Atlanta Hawks
7/29 Sign Maurice Evans
7/30 Sign Randolph Morris
8/8 Re-sign Josh Smith
8/11 Sign Thomas Gardner and Othello Hunter
8/13 Sign Flip Murray
At the end of the day, the Hawks avoided the worst case scenario–that Smith would take a one-year qualifying offer in order to set up a run at unrestricted free agency in 2009. It seemed that Smith wanted to leave Atlanta pretty badly but not badly enough to risk injury or decline that could kill his market value in 2009. Smith is a young athletic leaper so I thought the risk wasn’t inordinate but $58 million is hard to turn down.