Once More, With Feeling: Reviewing Rick Sund's Season

It's difficult to evaluate Rick Sund's tenure as general manager of the Atlanta Hawks because the worst parts of his tenure are essentially conditions of his employment. There are only 30 NBA general manager jobs and who's to say that not having one of those jobs is more satisfying than having one, but on the condition you can't choose the head coach and have to sign Joe Johnson to a franchise-limiting contract. Sund didn't make the Hawks' cap situation any worse this season. A backhanded compliment, but not one that could have been delivered at the end of any of the last three seasons.

Rick Sund is a symptom of organizational dysfunction, not a cause. In fact, in the limited space he had to maneuver, Sund did a fine job filling out the bench with freely available talent. Yes, it's absurd the Hawks went over the luxury tax line by keeping Jerry Stackhouse for a full season and locking in Erick Dampier as the fourth-string center, but those irritating decisions didn't have much of an adverse impact on the court. It probably won't improve the Hawks' future that ASG paid the luxury tax, didn't get the revenue from hosting two second-round playoff games, and, in the end, ludicrously bought out Pape Sy's contract for no reason at all. But, hey, those are costs you can sell draft picks to cover.

And, on the court, the Hawks enjoyed career seasons from Willie Green and Jannero Pargo, paired bargain with pleasure in the form of Ivan Johnson, and weren't seriously hampered by the physical frailty of Tracy McGrady and Vladimir Radmanovic. There were surely more interesting ways to build a bench on the cheap, Sund just built an effective one out of familiar spare parts, players suited to the wide arc of Larry Drew's motion offense. He deserves credit for that.

Nor should it be forgotten that the Hawks survived Al Horford's absence because Rick Sund did not, in the end, trade Zaza Pachulia at the 2010-11 trading deadline just because Larry Drew couldn't identify his third-best big man and because a Rick Sund draft pick, heretofore marginalized by a head coach not of Sund's choosing, turned out to be a perfectly competent NBA point guard when given a reasonable chance to prove himself.

Sund hasn't overcome the curious whims of his employers, but he's done some good work in the margins. In lieu of a sound organizational philosophy, that may be all that's possible of anyone in a simultaneously enviable and unenviable position.

AJC.com: Cunningham: Rick Sund Q&A

Michael Cunningham asked Rick Sund some relevant questions. Sund responded with a mix of defensiveness:

Q. Do you think this core group has peaked?

No.

Q. How can it be better?

In some ways it might be a little bit like Dallas, although we were younger than Dallas. Dallas went three straight years with disappointing playoffs and eliminated in the first round and I think that prompted Cuban the other day to grab the mic and say, ‘For all you people that didn’t believe in us . . . ‘ Because they kept their core group together including Kidd and Nowitzki and Marion and they got criticized for that quite a bit. And they got beat pretty much embarrassingly, by their standards, in the last three years. I think we have learned along the way. We will look at the possibility of making our team better. We do every year. We’ve made two major trades the last two years and we will continue to look and see if there is something that makes us better.

Q. You look at Dallas, they did make a trade that helped them so...

Yeah, well, you asked me about the core group and that’s what I’m responding to. The core group of our players have, I think, improved every single year. I’ve had that question every year, even the year I got here: Can this core group get even better? And they have, I think, in terms of ultimately the playoffs.

Q. So you are not inclined to break it up?

I didn’t say that. I said we will continue to look. Your question was, ‘Can this core be competitive again?’ I think we were pretty competitive in the playoffs. I think we can continue to do it but I think we will look, like we do every year, to see if we can do something to make our club better.

dismissiveness:

Q. Larry’s offense didn’t go the way he planned as far as getting team to play that style all the time. Do you still think this...

I don’t know. You have got to ask that question to Larry.

and a reinforcement of the organization's central delusion:

Q. Joe got the contract and he had his worst year since he’s been here. He’s getting older, he had the injury, so are you concerned...

Well, I don’t worry about the old. When I am seeing Jason Kidd and Nowitzki and the Wades and all these people in their 30s, that doesn’t bother me.

At this point, I genuinely don't care what Rick Sund says, only what he does (and even then with a number of caveats concerning the degree of authority he has in making basketball-related decisions). Hence the lack of further analysis in this space.

2010-11 Season Review: Rick Sund

The aforementioned inherent difficulties in evaluating Rick Sund's 2010-11 season were founded on his lame duck status throughout the season. Not just was Sund universally perceived as a lame duck GM, but also one who did not have authority over either of the head coach hiring decisions made during this tenure. How do you evaluate a man over moves he may or may not have initiated, moves with which he may or may not have agreed?

