As reporters gush over the winner that the “patient” Atlanta Hawks have created for themselves, jubilant GM Rick Sund told chTONGUEeek today that “he’s got to give credit where credit is due – I’d like to take this opportunity to thank God for the decade of incompetence that allowed us to create the modestly successful team that we have today.” As he went on to explain:
If you look at the success of the Atlanta Hawks today – including almost making it out of the first round last season, and the possibility this season of defeating a team of Dwayne Wade, two corpses, and several rookies who might be hung over – there are two distinct moves that clearly put us over the top, er, into the middle. One was acquiring Mike Bibby to man the PG position, and the other was drafting Al Horford to be our stud of front. Any way you slice it, there is no way this dynamic combination could have happened without a full decade of total managerial incompetence. Not only that, but how we got both players, and why we needed them, is highly correlated, which really shows the complexity of what it takes to create a team destined for mediocre success.
Let me explain. There’s simply no way you get a young Buck, er, Hawk like Al Horford (11 ppg, 9 rpg) without a top-3 pick in the 2007 draft. Securing that position required a two- year incompetence plan – drafting Shelden Williams (4 ppg, 3 rpg) ahead of Brandon Roy (22 ppg, 5 rpg, 5 apg) in 2006, and Marvin Williams (14 ppg, 6 rpg) ahead of Chris Paul (23 ppg, 11 apg) and Deron Williams (19 ppg, 11 apg) in 2005. Switch either of those picks, and not only are we not in the position to land Horford, but we have no spot for Mike Bibby to fill – Roy, Paul, or D. Williams would just be in the way. Boy did we ever dodge one, or I suppose three, there.
