A blast from the past: Josh Childress and his NBA future
The Hawks are fighting for playoff position. The Lakers play at Philips Arena tomorrow night. And today we concern ourselves with … the Euroleague?
Why, yes. It might have escaped your notice that Olympiacos — sometimes spelled “Olympiakos” — of Greece has reached the quarterfinals of the European basketball playoffs and is leading Asseco Prokom of Poland 2-0 in its best-of-five series. (Game 3 is tonight in Gdynia, Poland.) This is noteworthy because Josh Childress, once a Hawk, has scored 13 and 11 points for Olympiacos in Games 1 and 2.
Even if you don’t follow basketball outside the U.S., you know Childress. He was the sixth player drafted in June 2004 — Josh Smith was the 17th — and he serve the Hawks well for four seasons. Then, rather than re-sign here or jump to another NBA team as a free agent, he left the country. He signed with Olympiacos for $20 million over three seasons — this is the second — but has the option of terminating his contract after each season should he choose to return to the NBA.
As noted by Jeff Zillgitt and J. Michael Falgoust in USA Today, Childress is again considering his options. “I’d be leaning toward finishing my contract [with Olympiacos],” he said. Should he decide otherwise, he’d still have to go through the Hawks.
From Zillgitt and Falgoust: “Childress can opt out of his contract with Olympiacos after this season but would be a restricted free agent with Atlanta. Or he can sign a qualifying offer from the Hawks for one year and become a free agent in 2011 or sign a longer deal with the Hawks if they offer one. Childress also can sign an offer sheet with another team, but Atlanta can match it.”
In sum, Childress’ status with the Hawks hasn’t changed since July 2008. The Hawks didn’t make a big run at him last summer — they were in the process of re-upping Mike Bibby, Marvin Williams and Zaza Pachulia — and have a more pressing issue ahead. Joe Johnson, as you might have read, is due to become a free agent on July 1, 2010, and the course of the franchise could well turn on what he does.
If Johnson leaves, a one-year qualifying offer to Childress might become a fairly cheap stopgap option. (I don’t know that Rick Sund would offer more than that because Sund, who didn’t draft Childress, has never seemed as high on him as was Billy Knight, who did.)
Understand: Childress is not Joe Johnson. Childress was a good NBA sixth man who seems to have settled at Olympiacos. As Nick Gibson writes for Slam Online: “After a rookie year of ups and downs, Childress has bumped his EL scoring from 8.8 to 14.7 on 63 percent shooting and just might earn a spot on the All-Euroleague team.” But he’s not the Olympiacos star: That would be Linas Kleiza, the Lithuanian who left the Denver Nuggets last summer to become a Grecian earner.
File Childress’ name away. He might again be a non-story, Hawks-wise, this summer. But if Johnson departs, J-Chill might become a local factor.
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72 comments Add your comment
Onyx
March 30th, 2010
2:09 pm
@ Bryan G.: He is probably dunking in the wrong goal…
ATL STEVE
March 30th, 2010
2:25 pm
Hey Nick…have you ever seen Josh’s ears? He’s got to cover those things up in order to keep him on the planet!
Mystikal
March 30th, 2010
2:39 pm
I think this was a good article. If worse comes to worse and JJ bolts, we could offer chillz a few mil more than we offered before(similar to Marv contract) and resign Crawford for 2 or 3 yrs. Doing that we could save a lot of money we would’ve overpayed for JJ(And leaving money to resign Big Al). I love JJ, but he’s in the tier below Lebron and Dwade. He’s arguably our best player, but fades in the post season too often. Plus despite being one of the bigger 2 guards in the league, he never posts up smaller guards(ala Dwade/Kobe). Around 15$ or 16$ million/yr is more than fair for what he does.
Also be interesting if we could go back to playing Chillz @ Point forward and not have Bibby as a defensive liability. What’d ya think?
heartofdarkness
March 30th, 2010
3:54 pm
Childress moves well without the ball, rebounds off the offensive board and can defense against a small forward or guard. He doesn’t shoot the 3 well (or he didn’t) and didn’t have a mid range game. Marvin can shoot the 3, which can extend the opponent’s defense, but if the Hawks are able to get to the basket anyway, Marvin is frozen out of the offense. Marvin defends the small forward and in an emergency, the power forward. My impression is there would be little difference in how the Hawks played offense with one or the other of these players [each would be a 5th option]. Maybe you would get a couple more possessions a week from offensive rebounds, but Crawford would get either one in the first period.
If JJ leaves, the Hawks lose one of their two triple threat players. In an isolation heavy offense, that is more significant than in one constantly moving the ball to the open man.
Gman
March 30th, 2010
4:16 pm
Sir, I have seen Josh Childress and he is no where close to Joe Johnson. Let him stay overseas.