I'm not sure that the one-year extension he signed this week really changes my reservations about both his performance and the role of the general manager in this franchise. If Sund was extended out of convenience, so the current owners did not have to engage in a job search while trying to identify the franchise's future owners, then the Atlanta Hawks are likely to spend one more off-season (though a long lockout might change things) bereft of long-term planning. If Sund was extended by owners who are not hell-bent on selling the team, then his continued employment (essentially a renewal of his lame duck status in this scenario) working under those who undermine their general manager and present the greatest impediment to the franchise developing a unified basketball identity validates every bit of skepticism directed at the organization.

As best as I can determine, Rick Sund, much like the team on the court, capped a mostly uninspiring season with a faintly impressive finish. Whether the faintness represents a relatively dim chance of future success or merely reflects past disappointments remains to be seen.

There's no reason to believe that Rick Sund initiated either the hiring of Larry Drew nor Joe Johnson's extension. Following orders is an understandable (with the example of Billy Knight serving as a cautionary tale) though not a sufficient defense in both cases. Drew may yet develop into a competent NBA head coach. If he does so quickly, he'll be a bargain. There is, I suspect, no chance that the remaining five years and $107 million due Johnson ever reflects competence. Even in a best case scenario, the contract will likely overshadow whatever value Johnson provides on the court.

Nor was it just Johnson's contract that came home to roost this season. Whereas that deal will seriously hamstring the Hawks in the future, it was the prior re-signings of Mike Bibby and Marvin Williams which seriously hurt the 2010-11 Hawks. The amount of money invested in two sub-par starters limited the utility of eminently reasonable contracts for Josh Smith and Al Horford and was partially responsible (shockingly poor talent evaluation being the other factor) for the team's lack of depth. The lone upshot of the Bibby and Williams contracts might be the refusal to sign Jamal Crawford to an extension, thus potentially keeping the quantity of defense-averse shooting guards in their thirties on the 2011-12 roster at one.

Now, the events of March, April, and May revealed that the Hawks might have had better depth all season than Larry Drew acknowledged. The recent success of Zaza Pachulia, Jeff Teague, and Jordan Crawford works to Sund's advantage in every way. Pachulia's contract is very reasonable for a third big man and Pachulia works best in such a role while Teague and Crawford the Younger both appear to be very sound use of late first-round picks. That all three of these players were out the rotation for some or most of the season really can't reflect poorly on Sund, either. What influence could he, a lame duck, have had over a head coach he didn't recommend hiring in the first place?

And, if Sund was general managing out the string, the trade of Mike Bibby, Crawford, Mo Evans, and a first-round pick for Kirk Hinrich was extremely defensible. The trade (beyond the cathartic aspect of getting rid of Bibby) made the Hawks better over the period of time for which Sund was under contract. Had Sund been working for anyone who had demonstrated an iota of basketball knowledge or strategic vision, such a deal, under those circumstances, might smack of cynical careerism on the general manager's part. Given Sund's age, the relative unlikelihood of him securing a similar executive role in another organization, and the relative likelihood that the current owners are quite pleased with a more competitive second-round exit for their team, I absolve him of any self-interested motives.

It should not, however, absolve Sund (and the organization) from the damage done in getting out from under the ridiculous contract Bibby signed in July 2009. The difference in cost between Bibby and Hinrich could reasonably be explained away by the difference in their quality, especially the differences in how they complement Joe Johnson. But in, rather improbably, making a bad cap situation worse, the Atlanta Hawks organization will surely come to rue the loss of both Jordan Crawford and the 18th pick* of the 2011 draft. Not that either are likely to become great players so much as the likelihood they could contribute, the possibility they could become good, and the cost certainty of their rookie contracts.

*Especially if any two of Kenneth Faried, Jordan Hamilton, and Tobias Harris end up being available there.

Sund, you see, again showed little ability to acquire quality freely available talent for the bench. Damien Wilkins was a sound mid-season pickup but he still played fewer minutes than Mo Evans for the Hawks this season. Josh Powell and Etan Thomas were both predictably useless. Pape Sy has yet to demonstrate the worth of spending a draft pick and the buyout to secure his age 22 season. Magnum Rolle may yet prove to be the cheap, rookie complement to Pachulia off the bench for which the Hawks should have been searching since Billy Knight was wasting the 33rd pick on Solomon Jones but the inherent humor in Rolle being at least 25 should he make his NBA debut for the organization that gets caught off-guard by players aging can't be ignored.

