Childress didn't want to play here anymore. I assume he was not enthused with the prospect of tying his professional future to a franchise that has no greater ambition than to stand pat following a 37-win season that included a lop-sided first-round playoff loss. I assume that he recognizes Mike Woodson's various and obvious limitations as an NBA coach. I assume that he has taken notice of two different front office regimes' inability and/or unwillingness to sign two of the team's four best players in consecutive summers. I assume he's looked at the bottom half of the roster and the summer league team and realized that the Hawks are one significant injury away from a 25-win season in 2008-09. I assume he noticed that Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and New York have each made a commitment to getting better. I assume he noticed that New Jersey has made a commitment to get worse so as to get better at a distinct point in the future. There are likely more reasons than this as to why Josh Childress didn't want to play here anymore.
I don't think he didn't want to play in the NBA anymore. I think he's headed to Greece because he didn't trust the Hawks' ability to complete a sign-and-trade. He took stock of a franchise that appears to us outsiders to be cheap and incompetent and concluded either that their incompetence exceeds even my vast estimation or that the decision-makers in the franchise are also untrustworthy.
So he signs a more lucrative (per year) deal with Olympiakos that lasts long enough that Childress won't (I believe) be property of the Hawks should he want to return to the NBA as a 28-year-old free agent in the summer of 2011. Good on you, Josh Childress. Good luck and good health.
For shame, Atlanta Spirit, for shame.
7 comments:
I think it's simpler than that. Greece offered him more money and the chance to start. Coming back to the Hawks meant backing up the inferior Marvin Williams again for less money.
That Childress played fewer minutes than Marvin Williams both in the regular season and (prior to Williams' ejection in Game 7 of) the playoffs is but one item of the list of mistakes that Mike Woodson made last year that was sufficient cause in and of itself to fire him.
This organization sucks. Everyone on the outside recognizes that. This decision demonstrates that someone on the inside thinks the organization is hopeless.
Childress would have signed a guaranteed, multi-year NBA contract for tens of millions of dollars. He didn't want to play for the Hawks though and the Hawks were too incompetent to recognize that fact and rather than acquiescing and trading Childress for something of value they've lost him for nothing.
I don't believe that Childress would choose Olympiakos over a four- or five-year deal starting at the MLE from an NBA team with a future.
As always, I could be wrong.
I'm so happy Josh did this. Meanwhile somewhere Billy Knight is smiling..... I think he's been vindicated a little. Now we know he wasn't the complete jackass we all thought he was. It's the owners.
Billy Knight did his share to get the Hawks in this position. Screwing up the 2005 and 2006 drafts culminated in the Hawks being scheduled to spend something north of $22M on Mike Bibby and Marvin Williams this season thus further limiting the already slim possibility that ownership would pay to keep their best young players around.
Playing for the Hawks might be a more appealing prospect had Knight ever made more than one decent free agent signing also.
Still, Knight repeatedly wanted to fire Mike Woodson so that's puts him one ahead of the ownership group.
more money, better currency, less games, more playing time... who in their right mind wouldnt make this decision. Financially, its great for him. Also, he can opt out after each year. Great move for Josh, bad move for Hawks. NOW, they need to sign Josh Smith today or tomorrow to lessen their PR sting.
And then you get things like this...
http://www.emptythebench.com/2008/07/22/a-love-letter-to-josh-smith-from-your-new-biggest-fan-whom-also-roots-for-the-pistons/
What I wouldn't give to have Mookie, Stacy, Smith, and Tumbo back again. This is the same kind of crap that made me completely lose interest in the team years ago, only casually checking the standings once in a while just to see if there was anything worth coming back to watch. I thought when we had Terry and then Smith things were on the upward side of the hill. Unfortunately I couldn't see the cliff of disappointment ahead.
I applaud Childress for taking hold of his future and making the best out of it. And when Smith leaves, I'll applaud it as well. No player deserves this kind of treatment or to be subjected to Woody. The ownership is full of failure and incompetent retards. The management is just as bad. Hell, even the damn coaching staff fled after they resigned Woody, that's how sad it is.
What makes it so bad is that the fan base knows all of this and is constantly being tortured by it all. The loyal of us deserve these guys, the talented players that we are losing, yet the franchise does not. I sure hope that Horford and Law can find a way out of this too.
I swear; I just can't believe how horrible this all is. It's like a bad nightmare that just won't quit. I don't understand how people this inept could possibly make their way up to the levels that they are. And it's not like Atlanta is a horrible market, in fact I would argue that it would be just the opposite. We all saw what Vick did for the Flacons fan base and we clearly saw what happened in the playoffs this year. The place was insane and dare I say magical. So, given the right ownership, the right management, the right coaching staff, and the right attitude towards winning and success, I'm sure the people of Atlanta, hell Georgia, would explode with enthusiasm and excitement.
Sometime I just wish I could call these idiots up, but I'm sure it would be the same as trying to argue with a tree, completely pointless.
-Jesse
Another frustrated Hawks fan:
http://runaroundsues.blogspot.com/2008/07/being-that-this-is-blog-and-nobody-is.html
I'd like to know how much of this was ownership vs. how much was Sund dropping the ball.
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