Tony Ressler is an impressive man. Grant Hill was impressive as a Duke freshman and has only grown in eminence. We no longer have to live with the reality that the Hawks are owned by bozos. To borrow from Elvis Costello: Clown time is over.
That said …
I worry that Ressler, introduced Thursday as the Hawks’ new principal owner, and Hill, the vice-chair of the mostly new board, came in a bit late. Bruce Levenson’s toxic email and Danny Ferry’s characterization of Luol Deng didn’t come to light until September 2014, almost on the eve of training camp, and Ressler’s bid to buy the Hawks was submitted at the 11th hour of the subsequent sales process.
What Ressler/Hill saw then was a smooth-running team of exquisitely weighted parts coached by a guy who knew what he was doing. “The franchise was starting a new chapter,” Ressler said Thursday, speaking to the AJC’s editorial board two hours after his public introduction at Philips Arena, although technically that chapter opened when Ferry was hired as general manager in June 2012.
Ressler again: “What was working was Bud, Wilcox and Koonin. I want that to keep working.”
By the time Ressler cast eyes on the Hawks, Ferry had taken the leave of absence that would become a permanent leave. But everything we saw last season — the 60 wins, the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, the four All-Stars — bore his design. He hired Mike Budenholzer as coach and Wes Wilcox as assistant GM. He played a part in Levenson’s hiring of Steve Koonin as CEO.
Ressler’s bid was declared the winner in late April. By then, nobody associated with the Hawks was saying much about Ferry. (Out of sight, out of mind, out of a job.) Ressler/Hill saw the status quo without knowing how the quo became status. Without Ferry, Budenholzer might still be holding Gregg Popovich’s clipboard in San Antonio. Without Ferry, the Hawks’ leading scorers might be Joe Johnson and Josh Smith. Without Ferry, all the pregame court projections and T.I. appearances mightn’t have moved the attendance needle one jot.
Ressler/Hill are betting big money on what they perceive as continuity, but what’s continuous about a president (Budenholzer) two years removed from being an assistant coach and a GM (Wilcox) who had never been a full-fledged GM before Thursday? It would have been difficult to keep Ferry — even though Andrew Young, who’d given Ferry his blessing and who’s a family friend of the Hills, sat front-row at the Philips ceremony — but “difficult” isn’t synonymous with “impossible.”
Ressler said he never spoke to Ferry — a mistake, I’d contend — but made his intentions clear to outgoing ownership that he wanted Budenholzer/Wilcox/Koonin to stay in place. (Outgoing ownership bought out Ferry on Monday.) Hill did speak to his fellow Duke alum but said, “Out of respect to him, I’ll keep those conversations private.”
Then this: “The season was fantastic. Collectively they did a good job last summer, and they did a good job over the course of the season.”
Apparently Ressler/Hill value Budenholzer’s tactics over Ferry’s roster-building, and that’s the eternal question: Which matters more, coaching or talent? The playoffs, alas, gave us our answer: The NBA, as ever, is about talent. Budenholzer, the newly minted coach of the year, had few answers for what Cleveland and Washington and even Brooklyn were doing.
Ferry did well to construct this team, but his work wasn’t nearly finished. The job of finding better talent has fallen to Wilcox but mostly to Budenholzer, even though only four other NBA teams feature a coach/president. He’s now the man with the plan, albeit a plan inherited from Popovich and implemented at Ferry’s behest.
At Philips, Hill described Budenholzer and Koonin as “rock stars,” and those two sang so powerfully — I speak figuratively — as to convince the new bosses they were the reasons what happened last season happened. I’m of the opinion that the biggest reason just took his money and exited.
The Hawks have serious new owners, and that’s great. They also have a blueprint without its architect.
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