It's not an evaluation of Sund so much as the organization as a whole to conclude that the best personnel decisions under his watch (extending Horford, drafting Teague and Jordan Crawford, re-signing Pachulia, not re-signing Jamal Crawford) haven't paid off on the court while some of the worst* (not letting the general manager pick the head coach, re-signing Bibby and Williams, signing Powell and Thomas) have already hurt the Hawks.

*Here I'm grading the Joe Johnson contract and drafting/buying out Pape Sy as essentially neutral on-court to date.

Until ultimate power in the organization rests with someone willing to grant the general manager ultimate power over basketball decisions it will be impossible for the Atlanta Hawks to progress toward a championship.

Inside the Bubble of the Atlanta Hawks

It's maddening (and repetitive) to write about an organization that appears to have little interest in objective reality or critical self-assessment.

As for the former, there's no shame in being a good-but-not-great basketball team, not even one that falls short of greatness despite nuzzling up against the luxury tax line and possessing just two above average players under the age of 29-and-a-half.

As for the latter, there's no need for a public recitation of failings (I don't know where or what my next job is going to be, either.) but the willingness of those within the organization to insult the intelligence of the fan base with which the franchise has a less than stellar relationship historically.

There's no benefit to Rick Sund describing the Hawks as "elite" based on a highly personal and in no way exclusive interpretation of the term.

Nor to him calling his team "analogous" to the NBA's model franchise, the San Antonio Spurs.

Nor to the continued self-congratulation for the team taking more than half-a-decade to go from the low 13 wins to the high of getting swept in the second round of the playoffs.

Assume Sund convinces one casual fan with any of these public statements. Does he create realistic expectations for that hypothetical fan when said fan chooses to watch the Hawks? Does the damage such dubious statements do to the perceptions and confidence of the team's relatively small but hearty fan base* outweigh the gains made with this hypothetical casual fan? I think it might. Given the lack of local media coverage, I think a casual (or potential) Hawks fan is far more likely to interact with a serious Hawks fan in their day-to-day life than to read Rick Sund quotes buried inside in the sports section of the AJC, or on Michael Cunningham's blog, or at Peachtree Hoops, or here.

*This deep lack of trust can perhaps best be exemplified that ownership, despite over-spending for practically every member of the roster not named Smith or Horford, is still accused of being cheap. The failure to couch the discussion of this organization's failings in terms of objective reality goes both ways.

Larry Drew appears not to have made the adjustment from thinking, during his 18 seasons as an assistant, about how he would coach an NBA team in the abstract to coaching the particular team he was hired to lead.

In the abstract, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Larry Drew believing in using the bench or wanting energetic defense but he's struggling to adjust his platonic ideals to the reality of coaching a team with a bad bench and a team whose limited individual defensive ability cannot be overcome by any amount of effort.

When Drew says about Jamal Crawford, as he does in this morning's paper:

"I don't want [poor shooting] to dictate how the rest of his game is going to be. He has the ability to break defenses down and get into the interior and make some nice passes, and I look for him to do that as well. Not just to go out there and sit on his shot."

Is he convincingly discussing how Jamal Crawford plays basketball?

Shooting is Crawford's game. There is no rest of it. His assist rate sits in a similar range to those of Al Horford and Josh Smith, not those of lead guards. Crawford is almost 31 years old. He is the player he is at this point and that's a useful player if a head coach leverages his strength and remains aware of the potential damage his weaknesses could cause the team.

This isn't the only instance of Drew (or his assistants) describing a team or player completely different from the one everyone else sees.

There's Drew's apparent belief that Josh Smith is one of the best spot-up shooters in the league.

There's the deeply painful sideline interviews during television broadcasts where an assistant calls for a commitment to defense...while Jamal Crawford, Josh Powell, and Etan Thomas are all on the court. Or for the Hawks to overcome a second-half deficit by having the guards drive the basketball and get to the line. As if the last season-and-a-half of guards* not being able to drive the basketball and get to the line (the latter problem extending to most of the roster, to be fair) was either anomalous or the result of lack of direction to do so.

*There are two Hawk guards who have demonstrated an ability to get to the line, but neither one starts.

And there's the contest scapegoating of "energy" for poor defensive performances.

Energy's not going to improve this team's defense. Better defensive players are going to improve this team's defense.

Spending more money is not, in and of itself, going to improve this team's results. Spending money more wisely is going to improve this team.

