Atlanta Hawks front office search and end-of-season takeaways with Glen Willis

Atlanta Hawks front office search and end-of-season takeaways with Glen Willis

On today’s show, good friend of the podcast, Glenn Willis is back to discuss the Hawks off season, how things ended at the end of the 2024 25 campaign, what’s to come, and much more. All that’s coming up right now. You are Locked on Hawks, your daily Atlanta Hawks podcast, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. Hello friends, welcome to episode 1967 of the Loft on Hawks podcast. I am your host Brad Roland coming to you deep in the night here on a Saturday evening into Sunday here in early May. And today’s podcast is brought to you by the folks at Monarch Money. Take control of your finances right now with Monarch Money and use code locked on NBA at monarchmoney.com for half off your first year. I also want to encourage you at the top of the show as I always do to make sure your first listen each and every day here at Locked on Hawks. Check us out and subscribe to this podcast anywhere you find your podcast. That includes Apple and Spotify. It also includes YouTube, so please like, subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends, and all that fun stuff. At the top of the show, I’ll be joined in a moment by Glenn Willis of ATL129 and Peach Tree Hoops. Glenn has been a longtime guest on this show, good friend of the podcast, and actually recorded this podcast on Saturday evening, which why I’m dropping part one of two early. Usually I would hold this in both parts until probably Monday, but because there’s a little bit of uncertainty with when the Hawks might move on their president of basketball operations, we discuss that in part one of the show. So I’m posting it right away. And then part two will be available sometime on Monday. So this is going up overnight Saturday into Sunday. In about 24 hours, the part two will be available as well. So that’s why just as a PSA at the top of the show, that’s why that’s going to be doing that. But anyway, without any further delay, here we go. Myself and Glenn. I am joined once again by my friend Glenn Willis. Glenn, it’s been too long since you’ve been on the show. I know you have your own podcast. You guys are always recording over there and I listen every time. But welcome back to Lock on Hawks. How are you, my friend? Yeah, it’s it’s good to be back. You know, the season has concluded and all sorts of other things and awards and everything. So, since we last talked, it was still be good to to take some time and kind of take a look back at at what we saw. Yeah, the award I feel like the awards uh happened a long time ago, even though they absolutely didn’t. Dyson was crowned three days ago, four days ago as we’re talking on this podcast. We’re recording this on Saturday night and uh just a lot has happened since then in the league and um you know awards are interesting because like you talk about him forever and then they get handed out and then there’s like one more day of discussion and then that’s kind of it like it kind of goes away. Um Hawk fans are excited as they should be and nice to hear from Dyson on that night. But yeah, it’s interesting to kind of go through that. Um, we have one little bit of news and then we’ll talk basketball from this point forward. But I haven’t done a show since Thursday night. And on Friday, Zack Klein of WSB in Atlanta set off kind of a storm by tweeting slash like semi-reporting some names and the president of a basketball operations search for the Hawks. A couple of them had been already mentioned. um El Brand, Shar D Raheem, former players, local ties, all that stuff. But there were three newish names that people had not necessarily reported on. Monty McNair, former Kings GM, Calvin Booth, former Nuggets GM, and the one that got everybody talking was Danny Ferry, former Hawks GM. Uh I won’t see I won’t tee up any more than that, Glenn. What What did you make of those names coming out in the way that they did on Friday? And to to this point, Saturday night, no one else that I’ve seen, no national reporting. It’s just been that was out there from from Klein and that’s all we know right now. Well, I mean, it’s I mean, I’d like to know who they’re actually interviewing, but I don’t I don’t I can’t get any information on that. I mean, yeah, what sourcing I mean, I have like, you know, a few a few people that’ll sometimes give you a little bit here and there. Um, but um I have no idea who they’re interviewing. I mean, it’s gonna be interesting to see if they can land a substantially experienced and proven person. Um, you know, as when a couple weeks ago when Tyler and Kevin and I kind of wrapped the season and and it just so happened that we were planning to record that night and then that’s when the Landry news came out, you know, and the conversation that we had was we’re at a point now where they need a big move to take the next step. They need a big move. And if you go hire um Elton Brand, has he ever done anything like that before anywhere? You know, has Sheree, you know, or or can they go find someone who has actually, you know, made substantial changes, affected, you know, important uh because the Hawks can’t be in the business anymore. I think a lot of positive this last season that we’ll talk about a lot of positive stuff from this last season but the the window