REHawksFan

44 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

3. Hawks have engaged more seriously with 10 centers, most with starting exp or potential. At the moment, the number is 8. Since ATL pulled out of the Dedmon and Drummond deal. Atlanta is seriously targeting several players and I expect a deal to be done closer to the deadline than sooner. Of the teams left, many have interest in a deal which is why of course, ATL didn't drop them. 

Is Myles still on the table then. Rumors out of Indy say Pacers pulled him back to see how it goes once Oladipo gets healthy. 

Centers.........Anyone on this list look good @NBASupes

1 minute ago, JTB said:

I’m going to go Bertans as the PF and Myles Turner as the center 

Either would be shocking. Both would register the Schlenker as greatest Hawks GM of all time (not that it's a high bar).

14 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

I'll do positions.

C

PF

Key targets. 

No Kevin Love either

Alright.......am I getting close?  If you make me go through all this and I get Alice back at the end of the rainbow I'mma quit you Supes. 

I just wish @NBASupes would go ahead and drop some names of these cats in the framework so I can go ahead and start plotting in my mind how they gonna take us to the promised land in the next few years. It's damn hard to do when I don't have the right young players in my mind. 

1 minute ago, JTB said:

Yup it’s hard for me to believe it’s Myles Turner cause man!...that’s just too perfect of a fit! 
then again I read some months back that sabonis and Turner don’t really click well on court as far as fit together . 
 

But for us and this team just too perfect of a fit! I’d be blown away if it’s Turner 

Well first you trade for his former PG, then you go get the big dog to help the transition go smoother. Hmmm........

15 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

There is a much better and bigger target who would really help us win. I guess they are holding out hope someone wants him but man, if we land him, OMG! 

There is a bench star that I am hoping we close on soon as well. You add him to the mix, we will have an excellent bench.

Is an old friend on a huge contract available up in Philly?  That would be.......um.........awkward.  

I could literally spend hours looking at that sortable matrix and playing around with it. Fascinating stuff. 

I don't have question but do have several comments. First, it amazes me how many PG-role players are worse defensively than Trae. I count 16 players in the PG role that they say are worse than Trae defensively. These players include the likes of Jeff Teague (League worst!?!), D'Angelo Russell, Devin Booker, Kyrie Irving, Lou Williams, Austin Rivers, and Spencer Dinwiddie.  How is that even possible? 

Also of note: How about Brandon Goodwin's defense?  Ranks T6 among PG role players, tied with Patrick Beverly. Impressive stuff though admittedly over a small sample size.

Similarly impressive is John Collins ranking 9th defensively among PF-role players.  He's also one of the worst offensive PF-role players in the league, which is counter-intuitive. 

Finally, when sorting the entire NBA to show only the Year 1-4 players, the Top 2 players in WAR are Luka and Trae. Luka has a wide advantage currently, but IF Trae could just play neutral defense similar to Luka the 2 of them would be lapping the field. As it is, Trae's defense is keeping him out of the MVP type level WAR. 

14 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Business is Boomin' 

You think any trade that happens gonna be right at the deadline or could it happen any day now? 

15 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

WAR and the RAPTOR are the best ones I've seen in terms of impact in their role and situation. That's all that matters to me. Too many of these value things that I might not value as much. Winning should be a prime objective. 

Winning is the ultimate objective obviously. But there has to be a way to isolate a single player's impact on winning if we are to compare player vs player in that regard. Maybe that's WAR. Maybe Raptor, maybe PER or RPM.  I agree with @enrique in that there's probably not one "catch all" stat that paints the entire picture. We should look at all of the them to formulate a well rounded opinion. 

I was really just curious why players with somewhat similar box stats had what appeared to be disparate PER.  

As to your point:

Trae plays 35 mpg for a team that has 9 wins.

Eric Bledsoe plays 26 mpg for a team with 35 wins

Would you suggest Bledsoe has a bigger impact on 35 wins for his team than Trae has for the 9 wins for his? 

40 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

The Hawks are now at the midway point of the season, capping off last night's 41st game with a win bringing our W-L record to 9-32. A win where we saw a glimpse of what our returning trio of Trae Young, Kevin Huerter and John Collins could be.

It's been a rough season, suspensions, injuries, strength of schedules, youth, the aged ones, coaching mishaps, etc - all had their part to play.