This is why the Hawks are not analogous to the Spurs. Both teams are spending about $69 million on player salaries this season. The Spurs are winning (and have won) more because they spent that money on better players, because they don't miss on the majority of their first round draft picks, because they find the occasional useful player in the second round of the draft, because they draft players with a plan as how to use them in the NBA in mind, because they fill their Summer League team (and field a Summer League team every year) with potential assets rather than players already signed to foreign clubs for the upcoming season, because they operate a D-League team to provide extra depth on the cheap.

The Hawks aren't the least analogous team to the Spurs in the league but one would have to squint to find a strong similarity between them beyond each employing a great post player who doesn't want to be called a center.

The public comments of Sund and Drew are not disconcerting because I assume either of them to be disingenuous, they're disconcerting because I assume them to be honest and it's the self-serving and/or impractical expression of their honesty that enervates.

SI.com: The Point Forward: LaGree: Average Hawks in Need of Financial Creativity

Given the opportunity to help fill in for the vacationing Zach Lowe, I jumped at the chance to play Nate Robinson to his Rajon Rondo at The Point Forward on SI.com. They asked me to write about Rick Sund's belief in improving by staying the same:

Given that Philips Arenas has been, on average, at 75 percent capacity this season and that the franchise has not won a second-round playoff game since 1997, deciding to stay below the luxury-tax threshold is perfectly reasonable.

The lack of creativity in spending their limited resources is less so. Does any team (at least as 2011 dawns) need Mo Evans and Damien Wilkins? Both Jason Collins and Etan Thomas? Simply limiting themselves to one aging role player per position would create some financial flexibility while freeing up a couple of roster spots for younger players capable of augmenting the core in the present and possibly providing greater value in the future.

Unless the organization is willing to accept diminishing returns from their long-standing belief in sticking with more of the same, cutting back on aging role players may be a necessary change.

So You Say Want To Improve This Team

Dear Hawks fan --

It's a fair desire, but I have to ask how you propose that be done? Who on this roster (other than the productive and reasonably priced Al Horford and Josh Smith) would any other NBA team want for themselves?

• The one-dimensional starting point guard owed another $6.4 million next season?
• The injured and aging starting shooting guard in possession of a brand-new $123 million contract?
• The injured and disappointing starting small forward owed almost $25 million over the next three seasons?

If you don't move one of those three to improve the team at the point or on the wing, the team is unlikely to get better.

So that leaves you with trying to improve the team by bartering Jamal Crawford* or Jeff Teague** or Mo Evans. Given the Hawks' record with second-round picks, I don't see moving any of those leading to significant improvement.

*There's still time to deal him. Some team might suffer an injury and the backcourt and be interested in bringing him on for the stretch run.

**Sacramento might have interest in him but the Hawks have constructed their roster in such a way that trading Teague (who's two coaches deep in disillusionment) for frontcourt depth could actually make the team worse at the point.

Who's to blame? Rick Sund gets his share of blame and he deserves* some of that. But it's a fair question how much power he has. He didn't choose the head coach. It's unclear how much of the effort to re-sign Joe Johnson was instigated by Sund and how much was Sund carrying out the wishes of his bosses. He's shown no (useful) imagination in filling out the bench but, again, how much of that is his work and how much is it due to the ownership's fondness for familiar names. If Sund is prone to having his decisions overruled and if he knows, as he must, that ASG won't fire him and pay two general managers for even part of a season what's his motivation to do more than cash the checks until his contract runs out and let ownership's next fourth- or fifth-choice general manager candidate attempt to clean up their mess. It's not admirable behavior, but it's understandable.

*Losing Josh Childress for nothing should be a horrible embarrassment.

The key problems for this team are organizational and they begin with ownership. There is no reason to believe that this is not, from Joe Johnson to Jason Collins, exactly the roster that ownership wants. Until ownership changes*, this team will have fundamental limitations. Limitations that Rick Sund can't transcend, that Larry Drew can't transcend, that Al Horford can't transcend. This a 45-win team with no cap flexibility until the Summer of 2014. They don't have a stockpile of draft picks or a history of scouting success to mitigate that lack of flexibility. Ownership has quite willingly saddled themselves to stagnation on the court, cut corners off the court, and the financial result for them will be, at best, stagnation.

*Either the makeup of ownership or their behavior.

Thursday Afternoon Atlanta Hawks Links

• No Mike Miller tonight for the Heat.
• Michael Wallace previews the game at The Heat Index.
• Rick Sund calls Hawks "elite." Tonight's Daily Dime Live sure to respond with claims that the Hawks are not "relevant."
• Kelly Dwyer and Dan Devine preview the Hawks at Ball Don't Lie.
• Tas Melas does the same for The Basketball Jones.
• At SBNation, Mike Prada ranks the Atlanta Hawks as the NBA's fifth-least watchable team.

