Ric Bucher on his Hawks offseason plan

[Admin]

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/news/story?id=5322416

Atlanta Hawks

Objective: Reduce tax burden ($19 million over the threshold if keeping rights to Josh Childress and re-signing Joe Johnson) while somehow adding veteran leadership.

The Plan: The Hawks are stuck as a good team without the financial flexibility to acquire the necessary pieces to be great. While letting a talent like Johnson leave via free agency is sure to upset their fans, the Hawks don't have much choice, unless they want to be tax payers. Cleveland and Chicago are both interested in a sign-and-trade for Johnson, but Atlanta would be getting back lesser talent (Kirk Hinrich from Chicago, Anderson Varejao from Cleveland) and still be over the cap.

Alternative Advice: Be fiscally smart -- there's no veteran talent being offered for Johnson that is going to make the team better or increase attendance. The team's growth will come from the continued maturation of Al Horford and Josh Smith. Deal Johnson in a sign-and-trade to a team with cap space and the best first-round pick, start Jamal Crawford in Johnson's spot and bring back Childress for needed leadership and depth.

[tomac]

If we can't resign him, I hope we can deal him for a good pick and some young talent. Sund's gotta earn his money with this one.

[Guest]

Objective: Reduce tax burden ($19 million over the threshold if keeping rights to Josh Childress and re-signing Joe Johnson) while somehow adding veteran leadership.

That is just flat our wrong. Bucher is thinking that the caphold of Childress counts towards the Luxury Tax. It does not, he is a moron.

The caphold does count in terms of looking at trying to sign more players to our team. But this doesn't factor in to whether or not we pay the Luxury Tax and how much. How do these people have jobs?

[coachx]

Bucher is a douche' !

How can he say that Varejo would not make the Hawks a better team then they would be without him ? Varejo would help us greatly off the bench for 25-28 mpg.

Seems pretty vanilla. Bring in Chillz to replace JJ........Well, thank for spending 2 seconds writing that bit of genius analysis.

If we could add Varejo and Chillz it would really help us not feel the loss of JJ so much.

Edited June 24, 2010 by coachx

[AHF]

That is just flat our wrong. Bucher is thinking that the caphold of Childress counts towards the Luxury Tax. It does not, he is a moron.

The caphold does count in terms of looking at trying to sign more players to our team. But this doesn't factor in to whether or not we pay the Luxury Tax and how much. How do these people have jobs?

That was my reaction as well. I read that, scratched my head, and said "what does Childress' cap hold have to due with the luxury tax?"

[DrReality]

Ditto on being an SOB. In love with himself.

[Guest]

That was my reaction as well. I read that, scratched my head, and said "what does Childress' cap hold have to due with the luxury tax?"

You want to know what is worse? Take the Childress caphold and also add in JJ's salary at the Max. One should get a total team salary of about $79 million. The luxury tax threshold last year was about $69 million. Bucher also fails at simple algebra, that is only $10 million above the threshold.

Now hold on, someone might say that Bucher for some reason is talking about the salary cap threshold and not the luxury tax threshold. OK, so let's look at that. Last year the salary cap was about $58 million. $79 - $58 million = $21 million. Way to go Bucher, not only are you incorrect in your assumptions but also somewhere along the way your math was wrong.

[GameTime]

Alternative Advice: Be fiscally smart -- there's no veteran talent being offered for Johnson that is going to make the team better or increase attendance. The team's growth will come from the continued maturation of Al Horford and Josh Smith. Deal Johnson in a sign-and-trade to a team with cap space and the best first-round pick, start Jamal Crawford in Johnson's spot and bring back Childress for needed leadership and depth.

That made me throw up a little.