thecampster

So lets try to keep this on topic. No thread hijacking. Knowing everything you know now, do you still feel the same about the team letting Ferry go? My Perspective: It was Ferry, not Bud who was responsible for the 60 win season. Ferry masterfully put together a team of lunch bucket type players who could defend and were willing to work on all parts of their game. It was Ferry who brought in Bud, assembled the coaches for Hawks-U and changed the culture. The day Ferry left, the wheels fell off. Is there anyone here who, if they could go back in time, would change their mind and keep Ferry?

Well I discussed this in another post but basically there will/should be a total of 5 new 1st round picks on the roster at the start of the 2019 season. We should also have about $40 million in cap space and an expiring asset in Baze. That's a lot of young talent and lots of room for 2 free agents to pair with Dennis/Collins and company. Now to get them to hold on to/develop our current youngsters and actually spend the money well, that's a different story.

Me thinks 95% of the board owes you a huge apology. Consider this my KB21 told you so to the board.

Looking for the Like X5 button...still not here.

But you'd miss all that great content while we're tanking next year???

I'll do it! :)

So we needed another tank thread? No, the Hawk's tank won't work in that the ultimate goal is a championship. Teams that "tank" don't win it all. There are too many other teams competing for that spot. 14 teams don't make the playoffs. Luck, market and front offices win a championship. Go back to the Bulls dynasty. They were extremely lucky Jordan fell to them at 3. Their office was very crafty in getting Pippin. Their market played a big role in their being able to draw and keep remaining talent in Chicago. Drafting 1st, purposely tanking had nothing to do with it. The Heat championships....market + aggressive front office. GS championships, Luck + front office. Years of Laker championships.....one helluva front office. San Antonio's championships you can blame squarely on luck. The David Robinson injury and other problems that year that led a playoff team to fall deep into the lottery led to teaming an aging Robinson with a young Tim Duncan, creating an atmosphere that drew the top talent. The market and city is awesome. If it was as simple as losing for 3 years straight, everyone would do it.

Your attitude on this I can't stand, but your logic is sound. The second we entered the tank train, I bought a bottle of Dramamine. It's going to be a sickening ride.

A Philly type rebuild is unrealistic because our cap situation going forward is too flexible. This is the main reason we'd be willing to take on a bad contract. We have the cap flexibility to ride out a bad contract the next year or 2. This is about player salary averages. 108 million cap divided by 15 players is 7.2 million per player. A mid-first round pick is only 2 million dollars. This means that a $12 mil bad contract + a $2 mil rookie is the same as a 2nd round rookie + a $13 million FA gamble. If the bad contract is 2 years, it effectively positions us to use it after next year's draft (2019) in a salary swap to a tanking team. We are going to have between $40 to $50 million in free cap space in 2019-20 with a deep young core. This is not a 6 year rebuild. The salaries don't stack up that way. This is why THjr was allowed to walk, to not tie up that salary room after next season. It's long game, not short.

Look man, here's the thing. I am on record as saying tanking was a really stupid thing to do. But the reality is, its done. No point crying about it. Time to move forward. Logic and reason lost. Time to move on to rooting for ping pong balls.

It would be safe to say we are not Minnesota. The city is a much better draw, good owner now and established young nucleus. Free agents will come after next year when we have the money to get us over the top.

Since the title of the article is "lets be real", let me be real about this from a salary perspective. Assuming no trades and assuming Dedmon exercises his paltry $6 million player option (and Muscala at $5 million). Also assuming a salary cap of $108 million. We sit at 12 players (10 on the roster) at $71 million. However, we have 3 - 1st round picks next year at a guaranteed salary. That salary scale is (for 3/18/30) $5.74 mil + $2.07 million + $1.35 million or a total of $80 million for 13 roster spots. Those 13 slots do not include Lee, Cavanaugh or Cleveland. That is $28 million in cap room no one of value will be ready to sign for. So here is the "realness". Deadmon is probably getting $13 million or more in the offseason and has no incentive to take that option. Muscala will take his option because although he's played well of late, he's a terrible defender and has minimal value outside of Bud's system. So you are probably looking at no true center again next year. As much as we could get the top pick, we could also end up as low as 6 right now and Ayton is a long shot. This means we are probably using that $28-$34 million in cap space to overpay for a center. We also "might" be able to unload Baze but only to take back a butt-load of bad contracts. If in some crazy universe we swung a 3 for 1 contract eat deal for Baze and were able to use the remaining cap space to get a top 10 free agent then yes...yes we're a playoff team. But once we went tank mode, the last thing we wanted was to sneak into the playoffs again. Perfect world is next year Lebron leaves Cleveland but Cleveland somehow manages to win 33 games and come in with the 11th worst record in the league. We finish bottom 5 again and get 2 lottery picks. And this is what real is.

