As a hawks fan how do you feel about this statement regarding Ferry?

[KB21]

North....we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I seriously can't stress enough how lucky we were to unload JJ - and I was a big supporter. Even when he got the contract. In the case of a player in the last year of his deal - you're looking at a fat expiring. In the case of a slightly overpaid guy, perhaps with some potential left, with a couple of years left on a bad contract...I'd give you that.

We are talking $23 smackadoodles...for a fading 2nd option...for 3 years... That is what you call a cap KILLA. Would ANYBODY in here take that deal were you a GM? ANYBODY? Ferry did his part, but I'm sorry dude...that was the perfect storm. A team trying to appease it's star, moving into a new town, with a billionaire backer drooling over his new toy? There was a significant amount of luck involved there from my point of view. There is no amount of logic that anybody can present to me otherwise. Am I happy about it?

You should have seen my jaw the day I read the headline...it literally felt UNREAL.

KB, I have a different way of looking at things. Firstly, I'm a computer/network analyst. To fix problems, I look for trends and behaviors. Sometimes you can quantify it with something tangible, sometimes you just have to pay attention to the behavior; because computer logic mandates a predictable pattern and when you don't get the proper pattern, your starting point is to analyze the behavior.

It's no different with how teams perform on court and how the business side is handled.

What I'm looking at with the Hawks and Danny Ferry is not "tanking" per se. I mean, guess you could call it that...but losing to get the top pick in the draft is not a concern for me. Honeslty, that's just faulty logic and a flawed plan.

The reality is very simple. Looking at the trends or behaviors of the league over the past 30 something years...you notice what winners have in common. They all take different paths to get to the final four (rebounding, defense, leadership, expert shooting, dominant post presence), but the common denominator is simply phenomenal talent. You don't get to the next level without it.

When you are not at "contender" status, and you are not in "up and coming" status, your single-minded focus needs to be...acquiring. phenominal. talent. Playoffs are fun, but this is a secondary or even a non-existent concern. The idea here is that you are in full blown rebuild mode and every move you make reveals as much. In which case....

Josh is GONE. *poof* He's not a part of the rebuild. You won't get anything for him in a SnT and you might even risk injury stringing him through the season. Maybe you wait until the trade deadline to evaluate him, but just like the playoffs, he becomes a NON-factor and you move him. Honestly, anybody who has watched Josh knows exactly what he is, what he's doing wrong, and why he's doing it that way. I don't see how Ferry does NOT see that...being y'know a millionaire GM former NBA basketball player himself...whose sole job it is to evaluate basketball teams and make them better. Not criticizing...just saying, If we can see it...DF should have DAMN well been able to see it.

Korver is a specialist. Maybe some folks underestimated him, but I did not. I watched him do it in Philly, Utha, and I watched him do it to US when we played Chicago. I knew what he could do and I knew what he would do for this team - space the floor and allow Devin, Teague, Horf, and Smoove to go to work.

Lou is instant offense. You drop JJ's 18 or so PPG, and you pick up a guy that can give you 15-18.

Now, you combine those two pickups, with Devin Harris (who is another capable player I have coveted for years), with keeping Smoove around, and a team that is already decent enough to make the playoffs....the signal that you're sending isn't "rebuild"...the signal your sending is "we are going to the playoffs". I'm not saying that's a bad thing or that I was disappointed. There was just ultimately no point to it...and I was curious and concened.

I saw what DF was doing in Cleveland. I watched that team because I really liked LeBron - I used to be a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE LeBron fan. I couldn't figure out if it was simply pressure to "win now" or if it was a poorly thought out evaluation of the parts he brought in. One thing is for certain, from Hughes to Shaq to Jamison to Mo...i was not even slightly excited about a single move. To the contrary, I found myself scratching my head at every choice...the same way I lifted an eyebrow when we added Korver and Lou and kept Josh.

Now...maybe it could just be adding talent for the future, I will concede that. Could just be stockpiling assets that expire for cap space. Looks good to me. I'm still with you here. He wanted to evaluate Josh for a full year.......ehhh...ok. I guess.

But if we don't land the big fish this off season...and we start building with Iggy's and Jeffersons (even though I like Al)................I'm going to jump down off the fence and start doomsaying again. Full speed.

