has meant to Georgia.
Munson is essentially the last of his kind. He became the voice of a team at a time when radio was the primary link to that team. Today, with almost every game available on live TV, radio has been rendered a curio. Yes, Georgia fans are famous for turning down the TV sound and listening to ol’ Larry, but will they do the same when ol’ Larry isn’t around to growl and fret and break his chair on-air?
Look around. Wherever a beloved radio voice of long standing has stepped down, the replacement voice has had a muted impact. Bob Kesling does a nice job at Tennessee, but Kesling isn’t John Ward. Ralph Hacker became an object of scorn when he took Cawood Ledford’s seat at Kentucky, and Tom Leach, who has since succeeded Hacker, is a pro who knows his stuff. But Leach isn’t Ledford. Nobody could be. The medium and the marketplace have simply changed too much.
Munson didn’t just become the voice of the Bulldogs. He became the eyes of Bulldog Nation. The Rex Robinson game in Lexington — October 1978, Munson hollering, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” — wasn’t on live TV. The epic Herschel Game in Knoxville wasn’t on live TV. The Auburn game of 1982 — “Look at the sugar falling from the sky!” — wasn’t on live TV. If you wanted to know how the Dawgs were doing, you couldn’t rely on the cathode-ray tube. You had to listen to Larry.
Munson came along at a time when radio men weren’t just announcers but storytellers. Today we can flip on the TV and see, in glorious high-def, whether or not it’s raining on the Bulldogs in Jacksonville or whether or not Auburn is acting like she wants to score between the hedges. We can follow the stats with GameTracker. We don’t have to rely on one voice, even a great and distinctive voice.
The best Munson’s eventual successor — and I’d love to see Jeff Dantzler, who’s smart and funny and who has a great grasp of Georgia and its history, get a shot — can hope is that he’ll be judged in the context of the world as it is and not the world we remember. If the young Larry Munson were coming along today, he couldn’t possibly become the Larry Munson we came to know and love. This is 2007, not 1966. And radio, sad to say, belongs to yesteryear.
Permalink | Comments (108) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
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