Garnett has been one of the league's best players this decade. Part of what makes him so great is his intensity. Early in his career, KG was capable of harnessing that intensity in a positive way. In his later years? Not so much.
Not everyone is waiting for 2010 – the mother of all free agent summers – to try to improve their team by throwing big money at the seasoned veterans.
Even in hard economic times, the top players like Carlos Boozer, Hedo Turkoglu and Jason Kidd will leave teams and get their financial reward in other places. The squeeze will be on the lower-level free agents who must settle for minimum or various exceptions.
What hurts this class is that only seven teams really have major room under the salary cap to make something happen, and they usually aren't the NBA's biggest spenders. Unless the free agents stay with their current teams, only Memphis, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Atlanta, Portland, Toronto and Detroit have major room.
Although there has been plenty of dancing and unofficial talks the last few days, the real dealings can't start until 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
Here is a breakdown by position of the five most intriguing – and unrestricted – free agents.
The Atlanta Hawks are considered one of the NBA's rising teams, as evidenced by consecutive playoff appearances for the first time in 10 years. The Hawks, however, were easily swept in the Eastern Conference semifinals by the Cleveland Cavaliers, who spent four games exposing Atlanta's numerous flaws and weaknesses. The Hawks are approaching a critical time for their franchise, with Mike Bibby a free agent and third-year forward and former lottery pick Marvin Williams seemingly without a role.
Hawks legend Dominique Wilkins, the team's vice president of basketball, said the Hawks need two key components to challenge, Boston, Orlando and Cleveland for Eastern Conference supremacy.
The Miami Heat made it official on Wednesday. They're the worst team remaining in the NBA playoffs. That's just one conclusion you can draw after Atlanta won Game 5 over Miami 106-91 to go up 3-2 in the series.
How can the Heat be anything other than the worst team remaining when they came into the playoffs as an underdog and, now, Dwyane Wade is not 100 percent? Hey, it's just another way of saying that coach Erik Spoelstra is doing a great coaching job.
Miami was down 23 points at halftime, and the only reason to watch the remaining 24 was to find out who was going to commit the next hard foul and who was going to be on the receiving end of it.
Atlanta 106, Miami 91: Recap | Box Score Atlanta Leads Series 3-2 | Next Game: Friday @ Miami
The Hawks' Marvin Williams injured his left thumb in the first half of last night's win over the Bobcats. It doesn't appear to be too serious -- head coach Mike Woodson afterward said "nothing's broken" and Williams himself said he could "bend it but not extend it," so all signs point to him being just fine.
The bright side is that the team played the second half without him, and apparently looked good while doing so. They were able to go with a bigger lineup of Zaza Pachulia at center, Al Horford at the four, and Josh Smith on the wing, which instantly paid dividends on the boards and allowed the team to go from seven down at the half to up five at one point in the third.
The reason that this is encouraging news for the Hawks, at least in the short term, is that the team is now forced to pIay without Williams, which will help them prepare for their season opener against Orlando without him. I had forgotten, but yes, Williams is indeed suspended for the first game of the regular season, thanks to this flagrant (but not homicidal as the announcers would lead you to believe) takedown of Rajon Rondo during last season's playoffs.
For the second straight playoff season, Robert Horry finds himself in the middle of a "dirty/not dirty" play controversy. After setting a back pick for David West that knocked the Hornets' star from the game, everyone is going to the video of last year's hit on Steve Nash and saying something to the effect of, "look, he did it again!" First the clip of the play on West (at the 1:29 mark), then the discussion.
I'm the last person in the world that you would expect to come to the defense of the Spurs' edition of Robert Horry, but I'm going to do exactly that -- at least a little bit.
The Atlanta Hawks sure are fun aren't they? And popular, too! Atlanta does love it's Hawks. And the Hawks love them right back. Witness Zaza Pachulia's post game "speech" whereby he yells things about Game 7. You really have to love this guy, even though if I were his teammates, I'd be fairly sick of his armpit snare/hugs.
