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General manager working on foundation for team’s first winning season since 1998-99
The Atlanta Journal-Consitution
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Hawks players aren’t the only ones getting in early work for the upcoming season.
Hawks general manager Rick Sund and his staff are implementing their program in time for training camp — the team’s first after a playoff season in almost a decade.
So while the players convene this week for voluntary track, weight room and on-court workouts, Sund is busy laying the foundation for what he hopes will be the first winning season for the franchise since the 1998-99 (31-19 in the lockout shortened season) and a return trip to the playoffs.
Sund spoke with AJC Hawks beat writer Sekou Smith about all that and more in a recent interview.
Q. Mike Bibby wasn’t healthy last year at any point after coming to the team in a trade deadline deal, how important is it for him to have a training camp with this team and to finally be healthy?
A. What’s good about this upcoming season is Mike was injured a lot last year and I read all the injury reports from our medical people and what they wanted for him was rest. And I think he got that this summer on the thumb. You’re in a situation where it’s a great opportunity for him to be on a team that’s pointed in the right direction and he’s a veteran and a point guard and he seemed to enjoy, from what I could gather watching him playing, himself with this team. But it was an important summer for all of these guys.
Q. Important for all these guys in what ways, specifically?
A. Al Horford had an opportunity to play with the Select Team that played against the Olympic team that won the gold medal and that helped him. Acie Law made the All-Tournament team at the Rocky Mountain Revue, and that shouldn’t be a surprise because he was a first rounder, but we wanted him to go out there and get some quality playing time. We found a couple of players in the summer league that look like they might have some potential for the future, maybe not necessarily this upcoming season but in the future in [Othello] Hunter and [Thomas] Gardner. Josh Smith got signed in early August so now we’re in a situation where he had a month and half where he’s been free to focus and get ready for this season. His situation didn’t linger into training camp. And that’s a big plus. I just think training camp is going to be extremely important for us as a group as well as individually.
Q. It sounds like there is going to be a renewed focus overall for training camp. Is that something you thought was necessary for this team or the way you always prefer to handle business?
A. By virtue of the way they finished last year, with a good taste in their mouths despite getting beat in Game 7, these guys are going to come in with high expectations for themselves, just like the coaching staff and management. We’re going to really focus in on training camp. I’ve had some discussions with Mike [Woodson]. It’s going to be a serious, serious endeavor this year. We’re putting them up at the hotel this year. They’re going to have practice sessions in the morning and skull sessions and meetings and everything at night. We’re going to be like Hard Knocks on HBO, we’re going that route. We’re not going to go crazy because we have rules. But training camp is going to be a 24-7 gig. We’re going to be focused. We want to set some goals and do some things that will … we want to catch some teams ahead of us [in the standings] and keep the seven teams that finished last season behind us, behind us.
Q. Coming off the season this team had and with the changes that occurred this summer, how cautious do you have to be in regard to not overdoing it with the “change” theme, that seems to be all the rage this summer, going into the season?
A. Well, and I think I’m getting your point, the one thing you have to be concerned with is that the season is a marathon and not a sprint. You don’t want to get off to a 6-2 start and think “we’re there” or get off to a 2-6 start and say “you’re not there.” I think you have to battle that to some extent with players as well. You can’t get to high on the highs and too low on the lows. You don’t want them thinking they’ve arrived if they get off to a 6-2 start because you know it’s a marathon. And you also don’t want them down and thinking they’re not that good if they start 2-6. Our schedule the first month is tough because we’ve got a lot of road games. So again, you don’t want to get too high or too low early. And that takes work.
Q. It’s one thing to try sell that perspective to your team but how do you cement that ideology into the way they go about their business?
A. The one thing I have to emphasize this year is that we’re a young veteran team. Josh Smith is a young veteran. He’s started for three or four years. You’re in a situation where Joe Johnson is a young veteran, relatively speaking. But we’ve also made a concerted effort to get some veterans in here with Mo [Evans] and Flip [Murray] and Bibby last year. We’ve got some veterans.
Q. In your experience, how tough a transition is trying to meld new faces and returning faces in such a short period of time?
A. The transition is easier with veterans than it is with rookies, provided they are in the rotation. It’s not something I’m overly concerned about with guys like Mo and Flip specifically, because they’ve been on different teams and have gone into situations like this in the past and done well.
Q. How conscious were you in your tweaking of things this summer to maintain some stability from last season while also trying to affect as much change as you thought was needed?
A. The thing that I think, and if we’ve done anything this offseason, is we took a team that didn’t have a great record last year but made the playoffs and played pretty well in the playoffs, and we had a nice assimilation of some continuity and some change. It starts with the coaching staff. We don’t have the same exact coaching staff we had last year. We’ve got some changes there. Same with management. We have some people that are still here with management and personnel and some that are new. And it goes on with the players. Take Mo, Flip, Randolph Morris, Hunter and Gardner we have five new players that are going to be on this roster. But you still have your core. With a playoff team we’ve managed to maintain some continuity while also adding some changes to the mix. And I think that’s a good way to move forward with a team that made the playoffs with an under .500 record and performed well against the eventual world champions in the playoffs.
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