of opportunity to continue making incremental changes I think is is closed right T trace you know Trey has you know um just been willing to kind of play through so much change and you know and all of that that he in my mind he deserves having another very high level player added to the roster. I have, you know, I don’t know what that might look like. Don’t know who who that might be or what have you. But for me, it’s like if they can land like a really proven guy that first thing I’ll say is that will surprise me. That’s not typically an Atlanta Hawks kind of outcome. Um, but you know, I mean, Quinn’s, you know, pretty popular, you know, that, you know, so, so that they have, you know, Kyle’s very respected, you know, uh, and so may maybe they’re, you know, have some personas in place now that might allow them to to make a substantial addition there or not, but it’s just I don’t know. I won’t know to to know until we kind of see the out the outcome of the process. Yeah. to your point about like who the there’s candidates and then there’s who people you’re actually interviewing and there’s people that are mentioned and without going off I don’t know all the specifics but like every time you have a process like this there are almost always names that come out that are not candidates that get leaked for whatever reason by their own agents or whatever it happen that always happens not unique to the Hawk situation and the fact that you know Tony I mentioned this before but Tony’s kind of point painted himself in the corner to some degree with what he’s on the record put out in the press release and also kind of has leaked behind the scenes like they want this like established senior level executive with experience. And that is a really interesting situation because those guys are not growing on trees. Like when you say that to me, he’s talking about experience in this kind of role. Like you could always argue that there are a lot of qualified front office people including Auntie Salah by the way who’s in your own building right now who would don’t have experience at that level at the number one job. When you say you want experience at number one job it’s it’s a very narrow it’s a narrow candidate pool. Yeah. I mean you have to have um Yeah. I mean Elton Brand is has that experience. If you want to say he you know Calvin Booth just did it for instance. Mon McNair just did it. Those guys do check that box if they are if they are even our candidates. But even like someone like Shabbaheim is a very capable qualified individual. He’s currently the president of the G-League was a GM in the G-League at one point in time. Obviously player has done a lot of things. USA basketball stuff, but he has never been he’s never run a team at the NBA level. So is he on the list? Like he’s does he’s doesn’t actually fit what you’ve said you want, but is he on the list? That kind of I mean Danny Ferry obvious has done this stuff before. So, I mean, not this is not picking on client at all, but this is kind of just goes to the nature of how difficult, especially with front office stuff, it’s even almost messier because there’s like there’s no contracts that we know of. It’s not part of the salary cap. It’s like you can’t just dismiss things as easily as you can with trades, you know what I mean? Or free agency. Um, I had a source tell me that I trust that like that his phrasing was that quote more than half of the names that Klein listed are not candidates. And that’s not me picking on Zack. He might be right. That’s just what that source told me. And he listed five people. So that means three of them at least are not candidates in the eyes of this person. Does that mean anything? I don’t know. It’s we’re in this weird never region which actually I’m gonna post this podcast quickly like I normally wouldn’t over the weekend in part because this could get this could happen on Sunday. I mean we’re in a spot where the Hawks kind of need to get this done sooner rather than later. The combine is literally next week. And that’s not it’s you don’t have to have your president in place for the combine, but like culturally for a team that might have two first round picks, I would want my president of basketball operations to be in place before the combine. That’s just me. Uh it’s only a deadline you have to fill, but like it’s just a weird timeline. And also last thing, I know I’m rambling a little bit here, but if you were trying to poach a big name from another team, you can’t really do that till they’re out of the playoffs. And also that’s really difficult to do in general. I know people want to dream big on names that are already in the league. Tim Conway is the popular one, but like they’re still in the playoffs. Like he’s not going to talk to you right now, at least officially. Um, so it’s a jumbled mess. Uh, I will say this. There’s, and I said this on Twitter, Blue Sky, I can’t remember. There is no candidate that that’s been reported by anyone, whether it Klein, Jake, me, Mark Stein, anybody, that I am terribly excited about, honestly. Um, and I say that I I would probably just hire Antala if if this is the candidate pool. Now, there’s again, that’s a big if because we I’m sure in fact that there is a candidate or two or three that we have no idea about right now. I’m pretty sure about that. But if this is the candidate pool, John Hammond, whatever, I