The Hawks hold four of the first 34 selections in next week’s NBA draft. Let’s say they choose well, which would mean finding an All-Star type with Pick No. 3, a starter with Pick No. 19 and two rotational players with Picks No. 30 and 34. How long would it take them to finish an NBA season above .500?
A while. And maybe a while longer than that.
The Hawks’ tanking began with the hiring of general manager Travis Schlenk in May 2017. He came from Golden State, which before becoming one of the greatest teams ever had been among the worst. From 1994 through 2012, the Warriors broke .500 twice and made the playoffs once. We’re not suggesting the Hawks’ progress will be similarly glacial, but we do need to emphasize: The trouble with getting bad on purpose is that there’s no guarantee you’ll get good again anytime soon.
The Hawks themselves underwent a rebuild earlier this century. Billy Knight was hired as GM in 2001 and started selling anybody who could play. (In 2004, he sold Rasheed Wallace to Detroit 10 days after acquiring him from Portland. Wallace played one game for the Hawks.) The result was that a bad team – that’s why Knight got kicked upstairs to fill Pete Babcock’s seat – got worse, which was the idea. They went a league-worst 13-69 in 2004-05, but were unlucky in the lottery, seeing 30-win Milwaukee snag the No. 1 overall pick. They spent it on Andrew Bogut.
The Hawks picked next. They took Marvin Williams. You knew that already.
Today’s exercise isn’t to revisit the single worst choice in franchise history. (The statute of limitations on Poor Marvin having expired a few years ago.) The point is that, from 2004 through 2007, the Hawks exercised five lottery picks. They also snagged Josh Smith at No. 17 and traded Boris Diaw, whom they landed at No. 21 in 2003, for Joe Johnson, who would become the best Hawk since Dominique Wilkins … and they still didn’t finish above .500 until 2009.
Along the way, they landed Smith, Williams, Johnson, Josh Childress and Al Horford. (And, er, Shelden Williams.) Even after all those losses and lotteries, they were 22-28 at the 2008 All-Star break, whereupon Knight made his last big move, importing point guard Mike Bibby from Sacramento. That enabled the Hawks, who would finish 37-45, to make the playoffs as the No. 8 seed by one game over Indiana. Yes, they pushed the top-seeded Celtics to seven games, but still: Three years after losing 69 games, the Hawks technically still weren’t winners.
Let’s suppose Schlenk won’t miss on this No. 3 pick the way Knight whiffed with consecutive Williamses at No. 2 and No. 5. (Though we stipulate that the 2006 draft class was especially terrible.) Let’s say that landing John Collins at No. 19 last season was an indication that Schlenk knows what he’s doing. But there’s nobody in this class who’s a certain 10-time All-Pro, and even if there were …
The five biggest talents to enter the NBA this century are LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Anthony Davis. James and Durant had to change teams to become NBA champs. Davis, who’s about to enter his seventh professional season, has made the playoffs twice and won only one series. Oklahoma City had three of the five but banked only one losing trip to the finals, and then the Thunder traded Harden because of salary-cap considerations, a move that seems sillier with every passing year.
The point being: Even hooking a transcendent player doesn’t assure an immediate – or an eventual – championship. LeBron left Cleveland because the Cavaliers could never find him a Scottie Pippen. Durant left OKC because Golden State had already proved it could win a title. (Though if it hadn’t blown a second one, it would have had no need for him.) And even the Warriors’ rise wasn’t predicated on unerring drafts: Of their five lottery picks from 2008 through 2012, two were Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, but the highest player they drafted was the immortal Ekpe Udoh.
As promising as Philadelphia’s future looks – take a bow, Sam Hinkie – the 76ers didn’t get great value from Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor. (Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid seem different stories.) Which goes to show that even THE Process was a process. Nobody bats 1.000. The Sixers just won 52 games two years after losing 72, but the rebuild began two years before the record bottomed out. Something like that could happen here.
The Hawks just won 24 games with Mike Budenholzer, the 2015 NBA coach of the year, on the bench. Their new coach is Lloyd Pierce, fresh in from Philly, and he admits the focus will be on player development, as opposed to W’s and L’s. There’s a chance the Hawks could reap a bountiful haul from this draft and slip in the standings.
Schlenk takes pains not to invoke the P-word, but his is a process, too. The Hawks aren’t going from 24 wins to 42 in a year. They might not get to .500 before 2021. Not trying to depress anybody here. Just being realistic.
