The End of an Era: Mario West Cut By the Hawks

Sekou Smith tweets: Mario West and Courtney Sims are gone. Cut this morning. Othello Hunter and Garrett Siler are the only two free agents left in Hawks camp.I've had some fun at the Hawks' expense for carrying West on the roster for the last two seasons and I stand by the underlying premise of that fun--that any NBA team that uses a roster spot on him isn't serious about the end of its bench. I hope that belief doesn't obscure how unlikely an achievement it was for West to spend two full seasons with the Hawks after playing less than half of Georgia Tech's minutes in either his junior or senior seasons.West wasn't a big man. He wasn't project. He was a guard with no offensive skills who stuck around purely on the basis of effort, effort that held little utility but was generally admirable. Good luck to him in whatever comes next in his life.