Only problem is, that player is named James, Bryant or (Dwight) Howard. “You don™t trade for superstars, you draft them,” Atlanta GM Rick Sund (above) tells the Journal-Constitution’s Mark Bradley. Bad news then, for a Hawks team who aren’t in this season’s lottery and haven’t always drafted well.
A little exercise: Take one player ”- any one, from Josh Smith to Speedy Claxton ”- off the Hawks and replace him with LeBron/Kobe/Dwight. Know where the Hawks would be? Preparing for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. This is a very good team that lacks one great player, but that™s a massive lack.
We tire of the NBA™s blather about its stars, but nobody can deny that it™s a star™s game. And stars are hard to get. Of the 15 men who comprised the 2009 All-NBA teams, 13 were top 10 draftees ”- the exceptions are Bryant, taken No. 13 when high schoolers weren™t yet the rage, and Tony Parker, who arrived from France as the 28th pick in 2001 ”- and 10 went in the top five.
Only three of the 15 have changed teams since their NBA debuts. (The three: Shaquille O™Neal, Pau Gasol and Chauncey Billups.) Moral of our story: If you find a star, you keep him. And if you have a chance at one and you whiff ¦ well, you wind up being the Hawks, forever chasing the game.
They couldn™t have had James in 2003 or Howard in 2004 because they didn™t win the lottery. But they had a shot at Chris Paul (second team All-NBA) in 2005, and they had another at Brandon Roy (also second team) the next year. To harp on those dire drafts is to flog a horse deader than Man ˜o War, but the Hawks haven™t yet ”- and might never ”- outrun those lapses.
They could have had a backcourt of Paul and Joe Johnson way back in 2005. No, they wouldn™t have landed in the 2007 lottery and wouldn™t have Al Horford, but they™d have made the Eastern Conference finals by now and still had Mike Bibby™s money to spend on a big man.
Billy Knight deserves credit for building a 69-loss roster into a robust entity, but the best player he acquired ”- Johnson ”- hasn™t made the All-NBA team