It’s fitting that the Hawks’ picks in the 2015 draft will be exercised by a general manager in his first official day on the job. We tend to think of this team — meaning the actual roster, not the front office — as stable, but stability in the contemporary NBA is a relative thing.
Danny Ferry, whom the Hawks just paid to go away, said two years ago that the league’s new collective bargaining agreement would make it harder for great teams to stay together. At the time, his team wasn’t nearly great. Today the 60-win Hawks are seeing their former general manager’s words become reality.
Paul Millsap and DeMarre Carroll comprise 40 percent of a starting lineup that included four All-Stars. Both are free agents. If they leave, the Hawks will have massive holes. If they stay, the Hawks will have paid dearly to keep intact a starting five that isn’t apt to get any better.
If Millsap and Carroll are re-upped, the Hawks’ starting five next season will have an average age of 30 years, 3 months. (This assumes Kyle Korver, who had surgery last month, is healthy.) Contrast this with the Cavaliers, whose presumed starters would have an average age of 27 years, 3 months. (This assumes Kevin Love stays with Cleveland; if he doesn’t and Tristan Thompson is retained as power forward, the average age would be 26 years, 10 months.)
Thanks to Ferry’s deft trade of Joe Johnson, the Hawks hold the 15th pick in this draft. It’s not often a team this good gets a chance to execute a near-lottery pick, but you might want to hold the applause. GM-in-waiting Wes Wilcox suggested Tuesday that the draft isn’t apt to yield anything approaching immediate help.
“Our focus is to sustain what we’ve done,” Wilcox said. “It’s going to be hard for any young player to play on our team next year.”
The only major personnel move made by the Hawks during Ferry’s nine-month absence was the shedding of Adreian Payne, the 15th selection in last year’s draft. (He was traded to Minnesota after working 19 minutes as a Hawk.) Said Wilcox: “We were so deep on front line there wasn’t going to be much opportunity for him to play.”
In the Eastern Conference finals, this “deep” front line was overwhelmed by the Cavs. The Hawks were outrebounded 208-157 in the sweep, and rotational subs Mike Scott and Pero Antic each had a Did Not Play. This would suggest that the Hawks’ emphasis in Round 1 would be to find a strong young rebounder. Not necessarily.
Wilcox: “I’d say we’re certainly going to add to our front line. That doesn’t mean we’re going to try to do that in the draft. I think our focus is to bring our guys (presumably Millsap and Carroll) back.”
Then: “The loss of Thabo (Sefolosha, injured in an altercation with New York police) was a big hit to our rebounding. It’s certainly an area we’re going to try to improve. I don’t know that that improvement is going to come from something we don’t have on this roster.”
The Hawks do have Mike Muscala, who worked a surprising number of postseason minutes, and they liked the 27-year-old journeyman Austin Daye enough to sign him through next season. But even as we concede that rebounding is what the Hawks do worst, we note that Golden State beat the Cavs for the NBA title by deploying center Andrew Bogut for three of the series’ final 144 minutes.
The trend in the NBA — the pace-and-space Hawks are among the vanguard — is to play smaller men and make the opposition chase. “We are very much a skill-based program,” Wilcox said. “Skill was on display at the highest level in the NBA finals. Skill is going to be very important for us going forward.”
Meaning: Don’t be surprised if the smallish Hawks take a wing or even a guard in Round 1. Said Wilcox: “We look at big decisions of franchise going forward. We try not to draft on positional needs.”
At first blush, that might be seen as disappointing. But think of it as long-range planning: Some of these not-young starters will need to be replaced soon enough, and the Hawks aren’t apt to be drafting any higher than this for a good long while.
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