SBNation: Ranking All 30 NBA GMs

Mike Prada ranks Rick Sund in the top 75% of NBA general managers:

The Hawks have a good, but not great team and an ownership group that won't go over the luxury tax. They're not winning a title anytime soon, that's for sure. Yet Sund seems so committed to bringing back the same core of players that have proven they can't get it done.

I'm not even talking about the ridiculous Joe Johnson contract, which we'll get to in a second. I'm talking more about all the moves that led up to it. There's little collective rhyme or reason to the contract handed out to Mike Bibby (three years), Zaza Pachulia (four years), Marvin Williams (five years) and Jamal Crawford (a trade, mind you, but two years). The contracts by themselves make sense, but taken together, they demonstrate a lack of planning. That's four key role players making a combined $25 million per season that expire in four different years.

Let's go back to Johnson now. Yes, his contract is terrible, no doubt. But Sund really got himself stuck by not thinking ahead with his other contracts. He put himself between a rock and a hard place because he did not think to give his role players contracts that all expire around the same time. He limited his options to "sign Johnson, ride it out and maybe rebuild in five years" or "don't sign Johnson and fail to rebuild for a couple years because all of Johnson's role players are clogging up our cap flexibility." Under those circumstances, it's more understandable that Johnson got what he got.

I strongly believe that a lack of creativity and long-term planning with smaller decisions ultimately leads to a lack of creativity and long-term planning with bigger decisions. Bad process leads to bad process. Rick Sund and the Hawks are the best example of this.

Draft Debriefing: Jordan Crawford, Pape Sy, and Money

It says something about the profound lack of confidence Hawks fans have about the organization that acquiring a legitimate prospect with the 27th pick fails to convince. Jordan Crawford does two things this organization has long valued (shoot and score) and could have an immediate role if Joe Johnson leaves via free agency. The resources wasted in acquiring Crawford reminds one, on a much smaller scale, of the deal that brought Johnson to Atlanta in a first place, a deal in which sound player evaluation was undermined, at least in terms of building a championship-quality team, by the cost of the acquisition.

Both deals also demonstrate the team's disinclination to build through the draft* or develop the talent** they do draft. As with the Larry Drew hiring, it will take time and perspective to adequately assess these as basketball decisions but it's immediately apparent that, as financial decisions, they're intended to limit short-term costs. By drafting Crawford at 27 instead of 24, Hawks ownership will save $306,400 over the next three years (should the team pick up Crawford's first option), and, rather than investing the gain of the 31st pick to immediately address either of the team's long-standing and glaring weaknesses (perimeter defense, defensive rebounding), they sold the pick for approximately $3 million before again, at the 53rd pick, declining to add a possible contributor for 2010-11 in favor of a 22-year-old wing (though the Hawks seem to think he's a power forward or center), Pape Sy, who played 14 minutes a game for the 13th-best (out of 16) team in the French League.

*13-win teams probably shouldn't be trading two first-round picks; teams with weak benches probably shouldn't treat the top of the second-round as an ATM.

**The Hawks had no idea that including Boris Diaw in the Joe Johnson deal meant including a league-average starter; drafting Crawford puts a serious damper on any hope of Sergiy Gladyr contributing in the near future.

The Hawks have concluded a head coaching search and the draft and the only certainty is that ownership turned a profit.

Some key Jordan Crawford collegiate stats...

Crawford	Pts/100	2PTFG%	3PTFG%	3PTA/FGA	TS%	FT Rate
FR	24.1	47.8	36.6	0.34	53.8	19.3
SO	37.9	50.1	39.1	0.36	56.9	21.1
Career	32.6	49.4	38.4	0.35	56.0	20.6

Crawford	A/100	TO/100	BS/100	S/100	OR%	DR%
FR	5.7	4.8	0.50	2.31	5.6	9.7
SO	5.3	4.5	0.37	2.48	3.4	12.0
Career	5.5	4.6	0.42	2.42	4.3	11.2

2009-10 Season Review: Rick Sund

Previously: Predictions

It's folly to judge a general manager on one season's work. The desire to win in the current season must be balanced with longer-term goals for an organization to succeed. There won't be many absolute judgments levied below nor will what look like problems currently necessarily remain problems.

For example, trading Acie Law IV and Speedy Claxton for Jamal Crawford was a great move in terms of the 2009-10 season. However, the $10 million Crawford's owed for the 2010-11 season appears to limit Sund's options this summer. Then again, Sund could turn Crawford's career year, combined with an expiring contract, into assets useful in 2010-11 and beyond should he explore the trade market. Which he surely must given Crawford's age and limitations.