Because I know trends, I know behaviors, and I know where that sort of basketball management methodology is going.

I think we in general agree. I definitely agree with you relative to the behavioral aspects, and sometimes, you cannot quantify those aspects. Where we disagree is here. While you agree with me that the players Danny brought in this past year had the ability to help the team win games on an individual basis, the fact that these were players who were on the final years of their contract (or only had one year guaranteed) could have adversely affected the behavior of the player. Instead of working within the team concept, each of these players could have been out for themselves and a new contract with their next employer.

Basically, what Danny Ferry has done is essentially put himself in a position where he has potentiall two pieces that will be part of the rebuilding project in Al Horford and Jeff Teague along with four depth pieces that are very affordable at this point. He has positioned himself to be able to reel in two big fish this offseason if he can convince them to come to Atlanta. If not, then we have the flexibility to keep the team competitive without killing our future salary structure with bad contracts and players that will never live up to those contracts.

With Josh Smith, I'm not sure there was ever a great deal on the table at the trade deadline. Had we taken Monta Ellis in the Milwaukee deal, then there goes our ability to add two max players this offseason.

Atlanta can still move him and get assets through a sign and trade deal though. A team like Phoenix, that has 10 draft picks in the next 3 years, is a potential destination.

[MaceCase]

Wretch, I think a big part of us continuing to win last season was to be as attractive as possible to the upcoming free agents. How likely would they of been to not only leave their glittery digs in LA but do it for a team that was scrounging the bottom of the East? A lot less appealing, right? Especially when we don't have an upcoming star like Harden or Griffin which made a losing and a mediocre franchise all of a sudden more enticing for Paul to be traded to the Clippers in the first place and now we are seeing all of the chatter of Dwight being piqued by Houston. *I need a thesaurus, I think I've ran out of synonyms for appeal*

We can see that Ferry was steadfast in his willingness to only acquire 1 year deals and this even applied to the shopping of Smoove. Let's not kid ourselves, we had a situation where two GMs were shopping him furiosly and even he wanted out yet not a single deal worth a damn materialized where the Hawks weren't getting raped (Lakers wanting extra "sweetener" for Gasol) laughed at (Nuggets with Carmelo, Minnesota with the #2 overall) or bamboozled (The leftover turd sandwich Milwaukee had offered on the deadline) so I believe that yes, Danny was more than right to let him play out the season here.

[Wretch]

I'm still on the fence, so I'm not going to disagree with you guys. I see the logic and I can't argue with it. I mean, it could have all been just about THIS offseason and the playoffs were a bonus. The only way of knowing what he's thinking is if/when he comes out and says, "Ok, we're rebuilding here and we just have to lower our expectations on the season. Right now, it's just about improving the team for the long term. We're not so concerned about the wins and losses. We hope that the fans can bear with us." He says something along those lines, we know what's up.

At the same time, it has been an agonizing season for me. Just pure murder, because it's going to happen this offseason. You could pin last year on a lot of things from cap space to evaluation, but this summer is the real indicator. We are going to know the plan in a few months. ESPECIALLY if we strike out on the big fish. Let's see how the roster looks come October.

Hell, let's just see what happens with Josh Smith! The real test is coming. This is the kind of sitution where real GM's are defined and where they make their legacy. You bring that cat back, and we are looking at MAKING the playoffs again and another mid 1st rounder...and less cap space.

Also...I don't put much stock into the "appealing" team sort of thinking. CP3 + Howard is appealing. +Horford is "wow...we could win a championship." Teague becomes expendible (if he isn't already), and players around the league will get bandwagon fever (then we can pick up all those "hubcap" players that we've been drooling over all these years.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

North....we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I seriously can't stress enough how lucky we were to unload JJ - and I was a big supporter. Even when he got the contract. In the case of a player in the last year of his deal - you're looking at a fat expiring. In the case of a slightly overpaid guy, perhaps with some potential left, with a couple of years left on a bad contract...I'd give you that.

