The Atlanta Hawks have set out to find a new president of basketball operations. And while they have been linked to several names already, two recent interviews underscore the duality of ownership’s decision.
The Stein Line’s Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported that Atlanta is indeed still linked to former Hawk Elton Brand, who has ties to the coaching staff and minority ownership.
Two others, though, offer far more polarizing backstories.
The insider duo rehashed the Hawks’ plan to pair their future executive with recently installed general manager Onsi Saleh. Saleh’s defining quality for the role to this point is that he is “one of the league’s top salary cap strategists.”
In addition to linking Brand, Fischer and Stein reported that former Denver Nuggets GM Calvin Booth and his ex-Sacramento Kings counterpart, Monte McNair, have interviewed for the job.
“Booth’s scouting acumen and strong reputation as a talent evaluator could pair well with Saleh's strategic expertise. McNair, meanwhile, just worked in a two-executive structure alongside Wes Wilcox with the Kings,” Fischer and Stein wrote on May 4.
Both Booth and McNair are free agents, per se.
However, they got there for different reasons, and this should be enough to separate the two candidates if all other factors are equal.
ESPN’s Tim Machmahon and Ramona Shelburne called Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke’s’ decision to fire Booth and former head coach Mike Malone both “complicated” and “remarkably simple”.
“When organizational dissension devolves into factions, one team source explained, both sides have to lose, “Macmahon and Shelburne wrote in April. “If Kroenke would've picked a side, the thinking went, everyone on the losing side would've either had to get behind whichever side ‘won’ or lined up behind whomever was brought in as a replacement.
“Kroenke held Malone and Booth responsible for allowing their personal issues to negatively affect the organization, sources said.”
Reports from Denver are that Booth and Malone rarely, if ever, spoke to one another.
For whatever basketball acumen Booth may bring – and part of the reason he and Malone clashed was because the coach resisted playing players the executive brought in via the draft – allowing such a divide to develop, let alone affect how he operated, are red flags.
The Nuggets hired Booth as AGM in 2017, promoted him to the full role in 2020, won a title in 2022-23, only to need a new lead executive. They have not missed the postseason since Booth's first year.
Monte McNair’s track record should scare the Hawks off
However, it is nigh impossible to argue that McNair would be a better choice. For starters, this is the same executive the Hawks convinced to acquire Kevin Huerter in a trade in 2022.
Huerter is a good player. However, the Kings surrendered a first-round pick only for him.
He ended his tenure with the organization as a reserve and trade fodder. Which leads to the next issue: McNair’s decision to recreate what the Chicago Bulls had (or lacked) with DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine.
McNair also traded away a pair of franchise PGs in De’Aaron Fox and Tyrese Haliburton for varying reasons, including firing Mike Brown, all of which is even harder to justify in hindsight.
The Hawks have other candidates on their rumored search list, including former players.
“Two more known Hawks candidates: Former BYU and EuroLeague swingman Travis Hansen (who also briefly played for the Hawks and now works in private equity) as well as G League president and former Hawk Shareef Abdur-Rahim.”
However, the Hawks have been linked to some clearly polarizing candidates in the early going, and few of them instill much confidence outside of Bob Myers and, perhaps now, Booth.
McNair’s tenure with the Kings is emblematic of that.
“The McNair departure concludes a five-year tenure as the team’s general manager. Two Aprils ago, he was named the NBA’s Executive of the Year, The Athletic’s Sam Amick and Anthony Slater wrote in April. “But that core stalled in the 24 months that followed. McNair was unable to make the necessary rotation upgrades around the edges to propel them forward.”
The Kings were bounced from the postseason in the Play-In Tournament in each of the last two years, giving McNair one playoff appearance in five years at the helm.
The Hawks can and must do better.