Hoop Dreams

Good fortune and the Atlanta Hawks have worst chemistry than a clumsy 10-year-old with a Bunsen Burner. Positive stuff just doesn’t happen for this franchise. Dominique’s trade, deaths, despicable owner spats, Doug Edwards. If it’s something bad, it probably happened in the Omni or Philips Arena.

Hell, you could win back-to-back NBA titles with the players (Pau Gasol, Luol Deng, last season’s rookie of the year Chris Paul, this season’s rookie of the year Brandon Roy) Atlanta has passed on in the past 10 years. You might win a church league game or two with the flops (Adam Keefe, Ed Gray, Roshown McLeod) the team ultimately picked. So, when I hear Boston and Philly fans speak of how they feel cheated by the ping pong balls not falling their way in the draft lottery –Boston, a favorite to get one of the top two spots, fell to five; Portland got the top pick- I have three words: Get over it!

At least you have titles in this generation. We, as in the thousand or so still-loyal Hawks followers out there, don’t have anything but bragging rights to say we’re the only NBA franchise with three slam dunk champs. And really, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not all that much to be excited about.

Having the third and 11^th pick in the June 28 draft, however, is certainly worth some jubilation—even if Hawks GM Billy Knight is still the guy making the choices. He can’t screw this one up, too, can he? Beyond the obvious Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, most are expecting big things from the ’07 pool of talent. The Hawks, who haven’t had an all-star caliber point guard since Mookie Blaylock, would be wise to grab Mike Conley Jr. and a big, maybe Spencer Hawes or Joakim Noah, at the 11 hole. (Or they could go big at 3 and wait for Georgia Tech PG Javaris Crittenton later on.) A combination of those two bookends compliments the three-headed monster that is Josh Smith, Marvin Williams and Joe Johnson wonderfully.

Of course, anytime you have two appealing picks like the Hawks do, trade rumors get to swirling. Names like Seattle’s Rashard Lewis and Phoenix’s Shawn Marion are already beginning to whisper, but with sticky contracts and David Stern-approved red tape all over the place, it will likely prove just smoke. What isn’t though is the fact that the troubled Hawks franchise’s future is starting to look up. Though Atlanta hasn’t smelled the playoffs in eight seasons, with a couple of quality moves in late June, the team could get back to Eastern Conference respectability. We believe the organization can shake off past mishaps named Roy Marble and Alan Henderson and make the right choices. The numbers have to fall in our favor eventually, right?

Yeah, maybe if we had another GM holding the damn calculator….