So it is with Marvin Williams, who was paid far too much in 2009-10 for what the team asked of him. I think it's a fair belief that Williams is capable of more. If such is asked of him and he's able to fulfill the promise that made him a consensus top-two prospect in the 2005 NBA Draft, then his contract (4 years and $30 million remain) would look reasonable if not a bargain.

Mike Bibby's contract is unlikely to be a bargain at any point in time, though, in concert with other moves, the $650,000 pay cut he takes this season may make the acquisition of an additional (and one hopes useful) player possible. If Sund can find a taker for the final two years of Bibby's contract, a parade would not be out of the question.

The end of the bench in 2009-10 doesn't inspire confidence for the end of the bench in 2010-11 which will almost surely consist of whatever cheap, available options can be scraped together. As expected, neither Joe Smith nor Jason Collins was able to contribute. The second, guaranteed year of Randolph Morris's contract wasted a roster spot on a team already limiting itself to 13 players for the entire season. More disappointing was that the Hawks continued to lack ambition and imagination with non-NBA free agents and to completely ignore the existence of the D-League. The Hawks used the final roster spot to recycle two non-prospects of their own: Othello Hunter and Mario West. Hunter was the better use of a roster spot* both because he's a marginally more plausible contributor and because Woodson wouldn't play him.

*Using that roster spot on him and assigning him to the D-League might have been more useful for the team, not to mention his own development.

Woodson's predilections make it impossible to give Sund's first-round draft choice anything other than an incomplete grade. Given the volume of quality point guard prospects (also, Jonny Flynn) available in the 2009 NBA Draft, it won't look good if Teague fails to develop. It remains to be seen if selecting Sergiy Gladyr in the second-round was a productive long-term decision or just another wasted draft pick for the franchise.

Another season without Josh Childress neither on the roster nor gone for good in a sign-and-trade leaves a mess Sund inherited unresovled and awaiting a final judgment.

Letting Mike Woodson's contract expire was a sound and necessary decision* but one that pales in importance next to the decision of whom to hire as the team's next head coach.

*One that will be discussed at much greater length in the next season review piece.

Similarly, I expect the 4 year, $60 million contract offered Joe Johnson in the summer of 2009 to compare quite favorably to the contract Johnson signs in the summer of 2010. Whether or not the contract Johnson signs is one offered by the Hawks will also go a long way toward coloring Sund's job performance. Bidding against yourself is not a recipe for success. Refusing to overpay may involve taking a short-term hit in the service of a brighter future.

Up Next: Mike Woodson

No Contract Talks Between Woodson, Hawks Until End of Season

It's a weird situation not made less weird by rare off-day reporting about the lack of anything to report. The relevant quotes...

Mike Woodson:

"Am I happy about it? No. But it is what it is. But I'm not going to sit here and complain about it by any means. I have this year on my contract and then I'm a free agent. They have not approached me, so obviously we're going to play it out.

I've still got a job to do. That's the approach I'm taking."

Rick Sund:

"It's been a good situation for Woody as ownership and the organization stood by him and supported him in the rebuilding years. When I suggested a new contract for Woody, the owners embraced the recommendation and I told Woody's camp that after two years, we'll evaluate it at that time and it seems to be working well."

They're both right. Woodson can't be happy not to have been offered an extension after the last season-and-a-quarter but being offered or not being offered an extension is beyond his control. Sund accurately points out that it's extraordinary, even in retrospect, that Woodson got a second contract to coach this team.

Josh Smith:

"Any time a coach can be successful every season and improve his winning percentage, I think that he deserves a shot."

Joe Johnson:

"He's all in all a great coach as far as getting the game plan ready and preparing us day in, day out, for battle."

Marvin Williams:

"I think everybody understands the situation, even Joe's situation. I think everybody knows what's on the line. Guys on the team are kind of playing for those two guys right now."

Thoughts on Real Training Camp

Check back in this space from 10am...

