Atlanta Spirit bashing: misguided or justified?

[Diesel]

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. I choose to separate "cutting them slack" from endorsing them as Hawks' owners.

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That's a very Niave statement WaLT....

For the one part, you really don't know much about them as owners.... and the part you do know is good.

For instance. These are the same owners that stood behind BK getting JJ. Like him or not, JJ is a franchise player. JJ is a player that you can build around. JJ is more valuable than all the potential in the world right now.

2nd, the cutting slack part. These owners only fault is that they are not filthy rich. As a collective they have a lot of money but they needed Belkin's 30% to do whatever they wanted. Without Belkin's 30%, they're still rich, but they are not the Maloofs or Paul Allen. This is important because right now, Belkin is bleeding them of money. They had to pay Belkin 11.9 Million dollars just so that they could continue to make moves in free agency after signing Claxton.

My feeling is that they will add some filthy rich Hawks fan (Ted Turner) who will be willing to put up the money and trust them to make good decisions once they rid themselves of Belkin.

However, Belkin is smarter than them in crooked business.

And this Judge Eric Johnson is just plain Unbelievable...

Find the Lack of logic:

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he ownership group was supposed to agree with Belkin on an appraiser to set the price for Belkin's 30-percent share of the team.

The judge ruled the group didn't abide by its agreement when it failed to engage a third appraiser within five days of objecting to a second appraisal. The judge also said the group missed a deadline to pay Belkin.

The owners said they couldn't be expected to pay off Belkin when the matter was still in litigation and no price had been set.

The judge disagreed with the owners, ruling: "There is simply no case law cited by either party that would allow the Court to stay the operation of this contract."

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[Guest Walter]

I don't know what all that hoopla was about. Nobody doubts that BK isn't using a weedgee (sp?) board. You call it a "plan". Unfortunately "plan" implies well thought out if not adequately designed. In that sense BK had no "plan" or his "plan" was a farce. He definately has an ideology. I use the term ideology rather than philosophy because of the extreme, unjustifiable lengths BK has gone to acquire 6'8" players and avoid the Pg and C position.

He knew with JC, JS, MW he couldn't invest 5 years worth of high starter quality salary or greater in a marginal starter quality player such as Al. Any "plan" would have traded Al sooner (before last year's deadline) rather than later.

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He picked the best Pf in the draft because he knew that after the trade of Al we would need a PF. How hard is that for you to see??

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Imagine the [censored] any GM would get for picking the "best Pg in the draft" next year. Your rhetoric is empty even assuming SW was the best Pf PROSPECT in the draft.

Anyhow, bold it all you want. You don't have to get a Pf of SW's "quality" in the draft much less with a #5 pick (the later you NEVER do.). Gooden, Wilcox, both available, both reasonably priced, neither cost a pick period, both better than SW.

W

[Guest Walter]

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. I choose to separate "cutting them slack" from endorsing them as Hawks' owners.

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That's a very Niave statement WaLT....

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[Diesel]

Ideaology is partly correct. BK's plan was to get a Defensive frontcourt.

The reason we didn't keep Al is because we could have gotten a chair and a whip to play better defense than Al and Zaza did.

BK's plan (I believe) was:

Best defensive PF in the draft (Shelden).

Best FA PG (Speedy).

Best Defensive C in trade for Al (Magloire)...

Before the free agency season really got going, it was mentioned that Atlanta was trading Harrington to Milwaukee for Magloire. Notice that when Magloire got traded to PTL, Harrington fired his agent. That move for Magloire made a lot of sense from this plans perspective. It's still strong speculation, but I think this was the move that we were looking to make.

You say a bad plan. I disagree.

Not many rookie PGs can run a team.

Most times, those guys take 3 to 4 years to develop. See Billups, Harris, even Livingston for an example.

We don't have that long. JJ's window won't last that long.

So the plan has to be inclusive of a guy who can run the offense now...

vet PG.

Lazy Lo is our Poor man's Magloire.

However, if the plan would have succeeded without Belkin's interference... i think we'd be much stronger, even though personally, i think Magloire is an overpaid thug.

[AHF]

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. I choose to separate "cutting them slack" from endorsing them as Hawks' owners.

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That's a very Niave statement WaLT....

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I can't respond to your whole post for time constraint reasons, but...

I believe the word "naive" describes well the AS ownership.

W

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I think we should all separate cutting them some slack from endorsing them as owners. They haven't gotten a chance to prove themselves good owners or bad with the Hawks. Their support of the Thrashers and pursuit of JJ, though, is promising.

Their handling of Belkin is discouraging and is likely to linger for years down the line unless either Belkin or the ASG decides to put some money on the table to buy the other party out.

[Guest Walter]

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Ideaology is partly correct. BK's plan was to get a Defensive frontcourt...Best Defensive C in trade for Al (Magloire)...

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I don't see how you can credibly say that BK's "plan" was to get Magliore. Nothing whatsoever to support this. There have been 3 years besides this offseason and the list of (mostly white) hack centers has excluded defense throughout his tenure save Pryzbilla, who he ran off.

Maybe interior defense was his plan. The best place to get it wasn't at Pf (meaning we must bench MW or JS), the best individual to get wasn't a 6'8" Pf with role player potential, and the best means to get it at Pf wasn't with the FIFTH OVERALL PICK without even trying out anybody else!