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Now that the free-agency whirlwind has calmed, we can sit back and ask: So, um, what exactly did the Atlanta Hawks do?They tried to straddle two paths at once, and ultimately fell into the netherworld between them.The NBA is ripe for a tank job. Two to three years ago, almost a half-dozen teams raced to the bottom at once -- a backward sprint so crowded, one or two would become a sort of reverse Mary Decker Slaney and stumble into too many wins. Now, everyone is trying to win. The path from the playoffs to the No. 2 pick has never been clearer.But tanking sounds better to those outside the game than the people who live within it. The Hawks rank in the bottom 10 in attendance, and they arent breaking the bank with their local TV deal. Their blah attendance is a nonstop talking point. Even former Hawks star Al Horfords father, Tito, told The Boston Globe that the contrast between crowds in Boston and Atlanta factored into his sons free-agency decision.The Hawks have to worry about butts in seats. Coach Mike Budenholzer is their top basketball decision-maker, and he has spent the past two decades winning a ridiculous number of games in San Antonio and Atlanta. Coaches with that sort of track record dont easily swallow full-on rebuilds.But a second consecutive playoff sweep against the Cavaliers demoralized the Hawks. It laid bare that their current core would not be able to compete against LeBron James & Co., and raised internal questions about whether their pass-happy style of play had reached its zenith. Atlanta players have talked openly about catching the league by surprise two seasons ago, when they won 60 games, and how their relative struggles in the playoffs were the first sign of the league catching up.The Hawks were juggling a lot of balls in those frantic moments before Horford bolted to Boston. They had already agreed to a three-year, $70 million deal with Dwight Howard, a decidedly un-Hawks-like player who mans the same position as Horford. They were working to re-sign Horford anyway, and arranging a trade that would jettison Paul Millsap -- their best player last season.The Horford-Howard front line would keep Atlanta competitive, and dealing Millsap would net rebuilding assets -- young players and picks to plop atop the No. 12 pick they received from Utah in the Jeff Teague deal. They could rebuild without dropping from the postseason.It was an interesting plan until it fell apart. Horford is gone, Millsap remains and the trade assets hed have fetched stay in Denver, Phoenix or someplace else.Millsap is entering the final season of his contract. He is 31, and with 10 years experience he will be eligible next summer for the highest possible percentage of the salary cap at the exact moment the cap leaps again -- from $94 million to about $110 million. If he gets the max, Millsaps next deal will start with a salary around $35 million. Oof. (Note: The Hawks would normally be able to offer Millsap a five-year deal, but due to a quirk in the collective bargaining agreement called the over-36 rule, which is designed to limit contract length for older players, they would be capped at a four-year offer, per several league sources. The rule would also apply to LeBron James if he hits free agency again in July 2017. The union may fight to scrap it in collective bargaining talks.)Horford has played for nine years, making him eligible for a max contract one tier below Millsap. Horford will sign with Boston under the current $94 million cap, and his starting salary will be about $26.5 million.That ballpark $9 million-per-year difference between the starting salaries of Horford and Millsap on their next respective contracts largely explains why the Hawks had chosen Horford by the end -- and why Boston had no misgivings throwing a four-year max at him. Trading Millsap would net the Hawks some building blocks and free them from the dilemma of paying his super-max deal.They talked about Millsap trades with Phoenix, Denver, Toronto and Houston; the Nuggets were ready to flip a players-and-picks package headlined by Kenneth Faried, according to several sources familiar with the matter.One problem: To execute that scheme, you actually need to re-sign Horford. The Hawks didnt. There is some debate over precisely how much Atlanta offered, and what Horford demanded, but the difference in the end came down to about $5 million total. That is essentially nothing in the new cap landscape.Blowing up a carefully crafted plan over that amount is either blind stubbornness or an indication that the Hawks are fine with their fallback of pairing Millsap and Howard. The Hawks expect Howard to thrive in a more functional locker room, and figure Dennis Schroder is ready to succeed Teague. They will be good again next season.But Millsap now knows the Hawks tried to move him, and his trade value declines every day.Trading a player like Millsap is painful. He emerged last season as one of the 15 or 20 best players in the league, at worst. But teams