July 27: It would be a real shame if the Hawks and Josh Smith are unable to work out a long-term contract and instead wind up having to sign-and-trade him, especially after the team made the playoffs last season. Not that qualifying for the postseason is hard when playing in the Eastern conference. Myself, a few other InsideHoops.com guys, Chuck Nevitt, JR Rider and Leon Smith could probably pull it off. Still, the Hawks are fun to watch, show promise to get a bit better, and have a squad that’s decent to cheer for. Losing Josh Childress to a faraway overseas land hurts, but if a bench guy or two steps up a bit and shows some improvement, he’ll only be missed a little. His afro, on the other hand, will be tougher to replace.
Anyway, imagine if a team like the Celtics were able to land Smith. If that happened I’d imagine they’d use him as a super-sixth man. They have championship chemistry in the starting lineup and shouldn’t mess with that. Imagine Smith getting 28-32 bench minutes on a 60-win Boston squad. Sweet, huh?
I’m just tossing Boston out there for the fun of it. Obviously every team in the league would love to have Smith, and he’d start for almost all of them.
Aside from being good and still young, Smith is also extremely exciting to watch. He sells tickets. The Hawks need to keep him, even if it means overspending a little.

July 26: I don’t think it’s particularly big news that an overseas team offered Mike Finley a contract. Chances are, every player in the NBA who is either an aging veteran or a young guy who isn’t a lock to stay in the league gets multiple overseas offers. It’s just that now, with Bostjan Nachbar going overseas (a slight surprise) and Josh Childress going there as well (a pretty big surprise), overseas offers are getting more publicity, and writers and columnists are asking agents more about that stuff than before.
Chances are, Finley got overseas offers in the past, too, and he’ll get them in the future.
As has been reported by lots of outlets, and confirmed by people we at InsideHoops.com talk to, there isn’t a big reason to think tons of players on the level of Childress will ever wind up going overseas, because the money isn’t there. Teams in Europe don’t have massive TV deals and marketing profits that NBA teams do. They’re much smaller operations. So don’t expect lots of good NBA sixth men or prime bench guys to leave the league.
I’d guess there could be another couple of good NBA bench guys (probably not as good as Childress) that go overseas this or next year, but not much more than that. Nothing that would shake the league up in any real way.

Hawks GM Rick Sund on Josh Childress signing to play in Greece:
“We were informed this morning by Josh Childress’ representatives that he has signed with Olympiakos in Greece, and we want to wish him the absolute best with his future career in FIBA.
“We have a great deal of respect for Josh and appreciate his contributions to our franchise.  We were very comfortable when we began this process that if Josh were to play in the NBA, he would remain with the Hawks.  This is a unique situation with Greece, and to my knowledge it is believed to be the highest contract ever awarded in Euroleague history.
“We feel we presented a very fair and competitive offer to keep him in Atlanta, and we will now move forward with the options we have to improve our roster.”

The Atlanta Hawks have named Jim Todd and Tyrone Hill to the coaching staff of Mike Woodson, it was announced this afternoon. The two new assistants join fellow coaches Larry Drew and Bob Bender on Woodson’s staff.
Todd, involved in coaching basketball at the high school, college or professional level since 1976, comes to the Hawks from Milwaukee, where he spent last season as an assistant under Larry Krystkowiak.  Prior to joining the Bucks, he worked three seasons in Toronto in a similar capacity for Raptors’ coach Sam Mitchell (2004-07).  During his final season in Toronto, the Raptors posted a franchise-record 47 wins, as well as capturing their first Atlantic Division title.
He began his NBA career in Milwaukee as an assistant coach under Chris Ford from 1996-98, and followed Ford to the Los Angeles Clippers in 1998, where he was named interim head coach on February 3, 2000. Following that stint, Todd headed to the collegiate ranks for one season (2001-02) as an assistant at DePaul University, before returning to the Bucks as a coaching consultant in 2002-03, and an assistant one year later.
After spending two seasons as a volunteer coach with the Hawks, the 14-year veteran Hill makes his entry into the coaching ranks.  The 6-9 forward was a former first round pick (11th overall) in the 1990 draft of the Golden State Warriors who averaged 9.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and 0.5 blocks (.502 FG%).
Hill played for five NBA teams during his career - Golden State, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Miami - with his longest stint coming on two occasions with the Cavaliers (1993-94 to -97 and 2001-03).
In 1996-97, he set the team’s single-season franchise record after shooting a career-best .600 from the field (and ranked second in the NBA).