would just keep on see. And I don’t I don’t know if they’re going to do that. I think Tony’s probably gonna hire somebody because he wants the splash, but I’m not moved. Are you Is there anybody you’re actually excited about as a Hawks fan? Like, would you be excited to bring in any of these reported candidates? I mean, there’s there’s no one that kind of just kind of jumps out at me. You know, for for me, what matters as much as who they pick is is the organization going to continue. I think for the last couple years, they’ve made they’ve been pretty constructive in how they’ve approached the roster building and I think they were bold and went young and I think it paid off this last year going young. Um, and I but I again I think just going running it back in the next season with a really really young core without adding something substantial to it is is not going to work um in terms of like the step pro the step improvement that you need to have. But I mean um I mean it’s just like you look around and like Bob Myers did in Golden State like you know it’s like how much credit does he deserve? like they were a million a trillion dollars over the tax line every you know and I don’t want to discredit like they they won four titles I mean they won three I guess I think they won three while he was in charge the fourth one came afterward but but in those in that context it’s hard to figure out like how successful was he individually in leading that you know you look at like the the title that the Cavs won you know Griff like how good is he you know it you know I mean in in New Orleans he was really limited by the ownership group if all the reporting is is what it seems to be. And so so there’s so when you look at a person’s track record, there’s so much context that we may or may not have awareness of that maybe is a filter for how we should look at them. So I mean for me, you know, if if they want someone that can like make big trades happen as someone who has that track record, great. How do you get a person like that to Atlanta? How do you get a person like that excited about where the Hawks are? Um, I I don’t want to say it can’t happen, but it just doesn’t feel like a normal outcome for how things go with the franchise. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. The world’s made a lot of progress when it comes to mental health, but there’s still a long way to go. Too many people have actually avoided therapy or still everybody avoiding therapy because they’re afraid of being judged. But the truth is, taking care of your mental health should be just as normal as going to the gym or eating healthy. This month is mental awareness month and let’s normalize getting help and encourage everyone to prioritize their well-being because when people feel supported, families, work spaces, and also entire communities are better for it. 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That’s that’s too that’s probably too broad the way I’m framing that. But like we just saw the patient approach that for the most part, not the whole thing, I I didn’t I didn’t mind that. I thought going young made sense with where they were, but I that signals to me that Tony does not want to do that anymore. Um, and that I don’t know that I don’t know that what that means. I don’t know if it’s going to be some blockbuster move or whatever, but I don’t think that they’re going to be in chill mode going into next year. That’s my guess, educated guess I would say. And you could argue they shouldn’t be. I mean, as much as I praise them for the step four they took this last season, that was grading on a curve with what their roster was. That’s that’s my whole framing was like look, if you look at their roster, they they performed pretty darn well, but they were young. They had flaws. We’ll talk about them, I’m sure, on this podcast, but like areas of the roster they had to improve. And you can bank on internal development a lot. And they will be doing that no matter what. They’re going to beg on internal development from guys like Zack and Dyson and Jaylen, even on who’s still really young. But like, you’re going to need external players to make this thing sing in the way that you want to sing. Even if it’s just to win 48 games or 50 games, not even being a title, that’s a there’s two different leaps you can make. You can make the like we want to be a top four seed in the east leap, which is a pretty practical like reasonable projection if you wanted to do that. Then there’s a two there’s two more levels above that to be an actual contender to win a championship. It’s different conversations, although you’re kind of going in the same direction. So, uh, does that strike you as reasonable someone more on the outside? Like I I think that signal to me anyway the move to move on from Landry. Like I think Tonyy’s not and look he’s not known for his patient. Let’s just be honest. Tony Russell is not known for his patience and I think he did a he did a good job last year letting the front office do what they were going to do and kind of but I think I think that’s probably running out now. Yeah. And it’s and it’s don’t want to go too in deep here but it feels like this is a summer where there a lot of notable players could move like I mean everyone’s curious what’s Jiannis going to decide. Does he want to stay in Milwaukee or does he want to go somewhere