You had me until your said "worth that money" and "sit". Look, there is help available and you don't have to suffer alone. Call me @ 770- WTF-KB21

I got this. Dead cap is salary that has been spent that can't be reused. For example, had we traded Belli instead of a buyout, we would have taken salary back. But we did not and the salary left on the board is dead...meaning it can't be turned into anything....this year. The benefit is they act the same as an expiring contract at the end of the year. The dead cap figure for Crawford goes down to 2.3 million on next year's cap. Belli, Illysova, Dunleavy, Stone, Mac, etc all come off the books at the end of this year. The effective benefit is our current cap number (per hoopshype which is always a bit off) is 98.8 million but next year (2018/19) we start with a cap number of 71.6 million. That is mostly because of the dead contracts. In 2019/20 the starting cap figure drops to 47 million. As for the current year, there is a small benefit. The cut player agrees to a buyout so he can join a better club. Usually there is a small salary savings that year. Also, if the player signs with another team, there is another small savings for the original club. It is a cost savings move because a tanking team is drawing less fans and is making less money. The last benefit is that vets always play over developing rooks not named Lebron, Durant, etc. By buying out the vet, you clear the way for more playing time for the developing players. Basically it got a few more minutes for Dorsey, Collins and friends, against better players. It is the only way they'll get better.

Last year's NBA champ GSW - top 3 players by ppg Curry - Draft slot 7 Durant - Draft slot 2 but signed as a FA Thompson - Draft slot 11 2016 champ's Cavs Lebron - draft slot 1 but signed as F/A Irving - draft slot 1 Love - draft slot 5 2015 champs Warriors Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green draft slot 35. 2014 - SA Spurs Parker - draft slot 28 Duncan - Draft slot 1 Leonard - Draft slot 15 My point - Lebron was a F/A. of the last 4 NBA champions, only Duncan and Irving were drafted #1 overall and were still playing where originally drafted. Drafting #1 is vastly overvalued as opposed to drafting well and managing the cap via signings. In each of the last 4 champions, one theme exists. Each added valuable pieces through free agency and lower draft picks. Getting all bent out of shape over the 2nd vs 5th selection is crazy. Managing the cap, relations with potential free agents, player perception and scouting are all more important to the ultimate prize. Without signing Durant, GSW does not win last year. Without bringing back Lebron, Cleveland does not win in 16. Without Hitting home runs on Thompson and Green, and assembling Iggy, Barnes, Bogut Livingston GSW doesn't win their 1st and without long shots Parker and Ginobilli being who they are, San Antonio doesn't win 14. All were won with acquisitions and scouting...not because of the #1 selection.

But now let me "explain" my position. The Hawks have positioned themselves "under" the cap. This limits their ability to improve significantly via trade. However, they have accumulated picks. Those picks are expensive against the cap. The cap is around $100 million and there are 15 slots on a roster. That is an average salary of about $7 million / player. If you have vet minimum/2nd rounders occupying 5 slots, the average for the other slots goes up to about $9 million / player. Now we know that 5 of those players in 3 years are going to be first round picks. That's $90 million for 10 players, 5 will be on rookie deals. If the average salary for those players is $3 million each, we can then afford about $15 million per player for the other 5 slots. If the average salary goes up to $5 million per player, we then only have $13 million. If you break down the moving parts there, Giving a player $20 million means giving another player either $10 million each or $6 million depending on how the average salary for the rookies went. So what I'm saying is, if you are trying to sign a free agent in 2 years and you can't offer $20 million because you gave Mike Muscala $9 million per year, yes the rookie contracts matter. If the rookie contracts are slightly less expensive at the top, the $17 million dollar Bazemore mistake is more forgiving. Don't fall in love with players but with slotting when looking at the cap. Certain players slot at X, others slot at Y and still others at Z. You can only afford less X's if your rookies creep into Z category. For every Karl Anthony Towns, there is an Anthony Bennett. For every Marvin Williams taken with the 3rd pick, there is a Jimmy Butler taken at 30.

If you were right no team would ever trade back.....queue mic drop in 3, 2, 1....boom/whine. I am not advocating trading back or forward or not. What I am doing is arguing against your very simplistic view of the cap.

