Give Me The Rock

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He's outta there

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Categorized as: Atlanta Hawks, Fantasy Basketball, Indiana Pacers, Player News, Trades
Posted on: August 23rd, 2006

Al Harrington, as we all now know, is headed back to Indiana.

I definitely look at it like Indiana got over on Atlanta
-Al Harrington

Yes, Mr. Harrington is correct. Too bad… I was really hoping for something more interesting to write about. Oh well. Can’t win em all.

First off, there goes the emergence of Danny Granger. Harrington should easily dominate the SF position in Indy. It also means that Shawne Williams probably won’t see a lot court time. The trade also opens up the possibility of running Jermaine O’Neal at Center with Harrington at PF, Stephen Jackson at SF, and then Marquis Daniels or Sarunus Jazzy-vicious at the SG with Tinsley at PG. I think O’Neal and Jackson should be able to keep up their averages from last season, but since Harrington will be the 3rd option, it may be difficult for him to get up into the 18-19 point range again. S-Jax isn’t a great rebounder, but Jermaine and J-Fos will soak up a lot of the rebounds out there. Harrington will probably be down a rebound or two next season.

I’d like to think the impact on the Hawks is more interesting, but it’s really not. The people filling Harrington’s position are Josh Childress, Marvin Williams, and Josh Smith. That was pretty obvious, right? They’re all pretty even, so you can estimate that they’ll all go from 9-11 points to 13-15 points. I don’t think Joe Johnson can really get more than he had last season. He’ll still be the number one option, but he already had that going for him. And I’d really like to say that he’s going to be fatigued from playing in the World Championships, but since SLAMOnline is on the watch for someone to say something about that, I’ll refrain.

Overall, Marvin Williams will probably see the biggest gain, since he played the least minutes last season, he’s got the most room for improvement. Childress and Smith can’t really get more than about 4-5 more minutes with which to boost their stats, but Williams could probably get another 6-10.

One thing I don’t know is who’s going to rebound for the Hawks now. I guess you’ll have to give some of Harrington’s rebounds to Shelden Williams, but after his Summer League showing, nothing about him is certain.

So, make sure to move M-Will up on your Big Board. Everyone else you can just kind of eyeball at draft time.

Other Stuff Like This:

  • http://www.givemetherock.com Nels

    Fanball.com’s analysis. Not quite as in depth as what you might find elsewhere. Like, for example, on this site.

  • http://basketdribble.blogspot.com/ rem

    i remain surprised that Atlanta could not do better than a first rounder for 2 players despite the deep bench they are still desperate for some size

  • http://www.gatoradedump.blogspot.com Mike Prada

    I think, but I’m not sure, that Atlanta couldn’t do better than a draft pick because of the court ruling that they couldn’t add any salary for a year because of the owners fiasco.

    Also, don’t you think Indiana will try to play Granger and Harrington together, with a platoon of Jackson and Daniels at the 2?

  • http://www.givemetherock.com Nels

    The frequency of the Granger/Harrington combo will depend on how many games Jermaine O’Neal misses. He played 35 minutes/game when he was not injured, so that doesn’t leave a lot of time to play Harrington and Granger together.

    Actually, Jeff Foster and David Harrison can probably handle all of the minutes at Center, meaning that my idea of having Jermaine play the 5 will probably never happen (not that I’m an expert on the Pacers or anything, though; I’m just looking at stats). So, if the 2 centers are healthy (which they should be for about 60-some games), that leaves Jermaine at PF for just about all of his healthy games. He’s used to playing 35 minutes when healthy, and so are Jackson and Harrington, so that just doesn’t leave a lot of minutes at those positions for anyone else.

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