Q & A w/ Stan Kasten Atlanta Journal-Constitution http://www.ajc.com/hawks/content/sports/ha...03/20hawks.html <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">After a tumultuous and disappointing season that included a fired general manager, a fired coach and a fourth consecutive year of missing the playoffs, Journal-Constitution writer Jeffrey Denberg talked with Hawks president Stan Kasten about the team's troubled state of affairs. Q: Will you hire the general manager before you hire the coach? A: That would be my preference, but if it got to the point where I had to make a decision on the coach and did not yet have a decision on the GM, I'd go ahead and make that decision. But my preference is to resolve the GM thing first and the coach decision sometime after that. Q: Are you looking for anything specific in a general manager? A: I have a dozen or more attributes. There is no person on earth with all of them. I've done this in sort of a clinical way. The kinds of things I'm looking for: the kind of experiences, the kind of ability, personality traits, and no one has all of them. . . . There are many attributes that are important, but there aren't any specific four of them that one guy has to have. We'll just see the best gathering of those elements. I know that's a very vague answer, but that's honestly the process I'm going through. Q: So this is a process you've been through before. A: Oh, yes. With Pete [Babcock], with [Braves GM] John [Schuerholz]. . . . When I hired John, [some people] didn't know who he was, and it wound up working out for a lot of reasons. It was a good fit. There weren't specific attributes with every guy. So I can't tell you he will be like Pete or he will be like John or like [Thrashers GM] Don Waddell. He will be like he is, and the guy who will give us the best opportunity to get back to winning. Q: Is Terry Stotts a viable candidate for the coaching job? A: Sure he is. Q: But you appeared to be down on the staff, as well as the players, when Babcock was dismissed during the losing streak April 2. A: You made a lot of my comments about my hating the way we lost at that time, and it's true. Those kind of losses kill me. But the other side of that is that Pat Riley's teams have been through that. A lot of great coaches have suffered through series of losses like that in their careers. So, how do you predict stuff like that? Q: Go back to your own days as a general manager with the Hawks. That probably gives you an ability to understand things that others in similar circumstances could not. A: I think so, but we also have to look at what we have here and the decisions we have to make for the future. There's a lot to bring the best factors into the decision-making. Q: You are going into the summer with only one guard, Dan Dickau. Does that worry you? A: No. It's true we have no guards, but that's not a problem. We can match. Whatever Jason Terry gets by way of an offer, we can match it. That's not a problem. Sure, he has no contract now. It's the same with Dion Glover. With Dion, I don't think you can say with any certainty that he would get matched. Q: How inhibiting is it that you cannot be involved in free agency because you are so far over the cap [at $54 million]? A: Sign-and-trade. Look, I will never accept salary-cap limitations as a reason not to trade, and you shouldn't either and neither should the fans. When you are over the cap, as almost every team in the league is, it means you have to use different tools. But can you accept that as an excuse? No, and nobody else in the league should use it. Why would customers care? They want you to do what you have to do, not make excuses. The job still has to get done. I'm not going to whine about how I do it. I do think we're all overpaid, and this is a difficult time for all sports. So, yeah, we have to work hard on things, but that won't stand in the way of us having a good team. It really won't. . . . We have to figure a way to make it work, and if that means moving a player on, then we'll have to find a way to do that. I would say most of us prefer a team with talent. Q: You said recently that because of the high cap number you will have trouble doing some things, and you'll have to ride that through. A: That's true. But that doesn't mean we can't find a way to make that be a good team. I think that by the end of the year you will see once again that everyone agrees we do have a lot of talent here. We do. Q: You won a lot of games with Glenn Robinson injured. The team did not appear to miss him. What do you make of that? A: It shows a lot, I think. We have to find a way to interpret that and make it work for us in terms of how we play. Q: Are you feeling more posi?tive about this team after its solid finish at the end of the season? A: I approach it with great optimism. We have a lot of positives. We have to make the right moves, but we're going to spend a lot of time evaluating and doing whatever we have to do to get in the right position. But there are enough good things here on which to build or could be tweaked or whatever you want to call it, so we could have a very good team next year. Certainly what we closed the season with was a heck of lot closer to what we thought we had than what we saw the first half. Q: Do you have some sort of time frame? A: I'm not going to rush this thing. We're well equipped to prepare for the draft and trades with [interim general manager] Billy [Knight]. I cannot tell you when we're going to get things done except to tell you I'm spending an awful lot of time on the Hawks, and everyone involved is spending a lot of time on the next steps. We won't miss a beat. We'll certainly be prepared for trade talks. We'll certainly be prepared for the draft. And whatever personnel changes we make between now and then, whether it's tomorrow or next week or beyond, we'll take whatever time we need to get the best end results. </div>