We are talking $23 smackadoodles...for a fading 2nd option...for 3 years... That is what you call a cap KILLA. Would ANYBODY in here take that deal were you a GM? ANYBODY? Ferry did his part, but I'm sorry dude...that was the perfect storm. A team trying to appease it's star, moving into a new town, with a billionaire backer drooling over his new toy? There was a significant amount of luck involved there from my point of view. There is no amount of logic that anybody can present to me otherwise. Am I happy about it?

You should have seen my jaw the day I read the headline...it literally felt UNREAL.

LOL. It still wasn't luck man. It's what desperate teams with money will always do in this league.

I know we as Hawks fans think that the worst thing in the world is to be "stuck in the middle of the playoff pack". But where we are right now is in NO COMPARISON from where we were after 2003. We sold off everybody in 2003-04 to be ready for the 2004 free agency period. The offseason comes around, and we completely strike out in free agency, with no one wanting to come here. 2005 comes, and we take Marvin, trying to pimp him out as the next James Worthy. Meanwhile, we were striking out again in free agency, with one exception . . . a young player in Phoenix.

We had to literally execute a "jack move" to get him away from Phoenix, by offering him all of his raises in that 1st year, so that he can make 20 million in his first year in ATL. That was the only way we were getting a decent free agent to ATL.

What we did was a desperate move, because after then ( 5 years out of the playoffs ), we didn't want to be totally irrelevant anymore.

Brooklyn was a desperate team, facing the prospect of not only losing Dwight, but also losing Deron. So they were willing to bring in Joe Johnson, just to try to sell a "named player" to fans, if everything else failed.

Look at the Lakers in January. You'd think the dang world was ending out there because they had built this so-called "Super Team", only to see people go down with injuries and the unit not mesh at all. They had fired Mike Brown even before he could correct things, promoted Bickerstaff ( who actually had the team playing the right way ), and then brought in that goof Mike D'Antoni instead of Phil Jackson.

Even before a beatdown in Memphis, the Lakers were 17 - 24, and they were in full panic mode. They had just had the infamous "team meeting" that day before shootaround, and the loss put then at 2 - 10 for the month of January at that point.

All I'm saying is that if JJ was playing at that time like he played at the end of his final year in ATL ( or even if he played like he did in the 1st half of the year in Brooklyn ), they were the type of franchise that would pull the trigger. The cap means nothing to teams like them. And as JJ enters Years 5 and 6 of his contract, he could be moved more easily to a team looking to shed payroll and maybe even "tank" for a year.

The history of this league has shown that if a playoff level team thinks they're one player away from achieving a higher playoff level, they will sell off multiple players that they're not using, to get that one player that can help them.

And the history of this league has also shown that average to bad teams who want to potentially start over, have no problem dealing with these types of teams, and will make deals with them, as long as they can get out from under the contracts of the incoming players, more quickly than they could the player(s) they're dealing away.

Keep your eye on teams like the Warriors, the Knicks, and the Clippers. With the way their seasons ended, let's see what type of moves and players they bring on. In the case of the Warriors, look for them to dangle the potential expiring contracts of Richard Jefferson, Carl Landry, and Brandon Rush ( which total 19 million dollars ), and bring in maybe just one significant player that can help Curry and the Warriors.

And it will be a player currently on a team that people see as being overpaid because he's not playing at star level. Maybe an overpaid player like a Javale McGee or an Andrea Bargnani. If the Warriors think they are "close", and just need either a little more toughness or shooting off the bench, I could definitely see them making a play for Bargnani, and trading Jefferson to Toronto, if the Raptors are tired of waiting on Bargnani's potential.

Or if they REALLY wanted to make a splash, they'd make a play for Kevin Garnett, if the Celtics decide to blow it up this year and if Garnett is willing to play for 2 more years in the Bay Area.

If Amare came back next year, and showed that he can still be an effective scoring PF, one of those playoff teams that "think" they are close, might even make a play for him . . and his 44 million remaining on his deal.

Desperate teams do desperate things. And they will continue to do these things.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

I'm still on the fence, so I'm not going to disagree with you guys. I see the logic and I can't argue with it. I mean, it could have all been just about THIS offseason and the playoffs were a bonus. The only way of knowing what he's thinking is if/when he comes out and says, "Ok, we're rebuilding here and we just have to lower our expectations on the season. Right now, it's just about improving the team for the long term. We're not so concerned about the wins and losses. We hope that the fans can bear with us." He says something along those lines, we know what's up.