The  National  Basketball  Association today announced  that  the  Salary  Cap  for  the  2008-09 season will be $58.680 million.   The  new  Cap  goes  into  effect  immediately  as  the league’s “moratorium  period”  has ended and teams can begin signing free agents and making trades.
The  tax level for the 2008-09 season has been set at $71.150 million.  Any team whose team salary exceeds that figure will pay a $1 tax for each $1 by which it exceeds $71.150 million.
The  mid-level  exception  is $5.585 million for the 2008-09 season and the minimum  team  salary,  which  is  set at 75% of the Salary Cap, is $44.010 million.
For  the 2007-08 season, the Salary Cap was set at $55.630 million, the tax level was $67.865 million and the mid-level exception was $5.356 million.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Sekou Smith) reports: Save for a two week break, Acie Law’s been working out relentlessly since the Hawks’ playoff run ended. He said he’s hungry as ever and will not let up come mini-camp and summer league (next week in Atlanta for mini-camp and the following week and a half in Salt Lake City for mini-camp). Coach Mike Woodson was all smiles seeing Law on the floor so early and already having worked up a ferocious sweat while working on his shot and an assortment of other things during his early morning workout. Law retired to the weight room (allowing me a few minutes to trade questions and answers with Woodson for an upcoming piece on Law) and when he finished with that part of his routine he headed out the door for a therapy session for his injured wrist that caused him problems during his rookie season (he said the wrist feels fine and that the therapy three days a week has done wonders).

The Philadelphia Inquirer (Joe Juliano) reports: With more than $11 million in salary-cap space available, the 76ers dove into free agency shortly after the bell rang at 12:01 a.m. yesterday and targeted Josh Smith, the young and talented forward of the Atlanta Hawks, as their primary prospect, but not their only one. The 6-foot-9 Smith, a restricted free agent, was contacted by the Sixers almost immediately. A team spokesman said Smith and his representatives planned to meet today with president and general manager Ed Stefanski. The spokesman also said the Sixers contacted Smith’s teammate, 6-8 forward Josh Childress, yesterday and expect to bring him to Philadelphia, but did not say when.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Sekou Smith) blogs the following report: “Josh Smith is being targeted by Philadelphia with their $11 million-plus in available cap space. I know there is a small segment of people out there that think the Sixers might be using all this hype as a smokescreen and really be interested in making a sneak attack for Corey Maggette or even Elton Brand (if he does indeed opt out of his deal, we’ll know later today if he does or not). But Smith is the guy. And if the offer to Smith is frontloaded (think of the structure of the Hawks’ offer to Joe Johnson three years ago), things will get really complicated. The worst part is the Hawks had a 6-7, 235-pound cautionary tale on the roster in Johnson the last three years and still ignored it so they could dip their toes into the shark-infested waters this summer. It’s crazy.”

The Hawks, who it’s fun to mention made the playoffs last year and took the eventual-champion Celtics to seven games, have added coaches and front office staff.
The team has signed assistant coaches Larry Drew and Bob Bender to new contracts to continue on Mike Woodson’s staff, and named league veterans David Pendergraft and Steve Rosenberry to the Hawks’ Basketball Operations staff.
Pendergraft becomes Atlanta’s new Assistant General Manager/Director of Player Personnel, while Rosenberry will serve as Director of Pro Personnel/College Scouting.
Drew and Bender, each of whom concluded their fourth seasons on the Hawks staff, will return as assistants to Woodson as the franchise seeks to improve upon a first-round playoff berth which culminated with a seventh game defeat at the hands of the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics.
To learn more about all these guys, read this.
As for the Hawks in general, maybe they should look into taking the route the Celtics did and see about trading a bunch of young guys for a top star that isn’t going anywhere with their current team and can use a change. The bad news is, off the top of my head I can’t really think of anyone they could do this with. Can you? If so, post about it on our board.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Sekou Smith) reports the following via blog: According to my spy the Detroit Pistons have asked for permission to speak with Hawks coach Mike Woodson (that’s his title for at least the next 26 days or so unless something breaks before the end of the month) about their vacant coaching position. Solid reports out of Detroit have Pistons assistant Michael Curry lined up for the job. But the Pistons have apparently covered their bases if that doesn’t work out by contacting the representative of Woodson, who was the lead assistant on Larry Brown’s staff when the Pistons won the NBA title in 2004.