It usually works this way: Owner hires general manager; GM hires coach. These being the Hawks, they have it backward. They have a coach but not yet a new owner and a GM who hasn’t been GM since Sept. 12 and probably won’t be again. (At least not here.)
They have a team lovingly built by GM-in-exile Danny Ferry, and it has been expertly coached — until the playoffs, when expertise took a hike — by Mike Budenholzer, who has also been acting as interim GM throughout Ferry’s protracted leave of absence.
These being the Hawks, the organization has turned back-flips in the effort to distance itself from Ferry, even to the laughable extent of nominating Budenholzer for NBA executive of the year. (Not everyone got the joke: He finished third in the voting.) Yet the only major personnel move made under Budenholzer’s managerial stewardship was the trade of Adreian Payne to Minnesota, which was a weird one.
Yes, the Hawks got a No. 1 draft pick, which is never a bad thing even if it is lottery-protected, which this one is through 2020. But they traded a big guy who was drafted 15th overall last June and who’d played 19 NBA minutes. And what, after the mostly uninspiring playoff showing, was seen by many as the Hawks’ chief flaw? Lack of size.
(Payne is 6-foot-10, 245 pounds. The Cavaliers’ Tristan Thompson, who bullied the Hawks, is 6-9, 238. How much worse would Payne have fared than Pero Antic, who rarely played well, and Elton Brand, who scarcely budged?)
Roster-wise, Budenholzer hasn’t had much to do. That’s about to change. The draft is June 25 and the Hawks are again picking 15th. Free agency arrives in July. There’s a chance new ownership — the Hawks are being bought by a group headed by Antony Ressler — could say, “Hey, Budenholzer finished third in the exec-of-the-year voting; let’s make him permanent GM.” Such an urge should be resisted.
How do we know? Gregg Popovich — Budenholzer’s role model in all things — was the Spurs’ GM before he fired Bob Hill and made himself coach. He lasted six seasons as coach/GM before ceding the latter title to the estimable R.C. Buford. That tandem has proved one of the best ever, ranking alongside the Lakers’ pairing of Pat Riley and Jerry West. (We should throw the Bulls of Phil Jackson and Jerry Krause in there, too, although that was mostly Michael Jordan’s doing.)
Yes, Red Auerbach was his own GM, but that was at a time when the NBA’s draft intelligence amounted to thumbing through a copy of Street & Smith’s yearbook. The jobs today are so big and so different that no one man can handle both. An NBA coach has to work 82 games plus playoffs; how many collegians can he hope to scout?
In sum, the Hawks will need a real GM. Grant Hill, part of the ownership group, is believed to be in line to be president but has never served in any basketball capacity beyond player and TV analyst. Wes Wilcox, the assistant general manager who has been working with Budenholzer, might get a look but probably not a promotion. This means the new owners will have to look outside, which mightn’t be easy.
As noted, GMs usually hire/fire coaches. The Hawks’ GM hiree will join a front office in Budenholzer’s thrall. How many established basketball men would want to inherit a coach, even a demonstrably excellent one, who cuts a wider swath than his titular boss? (We note last week’s ugly dismissal of Tom Thibodeau by the Bulls.)
Not all basketball men have the same notion of how basketball should be played. The Hawks were remade by Ferry, who took his lead from San Antonio and who hired Popovich’s top assistant to implement. That duo worked wonders, whereupon circumstances intervened.
Ferry built the best team in franchise history, although “builder” isn’t the B-word anyone uses to describe his situation. The word invariably used is “baggage.” It’s hard to imagine new owners choosing to keep someone whose image, if not his basketball acumen, has been besmirched. These being the Hawks, they might never find a GM better than the one they’re about to dump.
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