The Atlanta Hawks finished another underwhelming season under head coach Larry Drew, and while Drew is still under contract with the team through the end of June, it’s more than likely that the team will go in another direction next season.
In addition to the coaching spot, the Hawks are going to need to rebuild a little bit from a personnel standpoint, considering that Josh Smith is an unrestricted free agent, and is likely to sign elsewhere in the offseason.
Combine both of those situations, and you get to where Atlanta is now: in pursuit of a big name, experienced head coach, who may in turn help to lure a big name, superstar free agent.
From Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports:
The Atlanta Hawks are aggressively pursuing Stan Van Gundy for the franchise’s head-coaching job, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.
General manager Danny Ferry has made Van Gundy his top target to replace Larry Drew, sources said.
There has been contact between Ferry and Van Gundy, but the two sides have yet to meet in person.
The Hawks plan to make a hard push for free-agent center Dwight Howard on July 1, and there’s some belief that Van Gundy could turn out to be a benefit in recruiting Howard back to his hometown.
Howard has expressed some sentiment that he better appreciates Van Gundy as a head coach, despite their clashes together in Orlando that ultimately led to the coach’s firing after the 2011-12 season.
Van Gundy has an excellent reputation in coaching circles, and the job he did in Orlando — including how he was brutally honest in handling the Dwight Howard nonsense in his final season there — is well-respected throughout the league. While he hasn’t decided whether or not he wishes to return to coaching next season, there will be no shortage of opportunities for him if he’s ready to come back.
As for Howard, go ahead and consider this the first of what will assuredly be many rumors about what his ultimate destiny might be at the end of free agency. Howard said that his first season in Los Angeles with the Lakers was like a nightmare immediately following its conclusion, though he was much healthier in the second half of the year, and despite a multitude of injuries, he helped L.A. to a 28-12 finish to the regular season that landed the team in the playoffs.
The Lakers remain the favorite to sign Howard, partially because they can offer him one more year and $30 million more in guaranteed money than any other team can under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. That, along with being handed the keys to the storied L.A. franchise once Kobe Bryant retires may make the opportunity there too great for Howard to pass up.
