The local media seems pretty happy with Ferry’s demolition act in Atlanta as he dumped Joe Johnson and his monster salary on the Brooklyn Nets.
It took Danny Ferry a week to turn a franchise going nowhere into one with room again to grow. It took him a week to reach an agreement to send Joe Johnson to the Nets for a bunch of guys whose principal value rests in the expiration dates on their contracts. It took this general manager a week to ship Marvin Williams, enduring symbol of opportunity squandered, to Utah.
To follow the Hawks is to expect the worst, which means the initial response to this watershed Johnson deal was to figure it would be overturned on some technicality. Maybe we shouldn’t be fatalistic. At the rate Ferry is moving, he might be able to convince the NBA to replay the final seconds of Game 6 against Boston from 1988, and make it so that Dominique Wilkins (and not Cliff Levingston) takes the last shot this time.
A week ago we wondered if/when Ferry would dare to tamper with the Core Four. On Day 1 of Week 2, we got our answer. Ferry gored the Core without having to deal either Josh Smith or Al Horford, and by offloading Johnson he turned this capped-out club into one with a hangar’s worth of financial headroom.
Shedding Johnson’s contract was the only way the Hawks could get better. He makes $20 million per season, which is roughly one-third of what the NBA allows to fund an entire roster. It’s one thing if your $20-million-man is Kobe Bryant, but Johnson, over the two years since he re-upped, has sunk to being third-best among Hawks.
This looks like a great move by Ferry, but then he needs to show that he can build a team back up. Ferry did a decent job in Cleveland, and it’s hard to blame him for Lebron’s emotional breakdowns that did in the Cavs in the playoffs after they won 66 and then 60 games in the regular season.
That said, he made some big blunders in Cleveland as well (Larry Hughes). So here he has to show he can do more than wield a sledgehammer to a bloated roster.
