Times are tough for fans of NBA lottery teams.

The league is in the throws of a renaissance of sorts with a terrific playoff run that your team is not involved in.

Unless you are the Rockets, the draft holds little excitement, save the daily reports of the latest ?can?t miss? draftee that dogs it through your team?s workouts because he wants to play in a better market.

Making it worse is that the national media doesn?t know your team at all; making it difficult to get a decent read on trades, drafts, etc.

In Atlanta, it is worse because the Hawks don?t have a draft pick to discuss, and even the local media misses the bus on the franchise and its players.

Exhibit A of the ignorance regarding the Hawks roster is the role of Jason Terry.

The Atlanta Hawks officially lost their pick to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the sign and trade deal for Lorenzen Wright on draft night, but as Jeffrey Denberg reports do not rule them out of the first round just yet.

Atlanta will learn by June 10 if they get the 23rd pick in the NBA draft, Hawks GM Pete Babcock said yesterday.  The pick belongs to Detroit, which owes Houston a pick. If Detroit deals it, Houston owes Atlanta a first-rounder from last year's trade for the draft rights to Maryland's Terence Morris. The Rockets must give the Hawks a pick by the 2004 draft.

He?s back!  Jeffrey Denberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Pete Babcock is so tired of the NBA lottery that he will not be attending this year, opening the door for Hawks All-Time great Dominique Wilkins to attend.

The lottery is all-important for the Hawks, if the team lands one of the top three picks they get to keep their selection, otherwise it is relayed to the Los Angeles Clippers as part of the Lorenzen Wright trade in the 1999 sign-and-trade deal.

The Hawks finished the season with the eighth worst record.  Last year they finished with the sixth worst record but landed the third overall pick, trading it in the package for Shareef Abdur Rahim.

Unless they move from their current position of eighth into the top four, the Hawks won't even have a selection in the first round, satisfying a debt to the Los Angeles Clippers.

Should the Hawks get lucky today and land a top-four pick, Babcock sees a repeat of last summer's maneuvering, when they dealt the No. 3 pick, Lorenzen Wright and Brevin Knight to Memphis for Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

The No. 3 pick became Rookie of the Year Pau Gasol, but Abdur-Rahim became the most valuable Hawk, the team leader in scoring, rebounding and in the community.

"We would do something like that again if the situation were right," Babcock said.

On Valentine's Day a dozen years ago, Stan Kasten hired Pete Babcock, a hotshot young general manager from the Denver Nuggets, to run the Hawks' basketball operations and acquire the talent to bring an NBA championship to Atlanta. All this time later, the trophy case remains empty, and many, in retrospect, would have preferred flowers and candy instead.

Curtis Bunn looks at the career of the embattled Hawks GM, including terrific insight from Stan Kasten and Bunn's breakdown of Hawks draft history (but mysteriously not the trade history)...

In a press release Wednesday afternoon, Pete Babcock announced that the Atlanta Hawks have hired former Memphis Grizzlies GM Billy Knight as the new Director of Basketball Operations.

In a related front office/coaching move, Babcock also announced that Dominique Wilkins will assist the coaching staff with player development throughout the summer and help Knight with the basketball operations as well.

If you could buy a Coke for a dollar or a Pepsi for five dollars, which would you purchase?

If you were paying 60 dollars a month for internet access, then found a similar plan for 40 a month, would you still pay the 60?

Understanding that basic concept is the same as understanding the theory of replacement value talent in pro sports.

It sounds obvious, but when you look at the payrolls and rosters for the majority of franchises, you see there are still many lessons to be learned.

And some teams, like the Knicks, are about to learn the very hard way.

Jeff Denberg of the AJC takes a quick look at the names of the top players in this year's draft as the NBA Lotto approaches next Saturday.

Also, Denberg looks at:

---Who the Bulls are looking at should they get the top pick and whom they are consulting with for their offseason moves.

---The reputation of Pat Riley's relationships/playing time philosophy with his younger players.

---What two players may be moving over the offseason?

It's good to have Jeff Denberg of the AJC back to work, and he writes about General Manager Pete Babcock's willingness to step aside as a part of the process of trying to land Memphis President Jerry West.

Mark Bradley of the AJC writes that once upon a time, the Hawks were ahead of their time. From 1986 through 1988, they spent nine draft picks on non-Americans. Only one -- Alexander Volkov, known as Sasha -- played for the Hawks. The Hawks were ripped in many sectors, this one included, for straying so far afield. But are we critics laughing now?

The most intriguing playoff series matches Dirk Nowitzki, a German, against Vlade Divac of Serbia, Peja Stojakovic of Yugoslavia and Hedo Turkoglu of Turkey. The rookie of the year is Pau Gasol of Spain. The first player taken in the June draft could be Yao Ming of China. It's still billed as the National Basketball Association, but the league has gone global. The Hawks were ahead of the curve.