although there are good points in the post I admit regarding his minutes and stats and comparing him to others like him. Though I believe he will be okay

about JJ’s next contract hampering ownership’s ability to make the necessary moves to make this team a contender, than I’m concerned about JJ’s drop-off. It all comes down to the money and how it will affect what talent is left around JJ. My loyalty is to this team. I have emotional attachments to most of the players on it,but if they can make moves that will make the team noticeably better, then I am all for it. Whatever they do it needs to not only make sense now, but it needs to make sense going forward. The Hawks are not in a situation like Cleveland where they’re trying to rent a guy who makes $20 million per year for the sake of getting a ring. If they give Joe that or anything too close to that for a 4-5 year period then there needs to be some serious, serious data to justify it. I don’t see it. I still haven’t had anyone give me good basketball reasons for why this should happen. I love that this blogger looked at the contract situation from afar and compared it to the contracts of similar players. That’s what I’ve been trying to get half of the people on this site to do. It probably sounds better coming from someone who actually looked up PER and all of that fun stuff.

What we don’t know, if if he would sign for 18 or 19 or some other offer more in line with a player of his stature. Real easy to close the book on your best player but walking away (reference hockey star) but instead of giving up like that, i rather keep the known quantity. I do not agree with the statement he clearly rather go play for yet another struggling team. That is a statement that flies in the face of all he has going in ATL.

Because they are obviously pretty good businessmen. If you’re trying to run a successful business you have to make some tough decisions and the bottom line is going to be a factor. These owners are not going to be all nostalgic about Joe. Bottom line. They will assess his value and offer him a contract that they deem is fair and at the end of the day hope they can come to a mutual agreement that benefits both parties. This is still a business, and both parties will make business decisions. There’s also a very good chance Joe will leave regardless. Who knows what he’s searching for at this point in his life? One other thing, Joe is not an overly athletic player so I think he’s very well suited to still be effective when he’s in his early thirties.

Though I like to think that he will not desert his team so please allow me to keep on believing that:)

There are good quotes from Lang and Sekou among others.

http://www.csnchicago.com/pages/blog_runningwiththebulls/