The Hawks were a pretty good team – 2nd quartile – throughout the ‘80s and early 90s. Their best teams were built around dominique wilkins, kevin willis, and glenn rivers, current coach of the celtics. They made the playoffs every year and usually won a series or two. In the fullness of time, this level of achievement seemed inadequate and the club made a series of moves that traded their second quartile core for a group of players whose alleged higher upside was balanced out by bad chemistry, washed upness, and occasional outright criminality. They also traded competent but unexciting coaches – mike fratello & lenny wilkens- for some outside-the-box guys who over the course of the ‘90s turned the hawks into a third quartile team – occasional one and done appearances in the playoffs.

Around 2000 they figured well, how could it get worse than that, right? Let’s just blow the whole thing up. Turns out, it could get worse. For the next 5 years the hawks were terrible, no sniff of the playoffs. Season ticket holders couldn’t give tickets away and bailed – that would be me – and attendance was so bad that it seemed like there were more employees than fans on many a night.

They brought in Knight as GM and Woody as coach around 2004 or so. With high draft choices every year, they quickly established a core of good athletic guys including childress (#6 pick) J Smith (#19 or so pick – the highpoint of knight’s tenure), and joe johnson, acquired through a complicated but ultimately justified trade. It quickly became apparent that the team desperately needed a big tough mutha in the middle and a point guard. For the last three years the team has addressed the big guy issue in the draft. Marvin Smith, #2 pick in 05 was decent but not a tough inside guy. Shelden Williams #5 pick in 06 was a disaster – already gone. Horford #3 pick in 07 – problem solved.

Unfortunately that still left the PG issue. Chris Paul, Deron Williams, yada yada. What i’m saying is that maybe bibby solves that problem and it was just not so obvious during the sputtering run for the playoffs.