The Big Hawk                                   

By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

After Dwight Howard inked a three-year, $71 million deal with the Atlanta Hawks Friday; good for a yearly salary of a cool $23.7 million per year, NBA and Hawks fans made their cries of anguish immediately known.

As tempting as it may be to overreact, fans must keep things in perspective.

Howard getting less than half the money that Mike Conley did (who signed the richest contract in NBA history at $153 million), is just another wrinkle in the new bloated salary cap era.

Let us also not forget that Joakim Noah is one year older than Howard and is getting paid $18 million a year on a guaranteed four-year contract.

Howard is definitively sturdier and more productive than Noah at this stage of both men’s careers and indeed, the contract isn’t as bad as it would seem at first blush.

Apart from also being guaranteed one less year than the New York Knicks’ new center, Howard’s new yearly salary represents a paltry per-year increase over his player option he declined with the Houston Rockets.

Moreover, with the salary cap at $94 million, now Howard’s salary now only accounts for 25 percent of the team’s cap space as opposed to 34 percent under the old cap. That figure will also go down again next year when the cap is expected to rise another $20 million.

Howard’s signing came just before the news that Al Horford would be taking his talents to Boston, causing further frustration for Hawks fans.

It’s understandable that Horford, a guy who has spent his entire career in Atlanta is a fan favorite. But, having your three best players in the front court in their 30s (Paul Millsap is 31), is not a way to win a lot of basketball games in today’s NBA.

No top-10 team in the NBA is constructed in such a fashion, and the Hawks would be severely challenged in attempting to defend teams like the Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers if they were to run such a lineup onto the floor.

The Hawks are not a perpetually blundering organization anymore. They haven’t been for some time. Thus, there’s little doubt that the front office is keen to the fact that you can’t win when it matters while playing a traditionally big lineup.

Which means the signing of Howard is very likely a tell-tale sign that the Hawks brass knew they had already lost out on the Horford free agency sweepstakes.

And despite the emotional attachment, fans should be OK with that at this point. Howard is not going to shoot 35-percent-plus from the outside like Horford did, however he doesn’t need to. The Hawks retained Kent Bazemore to do that (among other things).

This Hawks team is going to look and feel different come next season, and that’s also something fans should welcome with open arms as they had definitively plateaued last year.

What will be interesting to watch is how the Hawks’ head coach Mike Budenholzer adapts his offense. For some time now the Hawks have run a ball-movement-heavy, unselfish offense where no player was the clear focal point or superstar on offense each night; and despite him displaying more maturity recently, Howard will always be a player that needs touches.  Budenholzer will find ways to get Howard touches without the ball dying in the post on possessions that end in no points.

He’ll encourage Howard when needed and get his players to buy into a team concept on both sides of the floor. It’s simply what he does. And it’s exactly the type of coaching that Howard needs.