Bill Shanks: Atlanta Hawks face tough decisions
The decisions the Atlanta Hawks must make before Thursday's NBA trade deadline are not cut and dried. They are difficult, as the front office examines the future of this team both for the short term and the long term.
Atlanta is not the same team it was a year ago when it won 60 games. The Hawks are more ordinary this season, and the notion they will click at the right time with a different team and be as good as they were a year ago seems unlikely.
They are different. DeMarre Carroll and Pero Antic are gone. The man who put that roster together, embattled general manager Danny Ferry, was fired. And even the big piece brought in during the offseason to make the Hawks better, center Tiago Splitter, is now out for the season with a hip issue.
In the past few days a few big names have popped up as trade possibilities. Rumors have Houston center Dwight Howard, originally from Atlanta, wanting to come home. Who knows if the Hawks are interested in Howard, but now that things have soured in Houston, the big man evidently wants to come play for his hometown team.
The bigger name is Blake Griffin, the Los Angeles Clippers star who is on the block. He might be out for the season after punching a member of the team's support staff. Griffin also has a quad problem that might be his bigger issue. Reports have the Clippers at least talking to teams, with the Hawks possibly having enough pieces to acquire a legitimate star.
Do the Hawks need a star? They didn't last season, but again the team concept that worked last year has been altered with a different cast of characters. That's why the Hawks are not as good as they were. So to get this team over the hump, would a player like Griffin be needed?
It would make the Hawks more relevant, and let's be honest, the Hawks are way down on the pecking order as far as teams in Georgia. A new ownership group might want to change that, and the quickest way to do it would be to get someone everyone would know and everyone would want to go watch play.
There's no debate about Griffin. He's a star. Is Al Horford? Well, I don't think so. Horford is very good, but if you asked a bunch of fans if Horford is a star, there would be a great debate. Stars are usually the type of players you don't have to debate. It's usually more easy to answer -- yes or no -- and there's little doubt most NBA followers would label Griffin as a star.
Horford is a free agent this summer, and the last thing the Hawks need to do is invest a max contract on a player who is good but not great. Realistically, how many fans would be upset if Horford were traded? It would barely scratch the surface compared to, for example, when Dominique Wilkins was traded two decades ago.
Griffin might not matter this season, but if he is available, the Hawks would be nuts to not explore a potential trade. They're not likely to do anything special this year anyway, so why not get someone who could be a building block, a star, for the future?
Griffin definitely would attract more fans, and he might even attract better players to follow him to Atlanta. Horford would only be more of the same -- a team that is good, but at least this year far from the great team we saw a year ago.
Listen to "The Bill Shanks Show" from 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WPLA Fox Sports 1670 AM in Macon and online at www.foxsports1670.com/. Follow Bill at twitter.com/BillShanks and email him at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.
This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 6:41 PM with the headline "Bill Shanks: Atlanta Hawks face tough decisions ."