are looking ahead at the $110 million mega-cap and are thinking hard about whether age 30-ish players who will demand close to the max are worth it.This is in part the inevitable by-product of the shorter contracts the NBA and union negotiated in the 2011 collective bargaining deal. Those marathon David Lee deals used to carry players through their entire primes and spit them back out into free agency around age 32. Any team signing a player at that age knows they are paying for decline.Under the new CBA, more players are hitting free agency in their late 20s and very early 30s, and sometimes twice in that span. Good for them. They should max out their earnings and exercise as much control over their careers as they can. For teams, the uncertainty is nerve-wracking.Weve already seen the Thunder and Bulls trade two free agents-to-be, Serge Ibaka and Derrick Rose, a year ahead of the $110 million cap. The Knicks expect Rose to bounce back in a contract season, but that expectation is precisely why Chicago traded him. Knowing what they know about Roses knees, the Bulls did not want to trap themselves into paying Rose $100 million-plus after one good rebound season.We might see more teams with impending free agents in this age range consider moving them. Unfortunately for tradeniks, the two most interesting potential candidates are point guards on very good teams who wont deal them: Kyle Lowry and Chris Paul. Both have player options for 2017-18 that they will almost certainly decline to dip into free agency. Paul will be 32 at that point, with knee injuries and a ton of minutes in the rearview. Lowry will be 31. Point guards do not typically age well, though perhaps Lowry playing as backup for the first half of his career bodes well for his longevity.If they play to their normal levels this season, both will seek the max amid another summer of frenzied spending. Paying a 30-plus point guard $35 million per year during a long-term deal is fraught with downside risk. The Grizzlies at least got Mike Conley while hes 28 (hell turn 29 in October) on the Horford-level max under the $94 million cap.The list of guys in this sweet spot is pretty short. Jrue Holiday and Tyreke Evans, both free agents a year from now, are just 26. Teams have concerns about giving them huge money, but age isnt one of them. Danilo Gallinari is interesting. Hell be 29 next summer, with a history of knee issues. The Nuggets extended him once. Do they want to do it again, for even more money?These new money deals look bloated compared to contracts signed under the pre-2015 cap, but those cheapo older contracts in a way subsidize some risk on fat new ones. If you have Markieff Morris and John Wall under contracts that now look absurdly low, you can gamble on overpaying a couple of free agents this summer and next.The league is entering a strange phase where teams will carry two types of contracts: old cap and new cap. Once the old-cap contracts cycle out, all veteran contracts will be more or less equivalent. A contract that looks ugly and risky now will be normal in two years.In the meantime, opportunistic teams will chase guys locked into old-cap contracts. Detroit did that in trading for Tobias Harris. The Timberwolves were aggressive in chasing Khris Middleton at last seasons deadline. Teams should call the Magic about Nikola Vucevic, still with three years left on his old-cap deal, now that Orlando has signed approximately 19 big men. Vucevic is a borderline All-Star making Solomon Hill money.Faried makes a hair less than Vucevic. You can bring Faried off the bench now and not feel as if you are wasting an investment. (Its not 100 percent clear the Hawks would have kept Faried if the Denver trade had gone through).Like Howard, Faried seems almost the opposite of a classic Budenholzer-era pace-and-space Hawk. He cant shoot, and he hasnt cracked 100 assists in any season. But he and Howard are good rebounders, and the Hawks are sick of watching Tristan Thompson shove them away like tackling dummies.The coaching staff longed for a big man who would slice to the rim on pick-and-rolls instead of popping for jumpers. Millsap and Horford would occasionally roll hard, but it was a change-of-pace thing for them. Tiago Splitter, a capable roller, barely played. Unless Teague or Schroder penetrated into the paint, the Hawks were left to fling the ball around the outside.Chasing Howard and Faried marks a bit of an identity crisis for a team that was set in its ways. The Hawks will play differently, on both ends, with Howard. Every team strives for roster continuity, but there is a blurry line between continuity and staleness. The Hawks decided they had crossed it.They had an elegant plan to shake up the present while boosting the future at the same time. To execute it, they needed Horford back. They came up short on the money, and acquired Howard -- about whom Horford had major reservations, per sources close to the situation.They could have signed another big man, kept Horford and dealt Millsap. They could have