Posted June 21, 2008 14:26:02
All of us sports nerds long to run our favorite franchises at some point in our lives. It is the reason why video games have expanded waaaay beyond gameplay and let you run your own team with authority! You get to wear the Owner, General Manager, and Coach hats. What fun!!! I have always wanted to take this one step further and do some deep research into just why a bad team reached its current level of disaster. I now present you with the breakdown of the Atlanta Hawks and their painfully slow rise to mediocrity.
The History
From the 1992-1993 Season until the 1998-1999 Season, the Hawks made 7 consecutive playoff appearances. In the previous 51 years of the franchises' existence dating back to 1949, the Hawks had 36 number of playoff appearances. This includes years spent in Moline, Illinois, as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (2), in Milwaukee (4), in St. Louis (13) and in Atlanta (32). After moving to Atlanta, playoffs were enjoyed 23 out of the 32 seasons or 72% of the time! Of course after the 1998-1999 season, the Hawks have suffered through an 8 year playoff drought (until they squeaked in this year, but that shouldn't really count). So what went wrong? Why the sudden fall from grace?
The current ownership took over in 2004. The first personnel move made was to hire the current coach in Mike Woodson who matter-of-factly steered the team into an iceberg of a 13-69 record. Ouch that hurts! But lets move back farther. Not much changed for the 4 years after Time Warner bought/inherited the Hawks in 1996. Lenny Wilkens still led a talented team to the playoffs 4 consecutive times from this point. Stupid personnel moves soon followed before the 99-00 season: Steve Smith was traded for Isaiah Rider and Jim Jackson and 2 first round draft picks were traded for the perennial bust Lorenzen Wright. The franchise was doomed the next year to a 28-54 record which led to Lenny leaving after the season. So we have reached my starting point for this rebuilding of the once might and proud Atlanta Hawks.
The Starting Point
The takeover will begin at the turn of the century: the 1999-2000 Season. My primary goal will be to build from the draft. Trades will be wiped from the public's memory. Bonehead draft choices will NOT be made here! My first act as Owner/GM/Coach is back out of the Lorenzen Wright trade and get back my premium drafts picks! Year One will follow shortly.
Disclaimer: Of course I can make the better decisions with the help of knowing what the future holds for these players. The outcome of this reconstruction is show what COULD have been had the right choices been made.
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...on my list at least. The Bank Job is less about the heist and more about the aftermath. Now I am a sucker for heist movies. The part of the heist that usually hooks me in is the planning. This movie really skipped over planning fairly quick. Even the actual heist portion doesn't take that long. The movie instead focuses most of its energy on what happens after the heist gets pulled off. It is hard to know who to trust in this movie as it doesn't seem to matter what the law is since everyone is looking out for themselves. Although this keeps the movie entertaining through some lulls in the story. The Bank Job is definitely not the best heist movie I have ever seen, but it is the best I have seen in a while. I give it 4 of 5 stars and place it at the #1 spot on my running list of 2008 movies which you can see on the right hand side of the page.
I am always thrilled when "independent" movies go "mainstream" especially when these movies are exceptionally good. One of the reasons for the success of Juno is that it reaches a broad audience. It is a comedy with dramatic elements that kind of pulls on the "heartstrings" near the end. Another reason for success is that this movie was well written. Diablo Cody put together a script that has great quick hitting witty dialog. You those "one-liners" that you just can't get out of your head, this movie is full of them. Why does that translate into success? People can't forget the movie and want to see it again to remeber more of these unforgettable quotes. The movie combined great acting performances by Ellen Page, Michael Cera, and J.K. Simmons (Juno's dad) with folky punk rock tunes that blended marvelously with the script. I will probably see this movie again before it leaves the theater and it is definitely destined to be a member of my DVD collection.
Pixar is a great film company. Here's the plot: "A rat who loves to cook finds himself in the position of being able to cook in a gourmet kitchen." Wow. On the basis of that statement, how do you make a rat in a kitchen cooking food lovable? IT seems impossible, but Pixar pulls it off with flying colors. I have already purchased this on DVD and have watched it numerous times. It never gets old.
The Bourne Trilogy is one of my favorite action trilogies. Each movie built upon the other and Ultimatum was the perfect ending to this storyline. The movie was just as action-filled as the previous two, but we finally get a lot of answers to long-standing questions. Matt Damon owns this role and if they do continue making Bourne movies I hope that they only do it with Damon as Bourne. The movie ranks atop my all-time action movie list. In a summer full of third sequels, this one is the best by a wide margin. I already has this one on DVD and it gets played a lot.
For 2/3 of this movie, my eyes were glued to the screen. Then one of the main characters appeared dead on the screen and the audience never got to experience a meeting between two characters (Lwellyen and Anton) that had been building all movie. I quickly lost interest from that point on, but as I reflected on the movie I understood why this was part of the movie. For that reason, I kept it on this list. Javier Bardem (Anton) still haunts my dreams. The cold emotionless look in his eyes made him one of the best "Villains" I have ever seen on screen. When it comes to DVD I will see it again, but probably won't buy it.
An action packed epic of testosterone and stylized blood and guts. Sin City made this type of stylized movie mainstream, but 300 took it to a new level. It also put Gerard Butler's name on the map. He can now be seen in tons of action movies. His performance made you grit your teeth and want to die for your country. Maybe the US Armed Forces should use this as a recruiting video. I read the graphic novel before seeing the movie and I can safely say they kept very close to the book. In fact screenshots from the movie, could be mistaken for actually pages from the book.
Action packed from beginning to end with some very funny dialog spread throughout. I enjoyed Shia LeBouf's performance. I like movies that I don't have to think about and this was one of them. It was just a fun movie that I thouroughly enjoyed. DVD-Worthy.
Adam Sandler should give up crap like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" and stick to movies like "Punch Drunk Love", "Spanglish", and "Reign Over Me". His performance was remarkable. It's rare that a movie makes me cry, but this one did and I commend it on it's heartbreaking story.
It's a shame this movie did not get a wide release. It never made it to Huntsville so I never got to see it on the big screen. It is a very unique script for a romantic comedy which seems like it would make a lot of money, but oh well. Keri Russell gives a great performance. Nathan Fillion is amazingly funny as always. Andy Griffith plays a dirty old man to perfection. The "hook" of this movie was that Keri's character would make a pie and the ingredients and name were a reflection of her mood. It is just a charming movie that I really liked. DVD-Worthy.
Kevin Costner makes this movie good. Another actor might have pulled it off, but Costner calm demeanor made his character creepy yet likable. I'd almost compare him to a more conflicted Dexter (of the tv series Dexter). Dane Cook was still annoying. The ending caught me completely off guard and that is something I loved about this movie.
When I got to the ending of this movie, I felt like it abruptly ended on a sad note. I didn't walk out of the theater loving it. My biggest problem is that Mike Nichols tried to make you feel sympathy for the Afghan people at the very end of the movie, but only gives a few minutes of screen time in the middle of the film toward addressing this. The ending fit the actual story and it served to make a point but I wasn't terribly happy with it. After saying all of that, I still enjoyed this movie immensely. Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymore Hoffman are brilliant. The parts seem tailored just for them. Julia Roberts could have been replaced by any actress. The story is well worth watching and checking it out multiple times will hopefully make you see all the good points of the movie.