else? And Phoenix that that’s a mess, you know, and does KD want want to go play somewhere else? Um, and then you got teams like, you know, Houston, you presume is going to look for a big move, you know, to to help that roster take the next step. in Orlando, you know, they got a couple really good young young uh guys, but they have their guard play offensively is atrocious, you know, and and you know, Boston’s getting older and can Cleveland kind of keep the band, you know, so it just feels like this might be the time that you might be able to kind of get lucky and and be able to snag someone where there’s a lot of movement happening or, you know, in that top 40 kind of group of players in the league. So many guys are in unsettled sit feels like unsettled situations uh with a lot of uncertaint uncertainty and that could kind of be a feeder into how much activity there there is this summer and if if Tony thinks I need to have someone who can navigate a market like that then I think it’s smart for him to try to make that happen if he can because it does take real skill to navigate a hyperactive market if that’s what it turns into this summer. Yeah, for sure. And that’s, you know, while I am I’m high on Anie Salah as a upandcoming front office person, he hasn’t had to do that job. Like he’s done some stuff behind the scenes. I know he was he’s been prominently involved, but that is a different level. We talk about like I know our mutual friend Tyler has been critical of them not making some of the bigger splashes. I haven’t I haven’t personally been averse to them not doing the Jimmy Butler thing or the Brandon Ingram thing. Like it didn’t bother me at all. But if that’s what you wanted to do, you do need to kind of, you know, work the margins in a different way. And um some of the process stuff’s not not been the best. Like I thought the bogey trade in the end was not a good process example for the front office. It’s one transaction. You never know what all went into that. But to kind of turn around and make a pretty rough value just in just in a vacuum, you didn’t use your leverage very well, I would say, in that transaction. So have to send picks with bogey to get Terrence ban. That’s one example. I don’t I and I said on the show like even I’ll say it again now. I don’t think Landry quote unquote deserve to be fired based on his track record as far as like oh this guy had to get fired. I never thought that about Landry. Now on the other side I never thought Landry is this elite executive either. And my framing is like you know if if you want to have a guy that you think is great and you don’t think that Landry is, it’s fine with me that you fire. It doesn’t bother me at all that that he moved that they moved on. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think the thing that I give him credit for is uh and it wasn’t just him. We know that it’s a team, you know, team approach and a front office, right? But in the last two years, they’ve kind of really dug out of a hole, you know, and you know, they overpaid their their own draft picks in a couple examples. Had to give John Collins away for basically nothing. Had to give Kevin herder away for, you know, which is a that those were awful, you know, decisions. Yeah. Um in in my view. Um, and not not that like the Hawks would, you know, not that Collins or Herd would made the Hawks meaningfully different, but to give them away for nothing because of the the contract she gave them is is is what, you know, so I I I for me I think Landry helped them create a situation heading into the summer where they had more flexibility than I thought they would. Like a year ago, you know, they, you know, a lot more flexibility. I think he deserves credit for that. I like to say in my professional life, there have been times when when I lead, you know, big teams or whatever, I have one person take lead steps one and two and then I have someone else come in and lead steps three, four, and five, you know, and builder versus an operator or whatever. And I and I do think that what Tony wants to happen, what Tony what I think Tony wants to happen requires someone who’s got some serious chops to kind of be able to navigate um a tricky some tricky stuff. and and that’s worth seeing if you can make happen. I think yeah, I’m actually I don’t know if I’ve actually laid it out the way that you did. Maybe I will on a deeper dive at some point, but like it is really worth acknowledging how much better they are in a position roster cap personnel-wise than they were a year or two ago. Like it’s it’s actually staggering when you look at it like one versus the other as far as if you include contracts and you include age and look, you get some good luck as along the way. You win the lottery, ended up with apprice. That’s, you know, hopefully you make the right pick. It looks pretty good to me right now, I would say. But to win the lottery, you didn’t do anything to do that. You got lucky, but you won it. And I think the pick looks pretty good. But to get Dyson out of that transaction where you kind of had to move, in my mind, you anyway, you had to move Murray. You got Dyson out of that was a home run trade. Jaylen takes a step forward two years in a row and is now like considered a pretty much universal like top 50 player in the league kind of level player on a great contract. You sign a con to a good contract. Like