My biggest takeways (despite all the excuses above) that could have helped us get more that 9 wins:

• The Veterans - not helpful, actually downright useless. Not in the locker room or on the court.
• The Center Rotation - what's that you ask - yeah me to.
• The Back-Up Point Guard - we needed one.
• The Bench - badly needs upgrading.
• The Defense

The next 41 games begins Friday against the Spurs. 2020 so far has been reasonably good for the Hawks, we are playing better as a unit, just need to learn how to execute the game plan down the stretch.
Travis Schlenk spoke about expectations for the 2nd half of the season here..

https://929thegame.radio.com/articles/travis-schlenk-on-traes-hamstring-and-how-to-grow-the-team

What are you looking to see from this group as currently constructed? (for this exercise, I'm assuming NO SIGNIFICANT trades).

As a team:
Get and Stay Healthy, Reduce TOs, Communicate on defense, Rebound, Reduce the number of blowout games, continued growth and improvement from.our rookies.

Individually:
Trae - reduce TOs, defense, balance running the team with his affinity to score.
Huerter - consistency, he now appears fully healthy
Hunter - Stop dissapearing, increase rebounds.
Reddish - get Lasik, seriously - his shooting needs work.
Collins - I would like to see LP run some plays for him. I don't want him to fall in love with the 3 too much. Keep working on his defense - he's gotten adept at being a weakside shot blocker, work on team and man defense.
Bruno - Welcome back! Hopefully he gets more playing time in the 2nd half of the season, I see no reason to not play him.
Graham - take advantage of every opportunity. I like his game.

Len - get and stay healthy and handle your bunnies.
Bembry - dat boy gotta learn to finish at the rim. He gets there easily then it all goes to hell - bad pass or easy miss.
Parker - get healthy, the jury is still out. Need his bench scoring
Jones - we know he can catch lobs and dunk. Defense and rebound, not so much

Vince - less playing time, please. Hopefully Parker is back soon and he'll soak up most of the PF minutes
Crabbe - I really need him to up his 3pt percentages over the next 3 weeks so we can find a viable tease.
The Aged Ones - Bye Bye


We have 21 days - 11 games before the Trade Deadline. What will our record be?
Home - Pistons, Raptors, Clippers, Wizards, Sixers, Celtics
Away - Spurs, Thunder, Raptors, Mavericks, Timberwolves.

I would like to see us win at least half of our home games and at least 1 on the road.

Thoughts?

What could have been....

The lineup we all wanted to see at the start of the season:

Trae / Kev / Cam / Hunter / JC = +23.4 Net Rating (pts / 100 poss). Ranks 15th in the NBA as a lineup among lineups that have played 40 minutes together. Alas, they have logged 42.8 TOTAL minutes together all season. Barely 1 min/game. Ugh.

Has anyone broken down the PER formula to figure out what has the most influence?  I was perusing some stats this morning and noticed the following:

Player A:   37.2 mpg / 44.8 FG% / 37.5 3PT% / 86.2 FT% / 6.2 rpg / 7.5 apg / 1.7 spg / 4.7 TOpg / 13 DD / 2 TD / PPS = 1.54 / PER = 31.4

Player B:   35.2 mpg / 44.2 FG% / 36.9 3PT % / 84.5 FT% / 4.5 rpg / 8.5 apg / 1.2 spg / 4.8 TOpg / 13 DD / 2 TD / PPS = 1.38 / PER = 23.5

Player A clearly has superior stats, but they magnitude of difference is not that great. IF Player Efficiency Ratio is supposed to measure the per game efficiency of each player, why is there such a difference in PER when their normal efficiency stats are generally similar. Does it factor in volume of shots? Is the biggest difference PPS (attributable to FT frequency and 3PA differences)?  

*In case anyone hadn't figured it out yet, Player A is Harden and Player B is Trae. 

10 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Latest, same as oldest....

 

Doesn't make any sense. What would be the point for Detroit to trade Drummond for expiring contracts if they get no picks out of the deal? What's to gain? 

7 hours ago, NBASupes said:

He has the biggest trade value on the team after Len of the available players. 

There core aren't available: Cam, Trae, John, Hunt, and Kev. 

The 2019 1sts aren't available as well as future Atlanta based 1sts. . 

Bruno is considered special and only available for a significant asset only. 

