“So glad my Dad’s buddy’s favorite player wasn’t Etan Thomas!”
First things first. As Chris Hardwick says near the end of every @midnight show, “Wipe Wipe Wipe Wipe Wipe…”
What you’ve accomplished, or didn’t, since Halloween doesn’t matter. Who you defeated, or didn’t, or couldn’t, doesn’t mean a thing. Nor does whatever it is you achieved last year.
You’re the Atlanta Hawks. All that matters is, you worked to earn first-round homecourt in the NBA Playoffs, and now you’ve got it. Game 1 is here. Your Hawkamaniacs are right here in The Highlight Factory, rocking the Volt Green and ready to shout their lungs out. And you’ve got the Boston Celtics (7:00, Fox Sports Southeast, 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports Go app, ESPN if thou must) in your house. Whatcha gonna do, brudders?
Now, if I may, full disclosure.
As a result of countless movie-night duties from my drunken fratboy era, I devolved into becoming quite the kickfighting flick aficionado. I’m not even talking about quality Shaw Brothers stuff, with the white-bearded kung fu masters and dudes yapping in hilariously delayed overdubs while flipping around in yellow jumpsuits. I’m talking Psycho Burmese Ninja Kickboxer 12 here. I’m told there’s therapy for this sort of thing.
This is all Ralph Macchio’s fault, you see. It all started innocently enough, mimicking the Rocky formula to wax-on wax-off success as The Karate Kid. But then, Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, messed around and franchised it. Soon, along came the Muscles from Brussels, knocking ‘em out the box while doing splits everywhere. Suddenly, everyone who can scratch their ear with their pinky toe fashioned themselves as America’s Next Action Film Star.
After three, or three hundred, of these films, you grow inured to the copy-paste formula of this fluff. Take some Euro-American black-belt in reality who’s not wild about the prospect of one day waking up as a 50-year-old point fighter, and dress him up as some jamoke who’s down on his luck.
Have him run into a past-his-prime Mister Miyagi guy who’s got no more protégés since his dojo’s been trashed by some bad gang, the same head-busters who’ve been bullying the sad sap hero around the neighborhood. Enter the dimepiece, a Pearl Pureheart who empathizes with the hero’s plight but manages to get abducted by the baddies. To save the damsel-in-distress and win her heart, the hero and his meek yet vengeful master team up, the hero willingly enduring one arduous exercise after the next to “toughen up” while taking random Fortune Cookie advice to heart.
The underdog hero gets the job done, eventually, but not until he backflips his way through the adversity of dozens of competitors interlocked in some sort of super-double-secret, inter-disciplinary, multi-national brawl. A tournament, held in an underground lair that somehow pays its electric and sewer bills but nobody sane knows about, owned by a megalomaniac with hundreds of bloodthirsty fans as his gambling buddies. Conceptually, this was what passed for MMA in the days before MMA.
From one flick to the next, in the middle of the movies, you begin to notice the very same guys getting their heads beat in. These are happily paid stuntfighters, experts at turning an absorbed kick into a triple salchow before going splat on the mat. Their sole raison d’être is to make The Big Hero, and The Big Villain, look unstoppably good. And their characters are hopelessly done in by predictable fatal flaws. Who told the Scottish dude to show up in a kilt? Sumo-dude, TKD-kicker-dude, seriously, diversify your skillsets, please!
There’s often the friendly drunken sidekick who thinks he’s just as good without working half as hard, whose snapped neck becomes just one more thing the hero has to get vengeance for. There’s usually the street-toughened ex-ex-ex-con, who never seems to figure out winding up punches from behind his head has disastrous consequences. There’s always the capoeira master who flips all around the cage but, sadly, thinks leaping into the spine-crushing arms of his behemoth foe is a splendid idea.
The stuntfighters are all incredibly talented, hard-workers at their crafts, unquestionably athletic, occasionally entertaining, and ultimately grist for the mill. They’re fast-forwardable opponents serving as filler for the middle of any random 90-minute flick, mere agents for the attempt to keep viewers tuned in for the real showdown that awaits them before the credits roll. There’s no need to care about the stuntfighters' story arcs, because they won’t be upright much longer. I identify our latter-day Hawks with these guys.