At the same time, it has been an agonizing season for me. Just pure murder, because it's going to happen this offseason. You could pin last year on a lot of things from cap space to evaluation, but this summer is the real indicator. We are going to know the plan in a few months. ESPECIALLY if we strike out on the big fish. Let's see how the roster looks come October.

Hell, let's just see what happens with Josh Smith! The real test is coming. This is the kind of sitution where real GM's are defined and where they make their legacy. You bring that cat back, and we are looking at MAKING the playoffs again and another mid 1st rounder...and less cap space.

Also...I don't put much stock into the "appealing" team sort of thinking. CP3 + Howard is appealing. +Horford is "wow...we could win a championship." Teague becomes expendible (if he isn't already), and players around the league will get bandwagon fever (then we can pick up all those "hubcap" players that we've been drooling over all these years.

This I do agree with.

When we traded off JJ and Marvin, I was perfectly fine just letting guys like John Jenkins and Ivan Johnson getting as much time as they could, seeing what they could do as players, and even possibly missing the playoffs. But once this team got off to that great start, that kind of threw that plan out the window.

And if we were truly going to "tank", this season was the perfect time to do it. Problem was that Ferry really liked Josh Smith. He may have even thought that Josh could be the piece to lure a big free agent in ( like his buddy out in LA ). But when Ferry saw Josh play on a nightly basis, he knew that Josh couldn't be the focus of a Hawk rebuild. At least I THINK that's the assumption he's come to.

The main reason why Josh has to go, is because he's not going to yield to Horford or Teague being the top options in the offense over him. Josh and his handlers will firmly believe that he is a better player than Al Horford. And even if Horford is marketed as the "star" and is even announced last in the starting lineup at home games, Smith will not yield to him and reduce his shots.

Ferry's time is NOW. If we're going to see what the future of the Hawks will look like, he'll begin to shape it in a big way this offseason. The coaching hire and the decisions of what to do with Josh Smith and Jeff Teague, may even supercede what we do in the draft and with acquiring new talent via free agency.

Can't build that Ferry statue just yet. Let's see what he does with loads of cap space, and with his choice of a head coach.

[Wretch]

One thing North...degree of difficulty.

Teams looking to push over the hump are always looking for that edge and there are TONS of teams looking to add a TALENT like Joe Johnson. No argument there, to those clubs...the money irrelevant. The problem is making it work. When you're a contender, the bulk of your $70 million to $100 million payroll is tied up into the players that GOT you there. In the case of the Lakers, it's around $85 million tied up into those guys.

How do you make it work?

Interesting that you use Golden State as the example of a team dangling overpriced assets...considering that the total salary of those jokers LESS than what JJ is making ALONE! What contender could just absorb a mistake like that? Unless the "dumping" team is willing to take salary back, I'll give you...but that kind of defeats the purpose of getting out from under the contract in the first place and that's *IF* you could find a team that was interested in him.

The only other option would be to pawn him off on a young and rising squad on rookie deals - but these guys are saving cap space for the big fish and they have time to sit and wait.

[Wretch]

This I do agree with.

When we traded off JJ and Marvin, I was perfectly fine just letting guys like John Jenkins and Ivan Johnson getting as much time as they could, seeing what they could do as players, and even possibly missing the playoffs. But once this team got off to that great start, that kind of threw that plan out the window.

And if we were truly going to "tank", this season was the perfect time to do it. Problem was that Ferry really liked Josh Smith. He may have even thought that Josh could be the piece to lure a big free agent in ( like his buddy out in LA ). But when Ferry saw Josh play on a nightly basis, he knew that Josh couldn't be the focus of a Hawk rebuild. At least I THINK that's the assumption he's come to.

The main reason why Josh has to go, is because he's not going to yield to Horford or Teague being the top options in the offense over him. Josh and his handlers will firmly believe that he is a better player than Al Horford. And even if Horford is marketed as the "star" and is even announced last in the starting lineup at home games, Smith will not yield to him and reduce his shots.

