Checking In As Training Camp Opens
by Hoopinion on Sep 29, 2008 10:08 AM EDT
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PrintMedia Day takes place today. The first practice takes place tomorrow. Thus, some proper news trickles out and a bit of local media attention shines on the Hawks.
- Despite the various news feeds and google alerts I have set up, the Hawks somehow managed to make an official announcement of their training camp roster on Friday without me knowing about it. The usual suspects are present plus Olumide Oyejedi, Marcus Hubbard (2007-08 stats), and Frank Robinson (2007-08 stats). More on those three coming later this week.
- Sekou Smith asks and answers five questions about the upcoming season. I'm on board with four of his answers but continue to insist that while expecting Maurice Evans and Flip Murray to replace the volume of Josh Childress's production is reasonable they will not be able to do so anywhere near as efficiently as Childress did.
- Mike Woodson gets a short profile in the paper which highlights his "resiliency." Certainly makes for a better headline than "organizational inertia." If the head coach continues making published remarks such as this:
"It’s going to take me and my staff and the players to make this thing work. Because we came full circle last season from where we started. Now it’s up to us to extend this circle."
I'm going to need to demonstrate some resiliency myself.
- Finally, in the latest in my informal series of highlighting worthwhile team previews from around the web, Dime posits the Hawks' best-case scenario as culminating with a trip to the second-round of the playoffs and their worst-case scenario as a return to the lottery. A pretty unassailable assessment but better to be correct than provocative, I contend.
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Really enjoyed your archive
I have been a hawks fan for a long time but non-resident for the last year or so, and am delighted to see you joined up with sbn.
So, enough small talk. After generally feeling that the front office/ownership disfunctionality of the hawks made any assessment of woodson pretty difficult i’m ready to consider the possibility that the childress departure is a result of his being fed up with woodson. I can see it both ways – childress seems like the kind of 25 year who might think “they’re going to pay me mega millions to live in europe for three years? cool!”
On the other hand, he seems like a fundamentally smart, serious guy who would not do something to screw up his career, like leaving the best league, for the hell of it. When i heard the news it just seemed plausible that he had had it with the hawks, which for him may well have been a total disenchantent with woodson. Hell, who knows, maybe he though about mike d’antoni who tore up the euro leagues and got a great start on a coaching career over there and decided it was a good career move. But it’s hard to see it as anything but a lack of confidence in the hawks coaches and management.
"...in baseball you wear a cap." -- george carlin
Thanks, Joe
both for stopping by and your kind words. My main line of thinking is that Childress was not impressed by the franchise’s off-season goal being nothing more than keeping a 37-win team intact rather than actively attempting to improve the team. He wanted to explore his options (obviously), and, if it’s true that other team’s weren’t offering him a contract because they a) thought Atlanta would match and/or b) didn’t want to attempt to complete a sign-and-trade through the labyrinth of Atlanta ownership, Europe was the only option he had to explore. That the organization did not make him feel they wanted him (and they should as I’m convinced all will quickly recognize how much the Hawks need him) was simply gratuitous.
He certainly appears to have procured a favorable deal from Olympiacos and may well have convinced the Hawks to trade his rights (should they not screw up somehow and just lose them finally and forever) to another NBA team. You know, one that doesn’t go on and on about “success” following a season wherein they had a losing record and got blown out four times in the first round of the playoffs. Progress? Yes. Success? Not by any ambitious standard.
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