emeans

If Chillz is better than Harrington RIGHT NOW, I ask you. Why does the offense run through Al Harrington when he is on the floor? Let me answer this for you Diesel. Chillz is not ready to create his own shots right now. Josh Smith is not ready to create his own shots right now. Right now they get most of their points off of cuts, movement and putbacks. In other words, even though Harrington forces a lot of shots, he is still better at getting his shots off and scoring in one on one situations. Chillz and Josh are not as skilled in this part of their game. They haven't figured out how to create their own shots yet. They will but right now they don't know how to. The reason both of their averages are up in April is because of more playing time and Al and Walker, not being in the lineup. Don't read too much into those elevated numbers. There was no one else to shoot the ball. The point is Chillz and Smith have not perfected the skill of creating their own shots right now. In fact Chillz really plays a natural 3s game. He is not a true SG. Most of their points were in the paint and off of direct passes to the hoop and offensive rebounding and putbacks. Again, let me clarify Harrington forces too many shots, but he is more skilled at getting his shots off under more pressure. Again Harrington is the Hawks best player right now!!

You are making a lot of blanket generalizations. I am very pleased at what BK has done with this team. Getting rid of Reef, Theo, Big Dog....in other words over priced veterans to free up cap room was genius to me. This was very good work. However, getting rid of relatively cheap good talent (your best talent) before or right in their prime should not take place, unless you replace them with better talent. In my mind Reef, Theo and Big Dog were not just overpaid they were all past their prime also. This made those moves no brainers. As for the players I think we should have kept, I will start with Steve Smith, Dominique, JT, Stephan Jackson, Nazr, Johnson. All of these guys were good and relatively cheap. As for Al Harrington. I would trade him (everyone is tradeable), but I would have to get good value for him. Most of these trades and post on this forum, basically have him going for free and that is where I totally disagree. It makes more sense to keep your best talent than just throw him away. That would be a big mistake and then again you would have given your best talent away......again. You have to start somewhere.

I didn't say they were franchise players, I said they were our best players. No one said anything about franchise players. We haven't had a franchise player in a long long time. What I am saying is you keep your best talent until you acquire through FA or the draft a franchise player. If they are your best talent and they are role players then so be it, you don't get rid of them. All I am saying is keep your best talent and put in better pieces around them and they will flourish. We have seen this time and time again and we are really seeing it more now.

Wrong again. JChill is not better than Al Harrington right now. Will he become better??? Maybe, but right now Chill is not better than Harrington. Is Chillz a potentially very good player? Yes, but you can not say Chillz is better than Harrington right now because that is not true!! You can convince yourself different all you want, but Harrington right now is the best player the Hawks have.

Utah was a fluke in the first 1/4 of the season. AK is good but you better get even more after EARNING the No. 1 pick. And on top of that you give your best player away. I am no longer into giving our best player away. It seems to backfire everytime throughout the history of the Hawks. I am keeping my best player(s) and bringing in talent around them.

Hell NO!!! You better get much much more than that trading your No. 1 pick and Al Harrington. With this trade you basically are giving away your No. 1 for a No. 4 pick and Kirlenko came back down to earth during the latter part of the season. His value dropped when he came back from injury. So basically you are just giving Al Harrington away. The Hawks would get screwed big time with this trade. When you trade the No. 1 pick you better get a LOT from it. Thank god you are not a GM!! And what is this obsession with you guys with giving your best player away. Haven't you guys learned we need to stop giving our best player away for nothing. Seeing the success that our former Hawks are having all around the league and in the playoffs. It is time for some of you guys to wake up and stop always giving talented players away in your proposed trades. You build around your best talent!!! Some of you guys will never learn. It is proven that if we had surrounded our traded talent away we probably would be doing better right now. Look at JT, Nazr, Walker, Jackson. Right now Al is the best that we have and you guys are giving him away. Stop with that non-sense!!! We will trade him away and he will be an impact player on another team and we will be left again scratching our heads like we are with JT.

