cam1218

Who cares. They gave up too much which ruins everything around them.

Albeit I don't really post much, but I've been on this site for 4 years and in your two days of posting and you have about 30 more posts than I do. I see you don't like this trade but give it time, I think it will grow on you.

It's not obvious whether this is a good or bad trade, but after thinking a lot about it I like it. A few points...

1- Bibby was one of my favorite players because he hit clutch shots, but this year he has only been hitting threes and not really doing much (or anything) else. His defense has been horrible and we will obviously get better there with Joe not guarding teams pg's. Lets not forget that Hinrich has been playing behind Wall and Arenas (for some part) of this season. So he hasn't really been a true PG but he makes shots, like Bibby, and plays A LOT more D than Bibby. It's an obvious upgrade to me.

2- We lose Mo Evans. I don't know if the headband was a lame attempt to make him feel cool and in turn start hitting shots, but I couldn't stand watching this guy play. Mo is now gone which is a positive for me.

3- JC55. I actually liked Crawford and this is the one piece I'm a little upset about. On draft night I was hoping we would take him and became rather pissed when we didn't, followed by being elated after we traded for him. He is the first guard that we have drafted in awhile that could make shots and I thought that was a really good thing. Nothing about losing him seems like an upgrade to me.

4-Let's just pretend the first is for Armstrong? Who cares? Do we even know if we would have kept the pick if we had it?

There are some negatives in this deal but the positives do outweigh them. I think getting Hinrich will help this team immensely and hopefully Armstrong provides some quality minutes for us. Armstrong and Crawford are definitely the wild cards in this deal.

Count me in the crowd that is going to miss Bibby. He had his problems, more so as he aged, but I always felt that he tried really hard. Problem was the results just were not there.

Refresh button here I come...

Will I be angry if the Hawks don't make a trade? Of course I will be, but to think I will stop watching the Hawks and root for another team? Definitely not. I'm with you AHawks89; good riddance to those who choose not to follow Hawks basketball any longer.

Cam. We're living in a time where true Journalism has been replaced by the bloggersphere. Nobody cares about accuracy anymore. They only want to see people torn down and speculations tossed around.

It's sad but very true, which is why message boards are so popular. As I was taught though, a good journalist and their story is only as good as their interviews and sources are.

FWIW, I recall during broadcasts that 'Nique absolutely loves Hinrich and his game. I don't know how much pull he has in the front office with his position but I'm sure his opinion does carry some weight.

I sometimes wonder if people know what bleacher report actually is. Not saying that the articles aren't good but anybody on here could write an article on there. The quotes are just things you find other people say in other articles, not from an actual interview with somebody.

Considering almost every trade proposal I see on here includes one of our first round picks from the last two years, I'm guessing they really don't mean much to most of us.

Does anybody remember the owners emails? I remember I sent Gearon and Levinson some emails during the Josh Smith free agency offseason about my displeasure on how they were handling things. Of course I'm nobody to them but it did feel good to let them know how I felt. If we are, the fans, aren't happy about the way they are handling things we should try and let them know.

LeBron has always mentioned the Hawks as one of the tougher teams in the East when he was with the Cavs. Usually it is about coming to Philips Arena to play though. Either way, it's good that at least the reigning MVP shows us a little bit of respect.

Chicago has definitely improved this year. I really get tired of hearing Barkley say "there are 4 legitimate teams in the east" repeatedly on Inside the NBA. When I first heard I thought he was talking about the Celtics, Heat, Magic, and the Hawks. He actually leaves the Hawks out and puts the Bulls in. The Bulls really haven't proved anything yet but they get so much praise.

One thing to remember when evaluating them is the fact they play in a horrible division. The second place team, Indiana, is currently the #9 seed in the East. Chicago's record in their division is 11-0, making them 23-14 outside of their division. If the season ended today we would have 4 teams in our division make the playoffs. Yes I know the Bobcats don't really deserve it, but it is what it is. Teams coming from the SE are going to have a much tougher schedule than the Bulls will.

...Free Throws!

Josh has been quietly and smoovely sinking his shots from the charity stripe this year, and he seems to be better than ever at doing so.

In January, he closed out the month with eleven straight free throws made, resulting in a 51-for-63 (81.0%) performance.

The prior month, he went 47-for-70 (67.1%), and 48-for-66 (72.7%) prior to that.

Any of those figures are a long way from the nadir he reached in 2008-09 (58.8%). His present season-long rate (73.4%) would be a career high, surpassing his sophomore season (2005-06) clip of 71.9%.

Is it safe to assume Josh no longer wears the albatross of Shaqish free throw shooting, a deficiency once seen by many fans (yours truly included) to be another "lost cause" for him?

Have his mechanics clearly improved, and is that more attributable to feedback from ex-staffer Mark Price, or the Hoops Whisperer, or someone else?

And if Josh is indeed getting his groove back, should it change the team's offensive strategies at all? His free throw attempt rate is nearly as low as it was back in 2005-06.

