Hawks director of basketball operations and interim general manager Billy Knight said Thursday that he has shown that he could pull the trigger on a move this offseason. That he wasn't handcuffed by a pending sale. That it was the dreaded luxury tax that kept him from signing free agents --- not prospective owner David McDavid.

Knight spent his first day after making his first major deal for the Hawks talking about all of the above, relishing the fact that he brought the team $2.42 million below the salary cap --- and way out of luxury tax territory. But he also scoffed at the notion that, by dealing leading scorer Glenn Robinson for Terrell Brandon's $11.1 million contract in a four-team trade Wednesday, he sent the Hawks into another rebuilding phase.

"I laugh at the notion that it means we're scrapping the season or starting over," Knight said. "Everyone who didn't win [a championship] is in a rebuilding phase. But we're not in a wholesale fire sale, where we're getting rid of all of our players. But we made a trade and we'll make another trade or two. Three. I don't know. We'll make a move if it makes sense to us."

"It's funny," he said. "People want to look at teams at the middle of the summer and say, 'This is our team.' But if you look around the league, everybody is not ready. No team is set."

Knight said he doubts Brandon will even be around Atlanta much next season, and several media outlets have reported that the guard's bad knees will force him to retire. But with Brandon's money coming off the cap in February, the Hawks have much more leverage than they did with Robinson's $10.37 million contract on the books. "[Brandon's] contract was a hot commodity around the league," Knight said. "That's why it took a 20-point scorer to do it."

The question remains, though: How do the Hawks replace 20 points per game?