As much as I absolutely love the Hawks, this team is still like the 2001 Carolina Hurricanes in terms of fan behavior.
We're definitelyall over this Celtics-Hawks series, and why not? If Boston should somehow manage to drop two of the next three games to a team that snuck into the playoffs with a losing record, it would be arguably the biggest upset in NBA history. While that's still a long way from happening, the league could certainly make things easier for the Hawks, depending on how they interpret what went down during that little altercation between Kevin Garnett and Zaza Pachulia.
The Boston Globe points out the fact that there might be a few suspensions handed down from the league for Game 5. And if it goes down the way they think it might, the Hawks would have to like their chances for the next game in Boston.
To make matters worse for the Celtics, it's possible that Garnett and Kendrick Perkins could be suspended for Game 5 for their involvement in a second-quarter skirmish last night. Hawks forward Marvin Williams also is in jeopardy.
Replays showed Garnett shoving referee Ed Rush, and Perkins and Williams went on the floor from the bench, which usually means an automatic one-game suspension.
Garnett can be seen "shoving" Ed Rush at about the 15 second mark of the clip (in Matt Watson's original post), and, as stated there at the time, there's no question that both Kendrick Perkins and Marvin Williams technically "left the bench" by stepping onto the court, which, by league rule, is an automatic suspension.
In last year's playoffs, Amare Stoudemire went no further off the bench than Perkins or Williams did, and he was suspended for it, which ultimately cost his Suns the series. Perkins and Williams should both be given a one-game suspension, period.
As for Garnett? Well, he did shove the referee to try to get back into the confrontation. But there's no way the league suspends him for that, right? Although if they did, anyone who's an NBA conspiracy theorist would need to find a new occupation. Because no one concerned with television ratings wants the Celtics ousted by Atlanta in the first round of the playoffs.
It's hard to argue that Kevin Garnett didn't do the right thing. Even after Zaza Pachulia got in his grill, KG kept his hands at his sides and didn't retaliate. No one wants to see Garnett get tossed out of a close game for taking a swing; not the Hawks, who'd have their victory tainted, and not the Celtics, who'd be worried about a Game 5 suspension.
That said ... how come when Dirk Nowitzki does this he's labled "soft," but when KG does it he's praised for keeping his cool? KG clearly instigated this by throwing a high elbow after the whistle, and after Pachulia retaliated with a head-butt, KG waited until he was separated by refs and teammates before trying to get in on the action.
When the Celtics dropped Game 3 on the road, I thought they were simply being generous, letting the Hawks get their token playoff win at home. But then something funny happened: they went and dropped Game 4, as well, letting the Hawks tie up the series 2-2.
Now, conventional wisdom suggests this is probably a fluke (though it wasn't wholly unpredicted). I mean, Boston won 66 games for a reason, right? But there's just something exciting about watching these Hawks. They're not afraid of the Celtics at all. Al Horford showed it in Game 3 by taunting Paul Pierce and Zaza Pachulia proved it again tonight by going forehead to forehead with Kevin Garnett after taking offense to KG's wayward elbow. (More on that later.)
With the start of the 2009-10 season looming, NBA FanHouse walks through the Valley of the Most Likely; we shall fear no topic.
Not everyone is waiting for 2010 – the mother of all free agent summers – to try to improve their team by throwing big money at the seasoned veterans.
The Atlanta Hawks are considered one of the NBA's rising teams, as evidenced by consecutive playoff appearances for the first time in 10 years. The Hawks, however, were easily swept in the Eastern Conference semifinals by the Cleveland Cavaliers, who spent four games exposing Atlanta's numerous flaws and weaknesses. The Hawks are approaching a critical time for their franchise, with 
The Miami Heat made it official on Wednesday. They're the worst team remaining in the NBA playoffs. That's just one conclusion you can draw after 
We're 
