It's Time For A Breakup

You know it when you see it. You buy into something because it is your team and that's what you do. You talk yourself into certain players. You say to yourself, well maybe if this guy is healthy or if he makes the commitment on defense or if he improves his jump shot or if ref gives us more breaks. When you have that many ifs it probably is sign that you are not good enough in the first place. It can be difficult to realize that something you have grown to love and appreciate could be and should be over as you know it to be. When that team has struggled for so long and then finds relative consistency and starts making the playoffs, improving upon their win total year after year. You can talk yourself into the team continuing to improve and continuing to going a little bit further each year in the playoffs. It is easy to do. However, if the ultimate goal of any professional sports franchise is to win a championship (and it should be), regardless of previous successes or not, and that it has become obvious to all of that teams supporters that it just cannot happen. That there are too many teams that are better and too many ifs have to happen for that championship to occur.

Then it is time to pull the plug on the current version of that team and that is the case now for the 2010-2011 Atlanta Hawks. I have heard, and agree with the sentiment, that in the NBA if you win between 40 to about 50 wins a season that you are in purgatory. You are good enough to make the playoffs, maybe make it to the second round of the playoffs, but you just are not good enough to make a run at the Finals. You are stuck with getting draft picks in the 20's and without radical improvement from within you will not win and win big. The 2010-2011 Atlanta Hawks as currently constructed are on pace to win 50 games for the second season in a row. The likely 5th seed come playoff time. That is decent but not good enough. They are in NBA purgatory. In the NBA you need at least two top 10 caliber players or three top 15/20 caliber players with the right supporting cast. You need the studs to make it work.

Let us look at recent NBA Champions.
2010 Lakers-Kobe(top 5), Gasol(top 15), supporting cast Lamar Odom, Artest, Bynum
2009 Lakers-Kobe(top 5), Gasol(top 15), supporting cast Bynum, Odom
2008 Celtics-Garnett(top 5), Pierce (top 15), cast of Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, Perkins
2007 Spurs-Duncan (top 5), cast Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili
2006 Heat- Shaq (top 5), Wade (top 10), weak supporting cast
*top 5 means All NBA 1st Team, top 10 All NBA 2nd Team, etc.

Point being all these teams had a top 5 guy and one other guy who was thought of as top 15 caliber player. Joe Johnson has been the best player on the Hawks since he came to Atlanta in 2005. You cannot question that. He averaged close to 40 minutes a game for a solid 4 seasons. He was worn out at the end of the season and I feel that his performance suffered in the playoffs when he ran out of gas. During the regular season, he was never better than a top 15 performer. Making the third team all NBA last season. Good player, but not great. His best basketball, I feel, is behind him. It is slowly becoming Al Horford's team. Again a good player but not great.

The Hawks have 3 guys on the team currently who would be considered top 25/30 caliber players. With Josh Smith being the third guy. Josh Smith, as electrifying as he can be, has never made an All Star team. He has been close a couple of times but never quite good enough to make it on the squad. Excellent defensive player, he can do a lot of things for you on the court, but you still cannot trust him to make the right decision at the right time. You need him on your team but he should never be one of your top options. Unfortunately the Hawks maxed out on that contract to Johnson. Limiting some of the moves they could make to improve the squad. The Hawks recently made a move to acquire Kirk Hinrich for Mike Bibby. An upgrade, but that is not saying much. Bibby was a stiff on defense and his FG percentages and PPG had dropped in each consecutive month this season. Hinrich has brought some intensity to the squad, upgrading the PG on defense and providing more of a spark on the offensive side of the ball. However, the improvement is minimal and will have little impact on the bottom line at the end of the season. Bibby helped the Hawks make the playoffs and established a nice veteran presence on the floor to help mature the young players that Atlanta had. It has been proven over time that veterans win in the playoffs not young teams. This Hawks team is not young and they are not really veteran. Again stuck in a purgatory. Do you wait a couple of years and allow this core group to mature and hope that they can get better while other teams around them fade? Do you add some key pieces here and there, maybe a shot blocking/defensive type center to shift Al to the 4? Will that move alone put this team over the top? Or do you start thinking radically and moving guys like a Josh Smith to try it with a different set of guys? Me, personally I like the last two options, especially the last one. Trade Josh and see what you can get for him.

There is just something about this team that reeks of lack of urgency. It became obvious during the blowout sweep to the Magic last year in the playoffs that something was missing. For a team that had continued to get better every year, they hit a brick wall and hit it in a big way. Something did not look quite right, they gave up and looked content. Or maybe it is that they are good but not good enough. Al Horford and Joe Johnson are nice but you need someone who is better than those guys to contend for a championship. You need a first team All NBA caliber type of player. But where do you find these guys and how do you get them to come to Atlanta? Carmelo would have fit in well here but he wanted to go to NY. Dwight Howard, Deron Williams, and Chris Paul would work but I doubt they will come to Atlanta when they are free agents. The latter two could have been drafted by the Hawks 5 years ago, but we decided that Marvin Williams was the better option, but that is a story for another day. Point being it's time for a breakup and hopefully management will realize this and make the proper move accordingly.

MB