Ace
March 30th, 2010
6:06 pm
i have a feeling joe will leave anyway so i say we send him for devin harris and brook lopez this will make us better in everyway. devin harris at point crawford at the 2 josh smith can move back down to the 3 and al can go back to his natural position of 4 andbrook lopez at the 5 moving al to power forward will make r team much better and having a future allstar center in lopez will 2
aDrummer
March 30th, 2010
7:35 pm
I think Joe will leave if Mike Woodson is re-signed but if we get a better coach I think he may stay.
BrittishAnger
March 30th, 2010
7:56 pm
Said before, and I’ll say it again…he’s not coming back anytime soon; even said he’s leaning towards staying with Olympiakos (classic UEFA spelling), plus the bills are covered, so why get caught up with a team that won’t start you and won’t pay you what you “think” you’re worth? We gotta trade away his rights some how, or get some cap relief and just rework the contract and make him unrestricted. It would give us better leverage in either resigning JJ, if not finding his replacement and improving our team at a ballin’ on a budget level.
ddoogg33
March 30th, 2010
8:19 pm
i was just on the baseball blog and i heard they wanted more blacks in baseball i thought it was play the best not the color what if we had to have 50-50 black white in basketball would that dimenish the game or is it because they have more players in baseball u just wont something for free i am a die hard hawks fan i dont think we need more whites why should the braves need more blacks that is just more towns for them to get in trouble
dub366
March 30th, 2010
10:58 pm
what has Joe Johnson done for the last 4 games. Let him go be a better team, more ball movement
Quick
March 30th, 2010
11:25 pm
J Chills was a decent Hawk. At least as good as Marvin. Woody just didn’t like him. I guess J Smoove got some pics of Woody’s old lady or somethin. Otherwise he’d be gone too. But at least we gonna have a 50 win season. I wouldn’t mind seein Chills back. That second blog was funny too. Posterizin his teammate. I love it!!! And what the hell is ddogg33 talkin bout?!
Paul Hewitt's Agent
March 31st, 2010
12:26 am
has anyone mentioned my client as a possible coach next year if Woody leaves?
Josh
March 31st, 2010
12:29 am
Pleaaase! J Chill can stay in Kazakhastan.
Josephdakoolest
March 31st, 2010
12:42 am
First things first we need Joe Josh and Jamal we would not be in the position we are n today without any any one of them now it would be nice to see what chill can do in the starting lineup however marvin does play defense on the other teams best player so you have to wonder if childress would be able to defend as well as marvin but marvin will step it up in the playoffs mo evans is playing well right now but I think chill will help the second unit out a little bit more because he can defend handle the ball rebound and hit open shots maybe we should have saved some of that money we gave marvin and given chill a little bit more think about him and jamal playing together off the bench deadly combo coming the bench and ddogg33 doesnt even know what he is talking about and as far as the Lakers being in town thats just another w for the hawks another big game from joe johnson 2morrow and get ready to go to see lebron and company Friday GO HAWKS THE A TOWN IS BEHID YOU
Big Ray
March 31st, 2010
1:26 am
I miss Childress. He brought something to the team that no one else does.
As for replacing Joe, you can’t really do that. But if you move somebody into his starting SG spot, that job is already taken by a certain Jamal Crawford. Move Evans to backup SG, then if Childress wishes to return to the team, let him and Marvin duke it out of the starting SF spot. Hint: Either Chills takes it all the way, or this motivates Marv to be better than he ever has before.
Michael
March 31st, 2010
10:36 am
If Childress stays all 3 years in Greece he does not have to pay any US taxes on his income earned in Greece. Olympiacos already pays his agent fees and his Greek taxes. The way US tax law works if he needs a certain amount of time overseas for his income there to be tax exempt. If he stays next year in Greece he will just qualify for that.
There is no way that Childress will come back to the NBA next year when he will lose many millions of dollars if he does. BTW, Childress is not shooting 63% from the field. Slam Magazine is full of hacks. He is shooting 53% from the field.
Delbert D.
April 1st, 2010
11:35 am
Mediocre in the EL, really bad hair, and IRS issues. He needs to stay in Greece.
Lance
April 4th, 2010
12:28 pm
FIRE WOODY
Am I the Evil ?
April 20th, 2010
1:02 am
OLYMPIACOS— Sofo, Bourousis, Kleiza, Chilldress, Teodosic:: The Euroleague Winners for 2010…How many trophies ATLANTA Hawks gets after 80’s? How manyyy?
ha ha ha
I aaam
April 20th, 2010
1:14 am
Marvin and Garnett: ”Grecian earners” to(o) be continued… Soon
Rob
June 4th, 2010
10:07 am
Childress was actually a good player for the Hawks who fit their 6th man role. He was an off-the-ball kind of guy, where most of his value came from forced turnovers, offensive rebounds, and quick cuts to the hoop for easy baskets, as well as starting or finishing fastbreaks.
He went to Europe because he deserved more money in a year where there was no free agent money to be had (summer of ‘08).
He’s not a “stats” guy, he’s much more of a “glue” guy. Childress helped make everything work for the Hawks when he was on the court.
Josh Childress leaves Olympiacos for the Suns. And now I’m sad.
July 12th, 2010
1:04 am
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