I can't wait until the lottery, then we can intelligently discuss more realistic player scenarios based on our position in the draft. After the lotto things will start shaping up quickly. Right everything is a big assumption and speculation is the only threads we can come up with. When is the lotto??

Yeah I digressed from Diesel's rules a little bit. If we get the 1st pick I would pick Bogut and draft a guard with the 31st pick because this draft is full of 1st round talent guards that by the numbers will be drafted in the 2nd round. This draft is deep in Guards. So if the team stayed in the same postion draft wise and don't trade Harrington. That would be my lineup and I would add Kwame and Dalembert as FAs. And then I would add two more FA at my question mark positions. I think this is more realistic as the team stands right now than saying starting with a core of Deron Williams. The lineup I put out probably can and will be a strong possibility in the off-season.

Kwame Brown and Dally would be the two players I would like to see in a Hawks uniform this offseason. Draft Bogut and a point guard and then get a SG with 3 point range and call it an offseason. My realistic team next year would look something like this: PG: Lue/Louis Williams SG: Childress/3 point specialist(????) SF: J Smith/Harrington PF: Kwame Brown/Harrington/????(FA) C: Bogut/Dalembert/Drobs If we can do this and add quality players at the question mark position, I think we will be competitive.

That is my main concerns with this team, whether we draft Bogut or Paul. Who can shoot the 3? We have absolutely no 3 point shooters on this squad. Who is going to keep the defenses honest in the paint. Bogut will not be effective without a legitimate outside threat. Paul will not be as effective without an inside and outide threat. Right now as I see it we have a bunch of slashers that can finish and that is about it. Where is out outside shooting going to come from??

exactly.....kBat said he is a fine coach....Based on what?? His record?? Woodson has no history (1 year), so how is he a fine coach. I am going to give him a chance with better talent, but to say he is a fine coach is way way premature. And again the jury will always be out on Woodson until PROVEN different.

How can you sit there and say the jury isn't out on a 1st time 1st year head coach. The jury will always be out on a rookie head coach period!! Woodson hasn't proven he can be a good head coach in the NBA. Now time will tell, but don't say the jury isn't out on Woodson because that is the far from the truth. They are going to give Woodson 3 years mininum and if he doesn't show that he can improve this team, Woodson will be gone!! That is the nature of coaching in the NBA!!! The Jury is always out, especially with a rookie head coach!!

Two totally different areas: Development of rookie players and Coaching. Just because he was good in progressing the games of 2 rookies doesn't mean he is a good Coach. Two different skills under the umbrella of the position called a Coach. What about the development of Ivey (who got progressively worse at the end of the year) and Donte (who was solid but didn't show any progression like the Joshes. Could it be that two potentially Top 10 1st round talents should/will get better with playing time naturally?? I don't know, but time will tell. This team flatout didn't not play at all at the end of the year. The TEAM got worse by the end of the year. Yes we have two rookies that got better, but what about the team progressing?? When they were getting beat by 40 by Detroit at home and 35 at Philly at the end of the year with no lottery position in jeapardy, my mind changed about Woodson and whether or not he was a good coach. There was absolutely no passion or motivation on the floor to play semi-mistake free basketball. It was ridiculus!!! At least the guys a year ago ended up better at the end of the year. I was looking for improvement and there was absolutely none. I will give him another year to fully evaluate him, however the jury is still out on Woodson!!!

Woodson is not on my approval list yet. He was questionable to me last year and I need another entire year to truly assess his value as a head coach. I was very disappointed in how the team played at the end of the year. There was no improvement with the team, in fact they got worse. I have heard of tanking but their play was ridiculus and there was just absolutely no motivation.

I have seen several trade proposal post that would net us Larry Hughes. The Hawks need absolutely no part of Larry Hughes. I have watched his entire career since he has been in the NBA and he is a classic heartless player. He only plays well against inferior talent. He almost ALWAYS disappears against good teams. He is following the script with Miami. He looked almost unstoppable against Chicago. He is playing very timid and scared against Miami. Not nearly as agressive and confident as he played against Chicago. This is not the only time I have seen this from Hughes. He will look good against inferior teams and disappear when the going gets tough and he needs to step up against better competition. He is an average player and it is because of his mental approach to the game, it is not physically. He has physical talent and long arms, but he is heartless. The Hawks don't need Larry Hughes!!!!