Ferry's time is NOW. If we're going to see what the future of the Hawks will look like, he'll begin to shape it in a big way this offseason. The coaching hire and the decisions of what to do with Josh Smith and Jeff Teague, may even supercede what we do in the draft and with acquiring new talent via free agency.

Can't build that Ferry statue just yet. Let's see what he does with loads of cap space, and with his choice of a head coach.

See, that part in bold is what makes my Spidey Sense tingle... I didn't want to put it like that, but that's kinda what I saw in how this team shaped up after the JJ trade. I'm hoping that he just wanted to evaluate Smoove for a season (or a half of a season) and then decide...rather than thinking he could actually build a decent team around the remaining core. I'm hoping that if he strikes out on D12 and CP3, that the focus will shift to RE...BUILD...and not another drawn out piecemeal retool of a middling playoff team....

I mean.........dude. Imagine the same ceiling we've had since 2008...repeated for the next 5 years...

You give me THAT choice or the lottery? I'll take ping pong balls ALL DAY LONG.

[Guest]

See, that part in bold is what makes my Spidey Sense tingle... I didn't want to put it like that, but that's kinda what I saw in how this team shaped up after the JJ trade. I'm hoping that he just wanted to evaluate Smoove for a season (or a half of a season) and then decide...rather than thinking he could actually build a decent team around the remaining core. I'm hoping that if he strikes out on D12 and CP3, that the focus will shift to RE...BUILD...and not another drawn out piecemeal retool of a middling playoff team.... I mean.........dude. Imagine the same ceiling we've had since 2008...repeated for the next 5 years... You give me THAT choice or the lottery? I'll take ping pong balls ALL DAY LONG.

North's bolded comments is what I said at the beginning of the season - that Ferry would give Josh a chance to step up and lead, be the man with Joe gone and make a move by the trade deadline if he didn't fit what Ferry wanted. I wanted Josh to succeed because it meant we would get the 'good' Josh and when that happens it would lead to more wins - it didn't and its time to move on without him. Edited May 23, 2013 by JayBirdHawk

[AHF]

And if we were truly going to "tank", this season was the perfect time to do it.

See, that part in bold is what makes my Spidey Sense tingle... I didn't want to put it like that, but that's kinda what I saw in how this team shaped up after the JJ trade. I'm hoping that he just wanted to evaluate Smoove for a season (or a half of a season) and then decide...rather than thinking he could actually build a decent team around the remaining core. I'm hoping that if he strikes out on D12 and CP3, that the focus will shift to RE...BUILD...and not another drawn out piecemeal retool of a middling playoff team....

I mean.........dude. Imagine the same ceiling we've had since 2008...repeated for the next 5 years...

You give me THAT choice or the lottery? I'll take ping pong balls ALL DAY LONG.

I am 100% on the opposite end of thinking this was a good year to tank. There are two transformational free agents this offseason and this team is more attractive to them for being a consistent playoff team. In the draft, there are no transformational prospects. If one emerges, it will be overcoming his pedigree.

Next year, there will be no tranformational free agents but there will be several transformational prospects.

To me, the smart play is to get flexible for this offseason - make your play at the two superstar free agents deciding to go the superfriends route and if that fails then the season to tank is next season when the prospect of landing a franchise player will be much better.

[Diesel]

Here's the problem that nobody really has addressed.

The next few moves are critical. I said this after the JJ trade. Everybody was claiming success, success... however, if we don't make anything useful out of his trade or worse... if we get into a worse position by signing a worse situation then Ferry has failed and this franchise has once again been fleeced by it's GM.

Like it or not, players have value and star players have more value. Ferry traded JJ for nothing and got no value in return. IN other to make up for that, now he has to sell money alone. Some of yall think that's easy. Sterling spent 20 years trying to do it in LAC. The Grizz eventually gave up and took bad deals to get what was needed to compete. Kwame for Pau anyone? What have we done?

We have inspired Smoove into believing that he's worth more than 15 million per.

We have taken a coach who won with very little talent and sent him packing in order to sign another assistant with no trackrecord as a HC.

We have hoped that Ferry can make pixie dust fall out of his bottom because he has money.

We might end up with egg on our face at the end.

[High5]

It's possible that will be his highlight, but give the man a chance before you write him off. His first offseason was a success and this offseason hasn't started yet.