there’s a lot of good stuff on the There’s still flaws too as we’ll talk about more in a second. But uh it is worth every probably every once in a while looking back and like man they were in some real trouble a year and a half, two years ago with the way things were trending. Like they had they didn’t have a lot of young players in the pipeline in the way they do now. and the guys they drafted, if you want to be more of a pessimist, haven’t worked. You drafted Edge Griffy’s out of the league in two years. That’s not really your fault, but it happened that way. Kobe hasn’t done anything so far. So, like, you could go the other way, too. But I think if you compare the roster situation a year and a half ago, two years ago to what it looks like now, it does look considerably better, even if they’ve not won the games yet. Yeah. For me, the last last thing I’ll note is, you know, if if if they’re sitting at what 13 or four, whatever they where they wherever they end up picking, right? And there’s a guy they really want, they’d only have to move up two or three spots to get. I’m sure it would be nice to have a couple of second round draft picks that you could offer a team to move up two or three spots to get and they’ve traded they’ve traded almost all of them away. They have very few second round picks in the future. Yeah. So, you know, like if if Jace is your guy or or whoever, you know, and and you know, those seconds can help you move up two or three spots. And so, um it’ll be interesting to see if um if that cost them, you know, an opportunity that they might have otherwise had. Yeah. And look, if something happens more on the president of operations front, there’s more reporting from national people or if somebody gets like, you know, lead candidate reporting kind of level, I’ll dive deeper. We’re definitely not going through resumes of these guys. You know, the fairy thing is this whole different like that could be an half hour show that I’m not doing tonight with Glenn. People are mad or they’re not mad and it’s it’s kind of to each their own on that, but uh for now we’ll put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it. I do want to talk um basketball with you uh beyond front office stuff. Um you and I haven’t talked with in this form since the season ended. So, I want to I want to start there, not with the whole season retrospective necessarily, but um there was a lot of talk about how the way the season ended, they didn’t obviously make the playoffs. Um they were operating with a roster that I I can’t stop myself from reminding people was incredibly flawed by the end. Uh and that shouldn’t be ignored. Now, you could say that was a failure of front office to some level, but also I would say it was outlier unlucky to have two of your top three centers and your starting power forward out for two straight months at the end of the season. So, all that goes into one bucket or whatever. Today is brought to you by Monarch Money. I think we’ve all done this in the past, but at times I’ve looked at my bank account and wonder where all of my money happened to go and between dining out and online shopping and entertainment. It’s easy to lose track sometimes. And that’s where Monarch Money comes in for you. 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It’s locked on NBA at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year with MonarchMoney. One more time, that is monarchmoney.com code locked on NBA for half off your first year. Coming out of the season, it’s not been that long. What was your feeling on the way that it ended and kind of the journey along the way? Because, you know, the roster changed and all that stuff. It was kind of a weird season. They were walking on this jagged edge all season long of trying to win, develop all that stuff. What was your kind of takeaway when the season was coming to a close? Yeah, I mean for me I look back at the whole season and see a lot of positives across the season. I think end of this at the end of the season I think they were on fumes physically and mentally, you know, and I mean and they and Quinn was trying to figure out how to play Don Barlo or Mo, you know, how how to patch some minutes that you had to and you know and it’s always kind of funny to me people on Twitter or Blue Sky or whatever talking about Quinn’s rotations are bad. It’s like I’m trying to figure out what what options he had and and there were times where he kept going to accommodations that would make you like why does he think this is going to work or is he just like hoping three minutes of this will not be horrible and terrible you know uh and all of that. But for me, um, you know, I just think they didn’t have the, you know, no Jaylen, no Nance, no, I mean, a lot of your physicality, a lot of your size disappeared, uh, you know, with those guys being unavailable to you. And so there, you know, they they had to they I mean, we saw Terrence man defending Giannis, you know, in a Milwaukee game and, you know, and Levert really had a, you know, ideally you want Levert attacking guards when he has the ball in his hands and he was ended up, you know, playing the three and and, you know, having big, you know, defenders in front of him. And so everybody was sliding up a position, it kind of felt like, right? and and and and then when you go up against Orlando who’s really physical and has has a