I have to disagree.... If Louis Williams is available at 31 and we pick Bogut 1st, we should take Williams with that pick no question about it. Paul, Jack, Felton, Deron will be gone by then and he would be the only guard with the most upside left on the board then. Trust me Louis Williams (Allen Iverson like) will be a star in the NBA...mark my words!! His situation is kind of like Josh Smith before the draft, where he was ranked in the top 5 players in the draft early on and his stock just dropped. Louis Williams is the same way. He was in the Top 10 early on and his stock has dropped after the All-Star games. This is exactly what happened to Josh Smith and we got him at 17 and look what a jewel we have in Josh Smith. Also, he is a local kid (like Josh Smith and a good friend of Josh Smith). And like Josh Smith he will bring out even more locals to the game especially in Gwinnett County. So economically it makes sense to draft him, not to mention the kid is very talented. His situation is similar to J. Smooth last year and I say he is a steal at 31.

While I won't take sides on either side of this argument, I will not be angry either way this draft goes because we NEED SO MUCH!! However, I leaning toward trading the No. 1 pick to get at least another high 1st round pick and fill several needs like Deron Williams and Sean May with both picks. That will fill our PG and PF situation. Sign Kwame Brown or/and Eddy Curry at Center. Overnight you have solved a lot of issues and instantly made this team much better. We have only 3 players guaranteed to come back next year...Josh Smith, Josh Childress and Al Harrington. This is why I think we need more than 1 1st round pick from this years draft. If we draft Bogut I will not be mad either. We need a Center with some skills so bad it is ridiculus. Peja can't shoot in the paint and Collier doesn't have a clue. Basically what I am saying is that we need everything at this point except a small forward.

It time to try and start winning some games next. First Ivey and Donte (who I like) are only signed for this year. The team can cut them without penalty next year. While Ivey is a solid defensive rookie PG, he is merely a serviceable role player. We need two top tier playmaking PGs next year and he doesn't fit that role. Donte I would keep, however we have so many swing players he probably will be release also, because of the log jam at that position.

Ivey and Donte will probably not be on the team next year. I would probably keep Diaw with the other 4 I mentioned earlier......but that is it!!! They need to clean house again and build around that nucleus!!

There are only 4 players I would keep on next years team. Josh Smith Josh Childress Al Harrington Tyrone Lue I would cut all the rest of these sorry bums!!!

I have ever seen from the Atlanta Hawks in the history of the franchise. The Detroit game at HOME was a joke and they are continuing to stink it up in Philadelphia. Where is the pride? Where is the effort? We have already clinched the most balls in the lottery, so there is absolutely no excuses why they are playing like this. They are not even giving any effort at all. They are turning the ball over like they have never touched a ball in their lives. I blame a lot of this on Coach Woodson. They are not movitivated to finish the season out on a positive note. Ridiculus!!!!

I agree with you on that Diesel. Why even have a lottery? The worse team gets the first pick works in every other sport. I think it is in most, not all however, peoples competitive spirit to try to win. I think the lottery should be taken out of the equation. The NFL has the best organized professional sports body period. Baseball has the worse!! The NBA is somewhere in between those two, but the lottery should get squashed. Watch the Hawks get screwed this year!!!

I too wanted Duhon with the 38th pick. I didn't even know who Ivey was until someone told me he played for Texas. Then I remembered who he was and I also remembered that he wasn't a better college player than Duhon by any stretch. And yes Duhon can play excellent defense too, so don't give me that Ivey was picked because of his defense excuse. We should have drafted Duhon as a backup PG period!!

If two players are projected around the same draft status and rank about the same, the rule of thumb is to get the big player. You can't teach size!! Draft Bogut over Paul!!

BINGO!!! Great statement!!