We’re heading into our ninth consecutive year of watching the Hawks enter the NBA’s Kumite, and, yes, “Two Teams Enter, That Other Team Leaves” is the likely eventual result. But, at least for once, I’d enjoy it if these Hawks were unafraid to diverge from the script a little. Atlanta has faced 13 opponents over eight seasons, each one taking at least two games from the Hawks during their 7-game series. The core of the team has done this postseason thingie for a few years together now, suffering through plenty of beatdowns, and putting up with a lot of junk along the way. I’d like to see Atlanta discover its Johnny Badass gene.
I’ve got no expectations of being the Big Hero everybody pulls for. But the best butt-whooping flicks always has that moment where it’s looking like things might not shake out for the scripted hero, who’s forced to do something... well, heroic… to save the day. That’s because of a Big Villain that earned his world-beater status. It sure would be fun to see our Hawks become Bolo Yeung, or Sho’Nuff, or Goro, or the dude who fights in a kimono that breaks out the bear claw where his hand used to be. No, they won’t be The Last Dragon standing. But by now, why can’t our Hawks be Cobra Kai? Sweep The Freaking Leg, Jeffy!
Swagger, without the necessary skills, leaves you like the 2008 Hawks, going bravely and literally head-to-head with opponents, even when everyone sees you are not on their level. Skills, without accompanying swag, leave you like the 2009 and 2010 Hawks, or like last year’s edition, a mightily-crafted sandcastle just waiting to be kicked into nothingness by some basketball bullies. It’s merely a matter of pulling the two components together.
These Hawks clearly have the skills. They’ve bringing probably the second-best defense in franchise history (oh, those ill-fated 1999 Hawks) to the table, plus an offense that, while off-kilter from time to time, has but one NBA Champion peer when it comes to sharing the basketball and creating assist-worthy shots.
In fits and starts, the swagger is coming along as well. Few young players have the brazen, unshakeable confidence of Atlanta’s top sixth man, arguably one of the best bench threats the NBA East has to offer. Mix his fastball in with the sliders and knuckleballs expertly lobbed by battle-tested vets Jeff Teague, Al Horford, Kyle Korver, and Paul Millsap, and you’ve got a rotation that could even help the Bravos win a series or two. The point guard Dennis understudies, Teague is quick to remind everybody who is too small or too slow to stop him for getting to the hoop.
The most effective Villains don’t allow middling, inferior opponents any oxygen, no daylight to shine. That has long been Atlanta’s issue no matter where they’ve been seeded. From Delonte West and Rashard Lewis, to Brandon Jennings and John Salmons, to Jarrett Jack and Alan Anderson, Bradley Beal and Otto Porter, Tristan Thompson and Matthew Dellavannoya, they all used the Hawks in their quest to emerge as America’s Next Big Clutch Playoff Performer.
Their presence in Hawks series have that uncanny way of making you want to add the warning, “THESE OPPONENTS ARE CRAPPIER THAN THEY APPEAR”, at the bottom of your screens. Players who either are looking for a fat new contract, or justifying one they recently got, have long used the Playoff Hawks as the palette for their Rembrandts. The Celtics are loaded with these kinds of guys.
NBA All-Homonym First-Teamer Isaiah Thomas (career-high 22.2 PPG) is poised for a big household-name breakout. The Little Engine that Could became a Bullet Train in just his fifth NBA season. The 2011 second-rounder reestablished himself as a starting-quality guard in November, and has rewarded the Celtics with All-Star virtuoso performances ever since.
His starting backcourt mate, Avery Bradley (career-best 15.2 PPG, 1.5 SPG), is hoping to cement his place as the league’s preeminent perimeter defender. So is Bradley’s teammate, Marcus Smart. Until the rest of his game picks up (25.3 3FG%, passing Toine 2000 and Smoove 2014 for worst 3FG% with at least 200 attempts), Smart will settle for making a name for himself as the league’s youngest team enforcer and crap-stirrer.
Center Jared Sullinger (career-high 8.3 RPG, 0.9 SPG) seeks to shed not just a pound or two, but his sullied reputation as a player whose conditioning issues might weigh him down from ever achieving NBA greatness. Considering some Boston-area sportsmen, he’s thrilled that NBA uniforms don’t come equipped with belts. Kelly Olynyk wants to be known as anything other than the Poor Man’s Fabio that kimura’d Kevin Love right out of the 2015 playoffs.
