Where do we go now/a ya ya ya ya ya ya

Maybe humming a little G'n'R would make me feel better. In case you haven't heard, one Mass Hole has backed another. It's sadly ironic that an ownership group replete with lawyers allowed one figure to have veto power over everything the Hawks do. (Alternatively, they did draft the agreement properly and either their lawyers were much worse than Belkin's or the judge was inclined to side with the local boy.)

Anyway, Joe Johnson is now totally in limbo. The Hawks could try to negotiate with Phoenix to strike a deal that Belkin would find acceptable, but the Suns are unlikely to bail the Hawks out of this mess and if the co-owners and Knight's view of Belkin are correct, he doesn't want the deal to go forward anyway because he doesn't want payroll to go too high. The Hawks could also call Phoenix's bluff and simply sign Johnson to an offer sheet, but all they'd be doing there is sending him back to Phoenix.

Long-term, Belkin has to go. The Hawks will never be able to sign a free agent with him still in place, which will depress the rest of the team and the fan base. (Can you imagine what the Hawks players think right now?) More significantly, as Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Mark Bradley made an excellent point this morning: Belkin's interference with his GM is exactly what Ted Turner used to do. The example of the one successful pro sports team in this town is that ownership should put the right guy in charge of the team and then let him do his thing, rather than meddling and pretending to have expertise in the field. Belkin clearly has not learned this lesson. He always wanted to be an owner, but it turns out that he has unquenchable desires to be a GM as well.