This Is A Splendid Trio For The Atlanta Hawks

Atlanta Hawks owner Tony Ressler kept delivering slam dunks Thursday during his season-ending Zoom meeting with local and national media. First, he said his management folks “underperformed” this season, along with his coaching staff, his players and himself.

Then Ressler said too many of them believed the fantasy that the franchise had arrived as a contender after a fluke trip last year to the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Before long, Ressler said excuses (coronavirus, injuries, the dog ate the homework) were just that, and he suggested he would shove anybody out of his organization quicker than a fast break for whining over a bunch of stuff regarding the Hawks’ failures instead of finding solutions.

Is there an NBA owner more of (ahem) a straight shooter than this guy?

Uh . . . no.

Actually, outside of Jerry Jones, Mark Cuban and maybe — well, nobody else comes to mind — Ressler is nearly peerless in professional sports.

“I think every team in the NBA should add a superstar whenever they can, and I promise you we’re no exception,” Ressler said, and soon afterward, he added he would spend whatever it took to get such a player for the Hawks.

Then Ressler said, “Going into the tax does not scare us. Going into the (NBA’s payroll) tax is not, in my view at least, only possible if we are competing for a championship in that season. Our job is to go into a tax when it’s good business, to position ourselves for greatness. We do not fear spending money. We fully expect Atlanta to be a truly attractive marketplace for whomever considers playing here.

“Money is not going to be our obstacle.”

Amen.

That is, if you’re into rooting for the No. 21 entry out of 30 on the Forbes list of NBA team evaluations at $1.68 billion.

All of that bluntness from Ressler came after I asked this private equity investor and chief executive (who Forbes determined is 460th among billionaires at $4.6 billion) if the Hawks’ extraordinary Trae Young needed somebody just as extraordinary in the same starting lineup.

I first asked Ressler that question last month at State Farm Arena, where the Hawks play home games. Back then, his defensively-challenged team somehow survived the ups and downs of their regular season to win play-in matches against the Charlotte Hornets and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Ressler said he couldn’t fairly address my question until after he saw the whole body of work of his team through the NBA playoffs.

You know the rest.

The owner determined his team needed Batman and Robin (as in Young combined with another NBA standout) after it was exposed by the Miami Heat in five games during the opening round of the playoffs. Among other things, Jimmy Butler proved there is a higher level of superstar beyond Young, especially since Young evolved from a prolific scorer into an offensive mess.

Most of the other Hawks were worse.

Barely minutes into Ressler’s media session, he blamed the Hawks challenging the Los Angeles Lakers all season as the NBA’s most disappointing team on complacency.

He began with his front office.

After the Hawks’ miracle run during the second half of the 2020-2021 season, Ressler said something like his management folks fooled themselves into thinking their roster of Bogdan Bogdanovic, John Collins, Clint Capela, Kevin Huerter and other OK players was strong enough to battle NBA teams that actually had significant talent.

“I think if you asked our front office, they would say that we thought based on last season’s visit to the Eastern Conference finals, that we could bring back predominantly the same team and get better and expect it to be better,” Ressler said. “I don’t think that worked out the way we thought.

“So yes, I think we should have tried to get better rather than bring back what we had. That won’t happen again, by the way. It was a mistake, in my opinion.”

George Steinbrenner would have been proud. The gruffy New York Yankees owner enjoyed firing managers out of nowhere while conducting public fueds with players he thought weren’t great every second.

In contrast, the 61-year-old Ressler is quick with a smile and a freindly conversation. Not only that, but he isn’t into impulsive decisions — with the Hawks or during his stint as one of the minority owners of the Milwaukee Brewers between running Apollo Global Management
APO
, which he co-founded in 1990 with Leon Black, his brother-in-law.

Don’t get the wrong idea: After Ressler said during his media sesson that he had final say on all matters regarding the Hawks, I asked him how involved he was during player personnel decisions and everything else.

“I’m very involved, frankly, in every major discussion,” Ressler said, and so was Steinbrenner, the epitome of a micromanager to the point of becoming a caricature of his overbearing self on “Seinfeld” TV episodes.

Here’s the difference, and I’ll let Ressler explained: “I’m a big believer in that the people who know the most should have the loudest voice, and for whatever it’s worth, I look at Travis (Schlenk, the Hawks general manager), Landry (Fields, Schlenk’s assistant) and Nate (McMillan, the Hawks head coach) relative to NBA basketball decisions as frankly as being more knowledgeable than me.”

Still, that doesn’t mean Ressler shuns voicing his opinion during those Hawks sessions, and that also doesn’t mean he shies away from displaying another one of Steinbrenner’s biggest traits.

Impatience.

“If you push too hard too soon, you actually hurt the objective of buidling a true championship-caliber team,” Ressler said. “I believe that to be true. And if you push too slow, you never get there. So, this is what and why Travis, Landry and Nate . . . I’m just going to say this: If you ask them, I would say I’m the least patient of the four of us. I don’t think that’s a shock to them.

“But, again, it’s running a good business.”

Steinbrenner would say, “Amen,” to that.

So should everybody.