Thrilled to be Hawks

The Hawks season opens Wednesday, but for Mario West, Othello Hunter and Thomas Gardner there was cause for a quiet celebration Monday. The opening day roster had to be turned into the NBA office and their names were on it.

Knowing he wouldn’t have to clean out his locker after a grueling month of training camp and preseason led to the first unfettered smile on West’s face since last season.

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Johnny Crawford/jcrawford@ajc.com

Mario West averaged 4 minutes a game as a reserve for the Hawks last season. ‘Mario West is just a guy that has a lot of heart,’ said coach Mike Woodson. ‘He makes things happen and he changes the game when he’s out there.’

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He pulled this same stunt a year ago, you know, making the Hawks roster then as an undrafted rookie free agent. Now he and his fellow undrafted free agents can all revel in the fact that they secured their jobs the old fashioned way — they earned them.

“I’m just excited and glad to have that [Hawks] name across my chest,” West said after practice Monday. “It’s a wonderful feeling. And I’m just as happy now as I was last year. It’s like I’m re-living the whole process all over again. I have another opportunity to live my dream and it’s a great feeling.”

There are plenty of players walking around with bruised feelings today. With all 30 teams needing to trim their rosters to the league limit, no more than 15 players under contract, situations can get tense.

West admitted to being on edge, mostly because he was unsure of his status with a new general manager and front office staff arriving after his rookie season.

However, his teammates and Hawks coach Mike Woodson and his staff returned largely intact. And they knew exactly what they were dealing with in West, the former Georgia Tech standout from Douglasville.

“Mario West is just a guy that has a lot of heart,” Woodson said. “He makes things happen and he changes the game when he’s out there on the floor. I’m sure Mario had an ulcer worrying about it [making the team]. But again, I think Mario knows what we’re about. He knows how I like guys that play hard. And sometimes playing hard will overcome some of those other deficiencies in your game.”

They only played a combined 132 minutes in the preseason, so West, Gardner and Hunter had to prove their worth with contributions elsewhere. Figuring out how to go about that can be stressful enough.

Undrafted two years ago after a stellar career at Missouri, Gardner went through a similar transition to life as a NBA free agent, wondering where and when the right opportunity would come.

Even with a guaranteed contract signed before training camp, Gardner knew that the situation for any player on a minimum contract is tenuous.

“It was good for me to have a little security,” he said. “But then I get to training camp and I get hurt. And that feeling comes back. The security goes away real quick. So for me it became about learning the defensive principles, knowing the spots and the intensity and then trying to guard Joe [Johnson] every day or Mo Evans, guys that have will make you challenge yourself.

“But you just can’t take anything for granted. You’ve got to improve every single day. No matter if you have a contract or not, or how many years you think you have, you have to keep playing every minute like it’s your last.”

Woodson singled out his young free agents throughout camp for showing up to work every day with the right attitude.

“All those guys went to work,” Woodson said. “They put in their time and we like the time that they put in. If there was something we didn’t like, they wouldn’t be here.”