HawkStr8Talk's Things That Make You Go Hmmmm

With apologies to Arsenio Hall, it's time to put a long finger in the air on a few things in Hawks land to see if these things make you go hmmmm too.

We've been so devoid of positives that it's been lost that when Marvin Williams was coming off the bench - he was pretty effective. Not #2 pick in the draft effective, but more aggressive offensively with some of the same defensive payoff that's needed from our perimeter defense. It's as if he got that inner dog that Coach Drew is always looking for. Since he's returned to the bench, will the lack of roster balance (essentially relying on Zaza, Jamal, and Damien to carry the Hawks through the NBA playoffs) come back to haunt the Hawks?

For all the currency the blog world gets out of Jeff Teague, the downward spiral of this team was paying Joe Johnson this past offseason. It's not Joe's fault he's not worth that money. You simply can't pay top dollar for a player who is a complimentary player who isn't a leader on the team, community, or the league.  No one goes to a game to watch Joe Johnson and so on many levels - it made no sense.  If the ceiling with him is second round playoff exit, then you can't justify the expenditure.  A sign and trade on the order of the Carmelo Anthony trade (well, obviously a few levels below that) would have been more prudent and heads need to roll because of the way it will hamstring the organization for the next few years.  

That said, the JUICIER story is what Jeff Teague has done to Larry Drew.  There's gotta be a Beyond The Lines expose in there somewhere. It's painful obvious to any objective observer that it's not basketball play that has Teague on the bench at this stage.  The popular thought last year and for part of this one was that Bibby was simply better and that the young PG needed to watch and get some seasoning.  Well, we've taken many shots for our position that Teague should have been starting from the All Star game last season until now (or he proved through consistent PT that he was woefully unprepared to be the guy for the future), but the recent DNPs just prove the point that it's not even about basketball. I wouldn't be surprised at this stage if Teague beat Bibby out in camp and Drew just wanted to play the veteran.  Maybe there's a deal between Drew and Bibby.  Maybe Teague called Drew Jr a punk for leaving UNC.  I don't know, but there's an unreported story here for why Teague isn't playing.  So, unless you are totally discounting defense (the half of the game everyone conveniently omits when stumping for Bibby over Teague over the past calendar year), there is no conceivable reason you can give us for why Jeff Teague is collecting DNPs like he's Pape Sy.

For Sund's sake, he better. To think that Landry Fields could have been a Hawk or some other guys that we could actually use just sticks in my craw.  And so, ONE of these projects needs to hit the floor and why not the guy we bought out and pulled out of the D League to sit on our bench. I don't care who it is, but it's a lot of draft picks catching splinter time. We haven't seen draft picks hit the floor for the Hawks since the Billy Knight era...ponder that for a minute

For all his inability to find a point guard, I'm not sure if you guys remember the Hawks were a salary capped aging team that couldn't get past the second round (sound familiar) before Billy Knight came to town.  He got rid of Rasheed Wallace, Alan Henderson, Antoine Walker, etc when their contracts weren't the most friendly for trading.  He built a stockpile of picks and cap space.  You can question his use of some of those, but not all of them.  Unlike Sund, Knight has had some home runs on his resume (Josh Smith at 18 is a home run).  Now, we might need to bring in someone to ensure we don't give up extra draft picks when doing sign and trades or when the point guard evaluation is going on, but simply put - shouldn't we long for the days when Billy Knight was at the helm.  (That speaks as much to Sund as it does to the shameful GM legacy of the franchise).

Seriously, the only thing that makes sense for why Jamal has such strong allegiance from the coach in the face of bad offense and awful defense is that he's trying to get him a new contract and re-signed to the Hawks. Even if it gets him fired...and to that we say - is there a deal under the table in case that happens?  If I'm Coach Drew, I absolutely am saying - "look, Jamal - if you're here with a phat contract and I get fired for not playing Teague at the point....YOU OWE ME! You do realize my contract ain't even fully guaranteed, so yeah - me and Jr. are gonna see you and my money better be in small bills."  Can't this really be what's happening?  This is plausible, right?  Tell MC and Ken S to get on the stick and figure this out...I'm only slightly playing.