• NBATV is on the ball this morning: Woodson, Bibby, and Josh Smith are mic'd up.
• Promising sing: Rick Sund said, in diplomatic fashion, that Jason Collins was signed to give fouls against Shaq and Dwight Howard.
• Even in drills, Joe Johnson has to guard a point guard.
• Josh Smith would play hard every minute of every game if he got to play against Mike Woodson.
• UCLA cut (video)
• Josh Smith to Horford, mid-drill: "You gotta start doing bets like that, 'Bet it hit rim,' 'Bet it don't hit rim,' 'Bet it swish.'" And some say this team lacks a vocal leader.
• Aaron Miles and Courtney Sims both want a job. They stand at attention directly in front of Woodson as he talks to the team.
• Jason Collins can dunk in an empty gym. I would have lost that bet.
• According to Eric Snow, Larry Brown doesn't believe in line drills and George Karl loves line drills. On that evidence, line drills are clearly useless.
• Mike Wilks and Miles perked up at getting to pressure Mario West full-court.
• If Randolph Morris makes the team, it won't be on the basis of his play in the half-court 5-on-5 portion of this morning's practice.
• While Mo Evans ices his knees, Mario West plays with the second unit.
• Garret Siler is significantly slower than Zaza Pachulia. Almost as soon as anything happens, Siler finds himself out of position.
  
• Pachulia, in general, looks far better than any other reserve big men. Not that that should surprise.
• Othello Hunter gets the power forward spot for the White team in Joe Smith's absence. Hunter gets two early buckets (one on a post-up, one off an offensive rebound) against Josh Smith.
• Bad passes, 1-of-2 from the free throw line, indifferent ball-screens, looking good when he occasionally attacks the basket, complaining about calls he isn't getting...Josh Smith's in mid-season form.
• Siler can get position in the low-post. His weight and free throw stroke appear to limit his effectiveness though.
• Mike Woodson: "Get Mike out of there." Mike Bibby: "No, I'm not coming." Bibby stays in the scrimmage, his breathing disturbingly heavy and high in the mix.
  

2008-09 Season Review: Rick Sund

Considering both the ownership situation and his brief tenure I'm going to give Rick Sund the benefit of the doubt for the time being. I don't believe that's simply a matter of being fair. By signing Flip Murray and Maurice Evans for a combined $4 million he earned the benefit of the doubt. The veteran pair combined to ably back up three positions while helping to accelerate the team's transformation, one which started following last season's trade for Mike Bibby, from an offense incapable of making three-point shots into a more diverse and dangerous team to guard.

Season	3PTFG%	3PTA%
08-09	36.6	25.3
07-08	35.6	16.4
07-08 (less Bibby)	35.3	14.5

While Evans was predictably solid on both ends of the court, Murray surpassed all reasonable expectations in posting, at the age of 29, career highs in every manner of shooting percentage and a career low turnover percentage. Murray deserves the bulk of the credit for his performance this season but it's worth mentioning that Murray's only two good seasons out of six in his career came five years apart for two different teams run by Rick Sund. Even if there is some element of fluke in the degree to which Murray succeeded, the fact remains that Rick Sund signed a player no other NBA team wanted and, in that single act, partially redeemed (for one season, at least) Mike Woodson's handling of both Josh Childress an Acie Law IV.

It's Woodson's philosophy regarding young reserves (both the ones on his roster and those that presumably choose to sign somewhere else in the hopes of playing) that makes evaluating the rest of Sund's transactions difficult. In the abstract, signing Randolph Morris to a two-year, $1.65 million contract is a small price to pay to see if the former High School All-American can hack it as a backup center. In reality, the signing is pointless if Morris is going to spend the season sitting on the bench behind the himself rarely used, limited in skill, but slightly more familiar and veteran-y Solomon Jones.

Unlike Morris (or Jones, for that matter), both Thomas Gardner and Othello Hunter were eligible for assignment to the D-League but instead spent the vast majority of the year not playing in Atlanta. Gardner, like Jones and Mario West, was a not especially good college basketball player on a not especially good college basketball team, so I'm skeptical as to the degree of development possible with him but Hunter could be a useful fifth man for an organization that needs every cheap asset on which it can get its hands and could, perhaps, have used the opportunity to play regular minutes to augment and/or consolidate his existing skills.

One can't make the argument that having a D-League affiliate in Anaheim is convenient for the Hawks but it's curious that a team with such a shallow rotation and a head coach with a poor record of developing and/or utilizing young talent would choose to keep players with the team but inactive when another option exists.

In the grand scheme of things, it's probably a good sign if the end of the bench is essentially the extent of one's concerns regarding a GM that took over a sub-.500 team less than a year ago so I'll wait until Sund acts to re-sign or replace Bibby, Murray, and Zaza Pachulia, makes a couple of draft picks, makes use of the rights to Childress, Law, and David Andersen, and populates (or doesn't) the end of the bench with real, live NBA basketball players (or at least real prospects) to make more forceful pronouncements regarding his stewardship of the Atlanta Hawks.

How Good a Free Agent Signing Was Flip Murray?