Tyler Zeller hopes to join Sullinger in restricted free agency, and stout playoff performances off the bench may lead to some nice summertime offers. It’s a similar deal for Evan Turner, who continues trying to show his 2014 comments about his former teammate Korver’s defensive skills weren’t hypocritical.
No one is questioning Amir Johnson’s two-year, $24 million deal, and he wants to keep it that way (68.2 FG%, 8.2 RPG since March 15) after a strong end-of-season push. Villa Rican forward Jae Crowder (career-best 14.2 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 1.7 SPG) got his five-year, $35 million contract last summer, too, and wants to foster the indispensable glue-guy love DeMarre Carroll created last year during the Hawks’ campaign.
All of these aspirations have been well-managed by their young mad-scientist head coach Brad Stevens, who The Vertical just yesterday touted, “might be the NBA’s next great coach.” Stevens joins reigning Coach of the Year (for another couple days) Mike Budenholzer in setting up players for career-years without an overreliance on individual players dominating the ball.
There are so many hopes for a rise to prominence, a return to glory, up in Beantown. And yet, Stevens’ crew is still looking for their first playoff game victory today. That’s because they ran right into The Big Villain in 2015, LeBron’s Cavs outpacing the Celtics 4-0 in the opening-round series, despite losing Love, before going on to steamroll the Hawks along the path to The Finals.
The Hawks have the tools to close the door on Boston’s aspirations, and to keep the door sealed shut. They can do many of the things the Celtics do very well (perimeter defense, transition scoring, passing offense, efficient point guard play, floor-stretching frontcourt play) and can often do it better. Integral to the Hawks getting their Tong Po on in this series is the team’s leading scorer, rebounder, shot-blocker, and ball-stealer.
This will be the third-straight postseason in Atlanta for do-it-all Paul Millsap, and it is past time to see Playoff Paul (40.4 FG% last 2 playoff years; 15.2 PPG and 8.7 RPG in 2015) at least resembling Regular Season Paul (51.2 2FG%, 17.1 PPG, career-high 9.0 RPG), a three-time All-Star. Millsap and Al Horford need to dominate their matchups in the post and around the perimeter, relying on help rebounding from the wing players to capitalize upon their unique help-defender skills.
The more effective Millsap, Horford and ex-Celtic Kris Humphries are on the interior, and the more efficient Korver, Tim Hardaway, Jr. (game-time decision, participated in shootaround today despite his strained groin) and Kent Bazemore are with perimeter jumpers, the less confident Thomas and Smart will be containing Teague and Schröder in space.
The pace that both coaches preach will make games in this series wild-and-wooly for long stretches, as was often the case during the regular season. The Celtics’ regular season ended well, but only after a 62-36 first-half deficit versus Miami, a decisive 39-13 second-quarter hole at home against Charlotte, and a 51-36 second half deficit in this same building that muted a 71-point first-half effort by the C’s. Boston goes on big runs, but they give up as many as they get.
Point guard stewardship can make the difference for Atlanta, who must build more sustainable runs to keep Boston out of reach at the ends of games. Schröder, in particular, must cut down on turnovers and hurried shots while disallowing Smart from getting under his skin.
Armed with a healthy Thabo Sefolosha, Atlanta must stem Boston’s desire for runouts off turnovers and bailout shots by Thomas. Long-rebound chances will abound from a Celtics team that shot the third-worst percentage on three-pointers (33.5 3FG%, 28th in NBA), so limiting Johnson, Smart and Sullinger from producing second-chances will go a long way toward cutting off the air for the Celtics (25.1 O-Reb%, 2nd-highest in East).
Booted in the past two postseasons by the #1 seed, the Hawks have sufficient know-how to understand what they need to do to win playoff games, along with knowing what not to do, as well as just about anyone in the Eastern Conference field, certainly enough to leave these less-experienced Celtics green with envy.
The NBA world is ready to fast-forward straight through these NBA Playoffs in anticipation of Golden State versus Cleveland at the end. The Big Hero, against The Big Villain: a tale as old as time. Watching their ninth sequel, rather than enduring another bloody ending, it would be a lot of fun for Atlanta fans if their Hawks can figure out a way to flip the script.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
