Am I the only one who's OK with another bad year?

[Lascar78]

That's because we went through the babcock years. We saw what happens when you're in a rush to win and grab every 'big name' you can in the hope that he's the one that puts you over the hill immediately. It failed miserably despite having JT, Reef, Big Dog, and Theo here. You can't be impatient if you want to go from a crappy team to a true contender. You need a full rebuild, that includes at least 2 years of being at the bottom of the barrell. Ours just feels like it's taking forever because we sucked for 5 years BEFORE we rebuilded

To answer your question, for me, the free passes end after next year's draft

[RAHMOR]

I think there are more teams that we can beat because we have more talent now. Overall we may not be able to finish with a better record but we have a better chance of beating good teams. I think Toronto, Charlotte, NO, Orlando and Portland will stink next year. I think 27 is fair.

[tmac13]

With all of our caproom, why shouldn't we expect to improve greatly this year? We could sign 3 max free agents with the cash we have..Why shouldn't we expect more is all I am asking..Who says you have to be awful for 3 years before you can get better..Tell me any team that has done that? Even Denver made the playoffs as soon as the drafted Carmello..

[Lascar78]

Carmelo was ready to go, and probably roughly as good as he'll ever be. Marvin needs another year or two. If we're not going to do SERIOUS winning, we might as well get one more real high draft pick. Once you start winning, you don't get those picks anymore. We still need one more young star at PG or C to round off our young core. I want one more high draft pick. Another top 3 pick will make me alot happier than winning 35 games and getting the 7th pick or something like that

[Gray Mule]

If Hawks don't trade it off, we will have 2 draft picks

next year in the first round {Unless the Lakers fall

into the lottery again, who would have thought it?}

and we should have a much more experienced team at

that point.

Our young players, and, for the most part, Hawks are

really young and inexperienced, will certainly improve,

simply by being more experienced, if for no other reason.

With no additions, we should win more games next season.

Adding our draft picks should give us a few more wins.

Having a year's experience under his belt, our head

coach should be better, adding a few extra wins.

Any trade or free agent signing we do should be good

for an extra victory or two.

All this should double our wins from last season. That's

not a lot of wins, but should put us in a position

to be really competitive in the 2006-07 season.

Yes, one more year of this, then WE GO!!!!!!

[KB21]

That's what I think is going to happen. The Hawks will build this thing right. There is no sense in building a team that can win 35 games this year and have them top out at 45 wins when you can build a team that may only win 20 games this year but will win 60 games three years from now and compete for a championship.

[Yeti]

I am fine with another year. After 15 years of getting enough wins to look respectable, but not enough to really challenge for the title - we finally decided to start over and take a long-term view. So we had ONE horrible year. OK. It will happen again. And each time we should get better talent and improve. The only fatal mistake would be panicking and trying to take shortcuts. Make a plan and stick to it. So next year we should be a little better. Then in 2-3 years these guys should be developed and we should have a top team. If BK can accelerate that with FA's - great. But if we want to win it all, we have to be patient.

yeti