lot of length, you know, in that playin. Um and then with Miami, Miami just has so much continuity to their system and what they do. Even though even though I don’t think their roster is really meaningfully better than the Hawks roster, it’s just the continuity that they have there. Um, but for me it’s like I didn’t really have any high expectations that they would end up in the playoffs unless Trey just like, you know, went, you know, for 45 and you had one of those, you know, one of those kinds of games. Um, but I but I think the value of what we saw there is you you can clearly see what’s missing, right? Another ball handler, another scorer, another creator. Um there were against teams that were say bottom half of the league, Caris was enough in those games to kind of give you the creation and scoring juice that you need, but you’re playing a top 10 defense that Caris really needs to be your third guy, you know, kind of in that role. And so for me, I understand Hawks fans being maybe disappointed and frustrated they didn’t make the playoffs. But for me, I really believe in feedback loops. I really believe in kind of looking back and seeing like okay we learned a lot about what we have and we learned even more about what we don’t have and I think with the things that they don’t have it’s very obvious what those gaps are and and that’s something they can hopefully take into planning for uh you know the next few months. I think that’s a good way to approach it like what what did it tell you? It’s more than like I know in the moment and we I do this too. Everyone does this like in the moment it’s like man this is this is ugly. you’re frustrated all the losses are like and that moment you’re focused on the loss and it’s okay I was trying to remind everybody in the moment like they look if they get in the playoffs they’re probably going to lose in the first round you know they would have been a giant underdog to Cleveland I’m not saying they wouldn’t have possibly competed in the series I will say they would have competed better than Miami I’m pretty sure with the way that that went but they probably weren’t going to win that series and yeah it would have been valuable and they all acknowledge that too the next day like hey it would have been valuable for our young guys to play in the playoff series that would have been nice Right. But also, you you really did learn a lot. You don’t want to overweight two games. But if you zoom it out a little bit even to beyond that, like it wasn’t a mystery that they needed another ball handler, another creator, but like it was staggering in those two games that if it was not Trey, it was just not happening in those games. And yes, Caris is a good player. Caris is a valuable player. He’s a free agent, which is notable. If he leaves, it becomes even a bigger need on your roster. And some of that will be mitigated by Jaylen, you would think, and maybe development from Dyson and development from Zach. Like some of that’s going to help you. But they do desperately need, we knew this the whole time, another perimeter player of some kind who can create their own shot. And for other people, that’s one thing. Another one is like they had one workable defensive front court pairing. By the end, it was Mo and Anaka together. If those guys weren’t playing together, they were going to have trouble defensively basically. I mean, am I am I out of line there? I think for me it’s like, yeah, certain matchups maybe you can you can get away with with George Nang and one of those guys and it’s not disastrous, but in a bad matchup you could see what George’s limitations are. For instance, like for me, and I’ve been say we’re recording on Saturday. I’ve been kind of arguing with people all day long about on Yaka’s limitations, which we can maybe get into if you want to, but like that’s another one. the roster as it was versus the what the roster actually looks like in a vacuum is a little bit different to me and like how much that matters to you is up for debate but I mean the I’m glad you brought that up because of the way that it was manifesting itself to tell you things and yeah there’s a front office has changed over I mean hopefully it’s not Tony wrestler making this decision but maybe it was like Tony looking at like man what why can’t we score like they couldn’t score in the two games I mean that’s the And Trey wasn’t even bad. Like Trey didn’t play a A+++, but he wasn’t the problem in these two games. It was like they just had no plan B, no plan C, no plan D. And at the highest levels, I mean, we’ve been watching the playoffs. You and I both watching a lot of playoff basketball. It would have only gotten worse against better teams. They, you know, Atlanta’s great defensively to be fair, but like it would have been the same against Cleveland. It would have been the same against Boston. Name your team. It would have been the same offensive problem. Yeah. And I know Hawks fans want to remember the wins the Hawks got against the Cavs, but sure that was with Clint and Jay and Jaylen and it was also in November and it was a long Yeah, I I do like again I do believe the Hawks would have competed much better than Miami. They might have won a game, but they probably weren’t going to beat the Cavs, I don’t think. Yeah, I think they could have won a game and then in the if you win one then you know you if you get to if