dealt Millsap, let Horford walk and bottomed out. They could have kept both, re-signed Bazemore, sloughed off bit players and signed another wing.Juggling all of this in real time is hard. Things change fast, in unpredictable ways. But for now, it looks as if the Hawks swapped centers and missed a chance to snag some valuable future assets. If they end up a slightly worse mid-rung playoff team with an outgoing free agent they cant trade, they might regret it. Ed Litzenberger Jersey . It was just business as usual for the Thunder at home. Durant scored 32 points and the Thunder beat the Bulls 107-95 on Thursday night for their eighth straight win. CM Punk Jersey . But now that hes in the NHL, the Calgary Flames centre showed big improvement in that department by scoring the winner in the eighth round of a 5-4 shootout victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Monday. https://www.cheapblackhawks.com/1077b-kenny-wharram-jersey-blackhawks.html . Thousands of Southern California fans enveloped the Trojans to celebrate an improbable win secured by an interim coach, an inconsistent kicker and a thin defence that wouldnt break. Doug Bentley Jersey . In Europe, top teams seem to be largely happy with their squads after spending nearly $1 billion in the off-season. And although English league clubs are unlikely to splash cash in January, Arsenal and Chelsea could be tempted to strengthen their squads with new strikers. Andrew Shaw Jersey . Batiste, who briefly signed with the Eskimos in 2006, has spent time with several NFL teams including the Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins. Counter Logic Gaming added another page to their growing book of accolades last weekend when the team defeated Enigma 6 to take home the title of Summer Season Champions. Paul Snakebite Duarte, captain of what many consider to be the best Halo team in the world, has drunk deeply from the cup of success since the addition of TJ Lethul Campbell to the roster in January of this year. Yet, Snakebites career hasnt always featured headlines and star-studded rosters.Honestly, it really has been a crazy experience, Snakebite said. I think that over the years I have just matured into a much better teammate. My individual skill was always decently high, but it is a team game and I dont believe I fully understood that until 2011.?His first event came at the ripe age of 11, in the Free For All portion of what at the time was the flagship game for Major League Gaming: Halo 2. He placed in the top 64 and did not try his hand at the 4v4 format until the next year at MLG Meadowlands 2007. He failed to make it out of the open bracket and was eliminated in the second round of the FFA tournament. His growth and maturity since then has paid dividends in the form of multiple tournament titles, including a world championship title.If I could go back, I would tell myself to try and enjoy myself more and remember how lucky I really am, Snakebite said. You can get so caught up in winning it becomes easy to forget you are a very lucky individual who gets to do something most people my age would only dream of.Behind the scenes at CLGCounter Logic Gaming sent ripples throughout the Halo community in January when it decided to replace Tom Ogre 2 Ryan, the player whom many consider to be the greatest Halo player of all time, with Lethul. The move was unprecedented and looked potentially regrettable after the squads first tournament together at the X Games in Aspen, where CLG took second place behind Evil Geniuses.CLG bounced back and has been unstoppable since, winning the North American Regionals and the Halo World Championship, maintaining a staggering 13-1 record throughout the HCS Pro League Summer Season and positioning itself as the clear favorite and No. 1 seed heading into the Summer Finals. CLGs tournament had a rocky start as they lost two games against Cloud9 in the first round of the winners bracket, but roared back to win the series and the rest of the tournament without dropping a single map.Honestly, we feel like the key to success for us is consistency, Snakebite said. A lot of these teams are so talented and always have the potential to take over a series, but it is the team that is consistent that will always take over. Our work ethic also plays a huge role into this. It is easy to be consistent when every play we are making just feels routine.CLGs dominance at the Summer Finals was particularly impressive because of its performance on The Rig Strongholds. Known as the squads weakest game type, CLG struggled through The Rig Strongholds throughout the season, and the game type was a point of focus for CLG as it entered the season finale.Leading into the event, Strongholds in general was just not going as well as we wanted. [However,] our team is really good at turning a weak game type into a strong one. Once we realized that we had some things to work on for The Rig Strongholds, it really just came down to us playing almost every night and breaking down that game type specifically