OKC 2022 1st is considered special and only available for a significant asset only.  

Atlanta is considering Parker, Len, and Bembry as key young players they want to keep and can help a team's rotation. 

 

 

How do they define "significant asset"? 

What "significant assets" are available around the league?

If we are to believe reports, they wouldn't offer a 1st for Drummond so is he not a significant asset?

Finally, sounds like the only players actually available from the Hawks are the expiring deals that nobody wants. IOW, don't expect a deal to be made at the deadline.   

6 minutes ago, kg01 said:

Rebounding, turns and free throws killed us.

Wash missed 70 shots and won by 10. Process that.

Wash with 18 off reb now. Between those and the -10 turnover margin the Wiz have taken almost 30 more shots than the Hawks.  Near impossible to win giving up that many additional shots.

Brandon Goodwin. I like it.

Wiz with 16 off reb and counting.  To be fair tho, they've missed 56 shots so far so I guess Hawks are doing ok on the glass... 

5 hours ago, bleachkit said:

There isn't a LeBron in this years class, not even close. It really is a weak group. 

This is why I don't get the heartache about trading the BKN pick. Folks act like there's some great get in the 17-20 range this year and I'm hugely skeptical. 

1 hour ago, AHF said:

To me it lines up ideally for us to hand out several overpay, one-year contracts for a more competitive team next year. Instead of paying $13M for 3 years of someone like Dedmon, you sign that player for 1 year at $20M or a 2 year deal with a team option in the second year for a declining $36M two year deal (which is likely a one year, $18.5M deal or something like that).

I'm down with that if so. I'm just concerned that there will be enough desperate money out there to hand out multi year deals. These FAs this summer have to know they are in the cat birds seat the year PRIOR TO all of the elite players being available. Do you think the B level players are going to want to take short term deals and end up back on the market with all the A level players in 2021?  I don't know. 

1 hour ago, kg01 said:

Woj on NBARadio right now.  Not much useful said.

Mentioned Hawks talks with DET have died down - which is to be expected.  You'd expect it to ramp up closer to the deadline.

Biggest point was w.r.t. our expirings, Parsons, etc.  Basically said this year's free agent class being poor has almost totally devalued having these expirings.  Due to the fact that no teams are clamoring to free space to sign someone.

Said the value may come in sign n' trades this offseason where teams look to acquire guys who are under contract.

Been saying the same thing for the last several weeks. The Hawks are - unfortunately - screwed by timing. Think about it. Because the FA class this summer is so weak:

1. Teams don't need cap space so the Hawks expiring deals are less valuable;
2. The Hawks WILL HAVE a ton of cap space ($70M+) and no one to spend it on;
3. The Hawks have only 6 players under contract beyond this year (Trae, JC, Kev, Cam, Hunter, and Bruno) so they HAVE to add players which means:
   1. Either they OVERPAY in a fight with the handful of other NBA teams with cash to spend and no one to spend it on; or
   2. They acquire players through trading assets they have accumulated (including expiring contracts to make salaries work)
      1. Side note: the reason they need to do trades during the season is precisely so they can use those expiring contracts to match salaries but the contracts don't have much value; once summer hits, what do they have to trade other than picks? 

It's going to be fascinating to see whom the Schlenk targets in FA if he doesn't put together some trades. And at what price he has to shell out to sign said players. 

2 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

1. Bad asset management 

2. I'll say again, if the BKN pick is included it has to come with his option being picked up for the 2020 season. That's how you test drive.

So if the test drive doesn't work out and we both move on we've more than likely won some more games this season with him which lowers our current lottery odds,  we don't have the BKN pick to be able to move up. 

1. I just don't value the pick much at all. The combination of the Hawks current roster being so young AND the reported lack of quality depth to the draft makes me less interested in any potential player taken in the 17-20 range.

2. I'm fine with the 2020 season being picked up. I'd prefer it as well. But it's not a deal breaker for me.

3. So you are willing to use the BKN pick to trade up a few spots for an unproven player but not to trade for a proven commodity to see how he fits with the team? And to trade up for who? By all accounts there's no sure fire elite player or superstar in this draft.  

I just don't see this draft as being hugely important to the Hawks future. I'll take my chances with where ever the Hawks land in the lottery but beyond that, I'm much more interested in adding vets and quality established players to play along side Trae, JC, Kev, Cam, and Hunter.