06.02.09
Bradley : Young Hawks Are One Player Away
Only problem is, that player is named James, Bryant or (Dwight) Howard. “You don’t trade for superstars, you draft them,” Atlanta GM Rick Sund (above) tells the Journal-Constitution’s Mark Bradley. Bad news then, for a Hawks team who aren’t in this season’s lottery and haven’t always drafted well.
A little exercise: Take one player —- any one, from Josh Smith to Speedy Claxton —- off the Hawks and replace him with LeBron/Kobe/Dwight. Know where the Hawks would be? Preparing for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. This is a very good team that lacks one great player, but that’s a massive lack.
We tire of the NBA’s blather about its stars, but nobody can deny that it’s a star’s game. And stars are hard to get. Of the 15 men who comprised the 2009 All-NBA teams, 13 were top 10 draftees —- the exceptions are Bryant, taken No. 13 when high schoolers weren’t yet the rage, and Tony Parker, who arrived from France as the 28th pick in 2001 —- and 10 went in the top five.
Only three of the 15 have changed teams since their NBA debuts. (The three: Shaquille O’Neal, Pau Gasol and Chauncey Billups.) Moral of our story: If you find a star, you keep him. And if you have a chance at one and you whiff … well, you wind up being the Hawks, forever chasing the game.
They couldn’t have had James in 2003 or Howard in 2004 because they didn’t win the lottery. But they had a shot at Chris Paul (second team All-NBA) in 2005, and they had another at Brandon Roy (also second team) the next year. To harp on those dire drafts is to flog a horse deader than Man ‘o War, but the Hawks haven’t yet —- and might never —- outrun those lapses.
They could have had a backcourt of Paul and Joe Johnson way back in 2005. No, they wouldn’t have landed in the 2007 lottery and wouldn’t have Al Horford, but they’d have made the Eastern Conference finals by now and still had Mike Bibby’s money to spend on a big man.
Billy Knight deserves credit for building a 69-loss roster into a robust entity, but the best player he acquired —- Johnson —- hasn’t made the All-NBA team