when we were done playing.We were giving up Strongholds very easily compared to other teams. Granted, [the difficulty of communicating] online can play a factor into this since we arent all 100 percent on the same page at all times, but it became obvious to us that we kind of forgot what we were good at, which is getting kills and fighting for the objective.The CLG roster has talent in spades, and the coaching role is no different. Halo veteran Wes Clutch Price has coached the team through multiple events now, which made his absence at the Summer Finals particularly evident. Chris Royal 1 Fiorante, brother of Snakebites teammate Matthew Royal 2 Fiorante, fulfilled the duties of coaching while Clutch was away.Clutch actually is in the sheriffs academy and we found out a week before the event that they wouldnt give him the time off he needed, Snakebite said. Luckily Royaal 1 was able to get time off of work on very short notice, and he actually coached us before in [Halo 2 Anniversary] so we knew he had the experience we needed.dddddddddddd This allowed us to go into the event not really second guessing who was going to be coaching us.The secret to successSnakebite expressed confidence in his roster, from the coaching staff to the players around him. His confidence does not come from tournament winnings, consecutive series won or championship trophies. Instead, it comes from what the CLG roster does when its not beneath the lights.This is the hardest-working team I have ever been a part of, Snakebite said. Even with the success we have seen, I can honestly say our attitudes and the work we put in never change. [Compared] with past rosters I have been a part of, I think this is the biggest difference; when [they saw] success it [was] easy to take a step back and relax a bit.That kind of confidence can, and often does, lead to arrogance, apathy and complacency. CLGs stranglehold on the competitive Halo scene is so tight, the community often discusses which lineup of players would be the perfect mix to try to dethrone them. The topic is especially poignant during the offseason, when many rosters dismantle in light of anything short of a first-place finish. All of the attention does not distract the top of Halos food chain.We do our best to use it as motivation, Snakebite said. At this point, with our team after a win, we have about 24 hours to relax before we are predicted to fall off again to a new roster being formed. We just try to remind ourselves how hard we work and remain confident when playing against all of these new lineups.?How would a Halo team go about becoming the new top dog? Snakebite suggested that the key might not entirely be about a teams individual ingredients, but more about the connections between them and the work they put in together: I think chemistry and being on the same page is underrated.People talk about the talent we have, but no one talks about how well we get along outside of game as well as inside of game, how well we communicate and just the work ethic we have to make a bad game type a strong game type. If you can form a super team and have all of those traitsb by all means go for it, but you will not win with just trying to outskill a team.Looking to the past and futureSnakebite has witnessed firsthand the rollercoaster saga of the Halo franchise throughout the years. From the glory days of Halo 2 and Halo 3, to the steady decline of Halo: Reach, through the muck and mire of Halo 4, the rebirth of Halo with Halo 2: Anniversary and, now, the rapid ascent back to prominence with Halo 5: Guardians. Snakebite understands what can make Halo esports thrive and what can stifle growth. When asked what his thoughts were on how to bring Halo back under the lights of the esports stage, he placed the onus not only on tournament organizers and developers, but on his peers as well.Continued developer support which has been awesome, be more open with the public about details of the events and prize pools, he said. More open LAN events, and I think pros need to make more of an effort to push out content.Snakebite and CLG understand the legacy the team is building and how it has the potential to shape the future of Halo esports for generations to come. The present roster has been compared to arguably the most dominant roster in the history of Halo esports: Halo 2s iteration of Final Boss. When this comparison was mentioned, Snakebite responded as humbly as would be expected, but left the door open for discussion further down the road.Although it is cool to read into the comparisons, I am not sure if anyone will ever reach that level of dominance, especially with how few events it seems we will be able to attend since majority of things are done online now, he said. The only thing we can really do is continue to put in the work and maybe see where we compare when it is all over.Whether Snakebites goal is to sit among the greats of Halo esports is irrelevant. His -- and CLGs -- growing resume thus far not only asks for a seat at the table, it demands one. ' ' '