2017 Season Will Determine Whether The Hawks Summer Was Successful Or Not

Zach Lowe of ESPN believes the Atlanta Hawks blew this years free agency period. We break down some of his points with our own analysis

The beautiful thing about professional sports is that there’s no surefire way to build a team. You can either draft your talent and develop them (Golden State, Oklahoma City). Make trades (2008 Boston Celtics), or deliver on key free agent signings (2011-14 Miami Heat). For the Atlanta Hawks, they elected not to go for big name free agents and elected to go the safer route; re-sign Kent Bazemore and quietly go after declining big man Dwight Howard. Good way to enhance their title chances? Possibly, but that cant quite be determined until this season really. That’s just my two cents. ESPN’s basketball wiz Zach Lowe disagrees. He believes the Hawks completely missed the mark this year and could be up for a rebuild soon. Lets take a look at some of Lowe’s points and I shall decipher them from there.

"The Hawks have to worry about butts in seats. Coach Mike Budenholzer is their top basketball decision-maker, and he has spent the past two decades winning a ridiculous number of games in San Antonio and Atlanta. Coaches with that sort of track record don’t easily swallow full-on rebuilds.But a second consecutive playoff sweep against the Cavaliers demoralized the Hawks. It laid bare that their current core would not be able to compete against LeBron James & Co., and raised internal questions about whether their pass-happy style of play had reached its zenith. Atlanta players have talked openly about catching the league by surprise two seasons ago, when they won 60 games, and how their relative struggles in the playoffs were the first sign of the league catching up.The Hawks were juggling a lot of balls in those frantic moments before Horford bolted to Boston. They had already agreed to a three-year, $70 million deal with Dwight Howard, a decidedly un-Hawks-like player who mans the same position as Horford. They were working to re-sign Horford anyway, and arranging a trade that would jettison Paul Millsap — their best player last season."

Good point, but the Hawks are practically betting some of their mortgage that Dwight Howard will be refreshed mentally and physically to compete near the level that he used to. Remember, Howard is a physical specimen as a center; when he wanted to, he could not be stopped. He had strength, power and speed that was unmatched. But somewhere along the line post the Orlando Magic trade he lost that desire to even be “good”. The Hawks are Las Vegas casino betting on Howard to at least be near his former self. If he can, it would be an upgrade from Horford.

"They talked about Millsap trades with Phoenix, Denver, Toronto and Houston; the Nuggets were ready to flip a players-and-picks package headlined by Kenneth Faried, according to several sources familiar with the matter.One problem: To execute that scheme, you actually need to re-sign Horford. The Hawks didn’t. There is some debate over precisely how much Atlanta offered, and what Horford demanded, but the difference in the end came down to about $5 million total. That is essentially nothing in the new cap landscape.Blowing up a carefully crafted plan over that amount is either blind stubbornness or an indication that the Hawks are fine with their fallback of pairing Millsap and Howard. The Hawks expect Howard to thrive in a more functional locker room, and figure Dennis Schroder is ready to succeed Teague. They will be good again next season.But Millsap now knows the Hawks tried to move him, and his trade value declines every day.Trading a player like Millsap is painful. He emerged last season as one of the 15 or 20 best players in the league, at worst. But teams are looking ahead at the $110 million mega-cap and are thinking hard about whether age 30-ish players who will demand close to the max are worth it."

Again, Las Vegas bets. But on paper a worthy one. But would Kenneth Faried be a fair replacement for Paul Milsap? Sure he’s younger and of course a great rebounder, defender and energizer. But despite a improved offensive game, he doesn’t stretch the perimeter the way Millsap would nor is a distributor by any means of the imagination. Possibly this could be the last year of the Millsap experiment if it doesn’t work with Howard, then we can say this summer wasn’t a success. Until then, we should try to understand the direction the front office is going. High risk, possible high reward situation.

"They had an elegant plan to shake up the present while boosting the future at the same time. To execute it, they needed Horford back. They came up short on the money, and acquired Howard — about whom Horford had major reservations, per sources close to the situation.They could have signed another big man, kept Horford and dealt Millsap. They could have dealt Millsap, let Horford walk and bottomed out. They could have kept both, re-signed Bazemore, sloughed off bit players and signed another wing.Juggling all of this in real time is hard. Things change fast, in unpredictable ways. But for now, it looks as if the Hawks swapped centers and missed a chance to snag some valuable future assets. If they end up a slightly worse mid-rung playoff team with an outgoing free agent they can’t trade, they might regret it."

This, my dear readers is why you play the game. Lowe as always brings up valid points and facts, but this Howard deal is no coincidence; he wants to clean up his act and coming home is perhaps the best place to do that. If the Hawks do indeed struggle and the Millsap-Howard experiment backfires, then we can always come back to this article and tell Lowe thank you for warning us.