1st things first.....you don't "have" to spend 90%. If you fail to spend 90% you are taxed the difference. Technically you could field all $1 million contracts and spend only $15 million. You'd just get charged a tax of $72 million and get it distributed to the players. 2nd thing....the cap is both a short game and a long game. We currently have 5 first rounders in 2 years. A 2018 top pick earns $5.8 million. The difference between the 30th pick ($1.16 mil) and the 13th pick ($2.18 mil) is $1 million and by all standards negligible. But the difference between picks throughout the lottery goes up substantially. If the Hawks had the #1, #15 and #30 picks this year, they would be spending $8.99 million. Contrast that with dropping 3 spots in the 1st and second picks (4,18,30) and they are spending $7.1 million, a difference of $1.9 million. But 3 years from now when the players are in their contract years and the Hawks are trying to be competitive, #1,#15,#30 cost you $17,412790.4 per year while #4,#18,#30 cost you $13,956,854.7 ($3.46 million less). Now although 1 and 15 should turn out to be a better player than 4 and 18, that extra $3.46 million would/could have been the difference in retaining/getting that one extra free agent. $3.46 million more in room could be the difference between Gordon Haywood and Paul Millsap. 3rd thing and I can't say this enough. More or less salary is two parts of the same coin. If you have "more salary" the rules are more generous to you swapping parts of higher level players but less generous in signing. Less salary gives you flexibility (up to a point) to sign talent but less flexibility when making trades for top talent. IE...Two LT teams can swap high salaries easier than 1 high and 1 low team because the low team usually ends up into the cap by making the swap and doesn't have the talent to send back to make those swaps work for the other team. If you have 8 players on rookie contracts (very possible for the Hawks in 2 years), you have to send out 4 or 5 players to take back 1 star contract but you have to maintain a minimum number of players on the roster throughout the season. Large amounts of rookie salaries makes dealing complicated to say the least. "Salary" is by far the hardest part of this puzzle that is tanking and one completely lost on the average fan.

I believe KB now has scoreboard.

How this affects the Hawks. The T-Wolves currently hold the 3rd best record in the West but are only 4 games from falling out of the playoff picture with 19 games to play. The Hawks hold the T-Wolves pick this year (top 14 protected). In order to convey that pick, the T-Wolves must make the playoffs. If the draft were held tomorrow, the Hawks would get the T-Wolves pick and draft 26th (ish). Assuming the Wolves go .500 the rest of the way and lose 3-4 slots (lets say 7th in the West,. a drop of 3 games in the standings), they would move up to the 17-18th selection. If you're looking for a reason to watch the NBA the last 2 months of the season, watch the T-Wolves and root for mediocrity. Not too bad they fall out of the playoffs all together, not so good they don't lose ground.

The issue isn't their loss, its what they were replaced with. You incluce Belli but he's gone. You include Collins but he was getting drafted anyway....he isn't here despite those guys. He's just here. Teague vs Dennis is a bit off because it doesn't take into account the defense. Dennis is much younger with room to grow...but that defense....geesh! Flip side, Prince defense vs Korver is light years the other way.

The 2015/2016 team finished the year 4th in the East. 16 months later, 3 members of that team remained. Muscala, Bazemore, Schröder. Prominent names gone and how they are doing in 2017/18 Hardaway Jr. - 16.7 ppg Horford - 13.3 ppg/7.7 reb/5.1 apg Korver - 9.3 ppg Millsap - 15.3 ppg / 6.2 reb / 3.0 apg Teague - 13.1 / 7.1 apg What did you get back? Plumlee (Stiff), Bellinelli (waived), Dedmon (auditioning), Ilyasova (fill-in) What did you pick up? Delaney, Prince, Collins, Bembry Yah, I'm finding it hard to watch.

I started and deleted a similar thread a few times already....so yah.

Go back and look. There was a fine discussion (promoted by yours truly) that Griffin would be a much better investment than Millsap. And my point isn't we're going to the finals with those guys and I think you know that. My point was those hobo riding the tank train thought it was as simple as just losing games. These are professionals folks. They have pride. Bud is a pro, he has pride. Nobody just lays down in the NBA. You aren't getting 3 straight years of back to back to back number 1 picks. Draft right, not high. That's the actual formula.

Tank they said, get Hardaway out of here they said, screw Dwight they said, Blake Griffin would be too expensive.....yah...tanking is for pros....