you can get to a game you know six weird things can happen on you know you’re playing at home or whatever. Um, but for anyone to think that they were going to go like apart from uh just what would have been required completely miraculous performances from Trey, they they had no shot to win the series, you know. Yeah. Um, you still I mean I think organization you still think would have been nice for our young guys to have the playoff experience and to to know what that feels like, you know. Dyson had a little bit of that little bit that New Orleans that one run that they had, you know. Um, but to get Zack that would have been would have been good. Um, and and this would have been the first one where Dyson was in a prominent role, you know. Yeah. As well. Um, so there’s there’s some missed opportunity there, but at the same time, I was like when I was watching them in the play and I was like half of my brain was like I I just they just they just need to lose. I don’t want I don’t want them to go into a series. And Trey get Trey gets hurt like in the series. They have no I mean Trey was managing Nilles and you know I was like I I kind of thought it was better for them to just kind of wrap it up and and call it you know just just from the standpoint of just protecting Trey Trey’s health. Yeah. And given where they were roster-wise and how limited they were in the front court like m maybe I don’t know how close and Clinton Larry ultimately were but they weren’t ready to go by the playin and if they would have if they could have played they would have played. Uh so without those guy and look those guys are not saviors as we’ll talk about those guys are not saviors but they they are considerably better than Don Barlo in 2025 that would have helped to have Clint one of those guys as much as much flack as Clint gets I think even even the even the Clint skeptics were like yeah we could probably use Clint right now by the end of the playoffs. So sorry of the playin run. But yeah I I think it’s just worth acknowledging the limitations. I I think a year ago when they got bounced in pretty ugly fashion in the playin, I was ready for it to be over much more than this season where I actually would have been intrigued by the playoffs. Um, but you’re 100% right like there are there are drawbacks too and um for all the young guys that would have been you know you’re trying to learn at that point as soon as I mean Tyler said this most famously that as soon as Jaylen went down it was kind of like the season like the high outcomes were gone for the season and that’s like crass to say out loud but it also is true like I I don’t I think with I think if they had Jaylen could they have challenged for the top six sure could they have challenged the Knicks or the Pacers in a series? Sure. I think that’s possible. I’m not sure they would have beaten those teams or on any of that stuff. You saw what Detroit did. Like I don’t think the I don’t think the Pistons were meaningfully better than the Hawks with Jaylen and and a backup center. I don’t I don’t believe that. Were they better? Maybe, but not meaningfully. So, I think that’s pretty similar level team to what the Hawks were dealing with if they had Jaylen and at least one with Clinton, Larry. And that’s a good model. They took the Knicks to the brim in the first round. That’s could have happened. if Hardway gets the foul call there. There’s a game seven there. Um and uh maybe something interesting uh happens there. But but I mean Detroit had physical defenders that put on Brunson. Yeah, different different roster style for sure. Like Detroit’s much much more physical generally speaking than especially especially than the team that that the Hawks was at the end. But even even the fully formed Hawks, they were they’re they’re they’re not younger. I guess they are they’re still younger, but they’re a little bit more offensely leaning with their talent other than Dyson, I would say. Um, yeah, different different squads altogether, but not entirely different as far as like level of overall quality. [Applause] All right, that is it for part one of two with myself and Glenn Willis. As a reminder, as I said earlier in this podcast, part two will not be dropping until sometime early on Monday. So, please stay tuned for that episode as it goes up. Usually I I drop them back toback, but because of the early posting on Saturday evening and Sunday, I wanted to get you part of this conversation. You have to hold tight for part two. If you listen to the show on Monday, it should be already be there be there in your feeds. So go ahead and subscribe to this show. And the best way always to get the podcast is to subscribe to have it delivered to you on Apple, Spotify. Also, if you’re on a YouTube subscriber, it will be available to you. They will you’ll be alerted when your when new shows are going up in the feed and they will also premiere in real time. So please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends, and we’ll see you all next time.

Brad Rowland (@BTRowland) hosts Episode 1967 of the Locked on Hawks podcast, and he is joined by Glen Willis of ATL and 29 for Part 1 of a 2-part conversation. The first discussion centers on the end of the 2024-25 season for the Atlanta Hawks, the team’s search for a President of Basketball Operations, and much more.

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