The question comes from Micah Hart who, when I was writing a post entitled "Subtraction By Addition" when Murray signed with the Hawks, was writing the following:

The thing I like about Murray's game is his ability to create his own shot, a skill not many Hawks possess save for Joe Johnson and Mike Bibby (though I think Acie Law is developing). He's a vet, he's been in the playoffs, and he gives the team another shooter to take some of the pressure off our starters.

There can no debate regarding which of us was right and which of us was wrong we can only attempt to ascertain to what degree I was wrong.

So Micah asks: if you look at the performance of all free agents who changed teams last year I want to know where Flip Murray ranks in terms of contribution to wins vs salary spent. Like if you were to use something like Win Shares in baseball, how much has he cost per win (or whatever) compared to his peers?

I'll look at Win Shares (courtesy Basketball-Reference.com), EWA (courtesy John Hollinger and ESPN.com), and WARP (courtesy Basketball Prospectus) for the best and most cost-effective free agent signings.

As all three ratings scale somewhat differently I've chosen not to make a futile effort to normalize or combine them, so there will be three charts below, one for each rating system. I've also only included salary information for this year. Obviously (for example) Oklahoma City's signing of Nenad Krstic (both Win Shares and EWA have him being worth a win-and-a-half in less than a thousand minutes this season) may prove more cost-effective over the life of the contract than Atlanta's signing of Flip Murray but since Flip is our subject and he's on a one year deal, we'll look at value for dollar for this season only.

First, Win Shares

Player (Team)	Win Shares	08-09 $ (in millions)
Andersen, Chris (DEN)	5	1
Duhon, Chris (NY)	4.2	5.58
Mason, Roger (SA)	4.1	3.5
Posey, James (NO)	4	5.58
Turiaf, Ronny (GS)	3.7	4.5
Maggette, Corey (GS)	3.6	8.275
Evans, Maurice (ATL)	3.5	2.5
Murray, Flip (ATL)	2.9	1.5
Pietrus, Mickael (ORL)	2.9	5.3
Barnes, Matt (PHX)	2.8	1.2
Amundson, Louis (PHX)	1.8	0.8

Next, EWA

Player (Team)	EWA	08-09 $ (in millions)
Maggette, Corey (GS)	5	8.275
Andersen, Chris (DEN)	4.9	1
Davis, Baron (LAC)	4.3	11.25
Murray, Flip (ATL)	3.6	1.5
Turiaf, Ronny (GS)	3.2	4.5
Duhon, Chris (NY)	2	5.58
Barnes, Matt (PHX)	2	1.2
Mason, Roger (SA)	1.5	3.5
Krstic, Nenad (OKC)	1.5	5
Brand, Elton (PHI)	1.4	13.75
Amundson, Louis (PHX)	1.1	0.8

Maurice Evans has 0.6 EWA.

Finally, WARP (The player card for Nenad Krstic, at the time of writing, do not have WARP info for either player.)

Player (Team)	WARP	08-09 $ (in millions)
Andersen, Chris (DEN)	6.8	1
Davis, Baron (LAC)	4.3	11.25
Turiaf, Ronny (GS)	4.1	4.5
Amundson, Louis (PHX)	2.2	0.8
Duhon, Chris (NY)	2	5.58
Maggette, Corey (GS)	1.9	8.275
Brand, Elton (PHI)	1.2	13.75
Murray, Flip (ATL)	1	1.5
Barnes, Matt (PHX)	0.9	1.2
Ratliff, Theo (PHI)	0.6	1.26

Maurice Evans' WARP is -0.6.

Notes

• It looks like Chris Andersen, even before accounting for his cost, has been the most productive free agent to change teams over the summer. That Denver is paying him just $1 million this season is a boon for the Nuggets. Andersen should receive plenty of interest this summer.
• Corey Maggette has been more productive than Flip Murray but he really should be for 5.5x the price.
• Louis Amundson hasn't been (except according to WARP) quite as productive as Flip Murray but could represent greater value since he's paid a hair under $800,000.
• Matt Barnes narrowly trails Flip Murray on all three rating systems and does so at 80% of the cost.

Conclusion

After looking at three advanced metrics designed to account for as much of a player's value as possible, Flip Murray appears to be at worst the 4th-best and at best the 2nd-best value for money free agent to change teams this past off-season.

Credit to Flip Murray, Rick Sund, and Mike Woodson making Murray's season as productive and cost-effective as its been. Credit also to Micah Hart for being right in advance where I was so, so wrong.

Further Reading: Marginal Dollars Per Marginal Win by Kevin Pelton at Basketball Prospectus