~lw3

Free throws? Josh isn't going to break Jamal or Reggie Millers record of free throws after a made three point shot. He isn't going to break it shooting jumpers either. I'm glad he is shooting those frees like he did a couple of years ago but he isn't really getting to the line on a consistent basis.

Maybe this is a silly question but is there any difference in the two.?Aren't you basically buying tickets for Resale at Stubhub just like HawksTicket Exchange? Are the prices better at one than the other?

I've only looked on the HawksTicket Exchange a couple times and the prices seemed pretty high (sometimes higher than using the regular box office). However, I do use Stubhub a lot. You can really find some great deals on there, upper level seats are as low as .99 cents for many of the weekday and some weekend games. The key is looking for what type of delivery method you want. If you get the instant download it's usually 5.95ish added on to your whole order. If you get the last minute pick up it's about 15 dollars added to your whole order and you pick them up at this random building lol. If you are picking between the two I'd say go with Stubhub. I've probably used it for about 15 different games and have never had any problems. Hope this helps.

I was at that Wilkins/Durant vs Hawks game unfortunately. What a heart breaker, that Durant 3 to win the game was such a lucky shot. It's funny how much things have changed since that game though. The Hawks were still an "up and coming" team and Joe Johnson was obviously our best player. During the "lets go Hawks" chants most of the people around me were instead chanting "lets go Joe". Now here we are a few years later and the perception of Joe has changed so much. If he was out 4-6 weeks back then I think most of the fans would have already been talking about a top 3 lottery pick.

I agree, Joe has been a part of the problem this year. To be fair though, I think we have had A LOT of problems this year so it just isn't him. Joe does do a lot to help us when he is not scoring (assists, commanding double teams) but he gets paid to score the ball for us, not to pass. We NEED Joe to be a force on the offensive end.

With that said, I don't think the loss of Joe will impact our record that much. We have guys that will step up and we weren't really piling up wins with him in there anyways. The one thing we need though is for Joe to be the Joe of old when he gets back. As of now, the Hawks are looking like a 4ish or so type team in the East. If we actually want to make some noise we will need Joe to get back to the player he once was. So basically we won't miss the 2010 version of Joe Johnson but if we want to make any noise in the playoffs we need the prior Joe Johnson to show up when he returns.

At the very least, it should be interesting to hear Nique talk about him during the games!

JC2 not playing is concerning...We will really need this guy--especially now with JJ out.

Drew said he will play JC2 or Teague depending on what the game/situation dictate. Teague actually played pretty well and Mo Evans was knocking down a few shots. There wasn't any real need for JC2 in the game so I wouldn't really be too concerned about it.

As far as the injury timeline, during his interview he said that his elbow has been bothering him since last season. It has been an on and off thing so he, or the team, never took it too seriously. He said that everybody was shocked that he had to have surgery. I'm glad they are getting this problem fixed and we can see better play from a healthy Joe Johnson soon.

Good points, I agree about "not having enough shots to go around". I don't think it's a huge problem if some of our players can learn to play a more team oriented game. Let the hot hand take the majority of shots and go from there. It seems we will see somebody like Horford going 7/8 early and the ball won't seem to go his way. Our guards will continue to jack up shots and ignore who is playing well. We just need to be more alert and get the ball to who is playing well, not who is paid the most.

Gray Mule is right. Those of us who watched the game could tell there was a different intensity from our players. It might have been the Wizards but the game wasn't close from the middle of the first quarter on. If they give that type of effort EVERY night we will finally start to see more W's.

Jordan has impressed me with his play so far. It's nice actually seeing a guard we draft being able put the ball in the basket. I don't think he ever will be a PG but he could be one of those combo guards. I noticed he has passed the ball to Zaza on his drives a lot and has actually got Z some nice looks. Zaza isn't finishing any of these so we have yet to see any of his nice passes translate into assist numbers.

Marvin needs a fresh start somewhere else. It's becoming more obvious that he just doesn't fit in with this group. I don't think any of us thought he would live up to being the 2nd pick of the draft but I also didn't think he would be this bad. He takes some really weird looking jump shots from different spots on the floor. He doesn't even know where his sweet spot is. I really wanted to get somebody like Anthony Morrow so we could have a 3 in the motion that can actually hit open shots.

This season has been really up and down. I don’t think any of us thought we were as good as 6-0, as bad as 0-4 and 2-1 pretty much seems right if you thought our home game tonight was one of those wins. So, before I get judged for a meaningless post count or no post that clearly goes to one extreme to draw attention I hope you give this a good read. It might be long but I feel it's important to actually post something worth the readers time on forums. So I hope my ideas, right or wrong, maybe create some discussion about how we can improve opposed to how much we suck or what trades we could make with our NBA video games.

So what is our problem? I see a many problems, I'll highlight a couple;

1) Is Larry Drew’s rotation horrible or is it to preserve our older players? I have been pretty happy with Larry Drew so far. I think he knows what we need to do to be a better team. Is it possible he was so set in his way (you try to be an assistant coach on a team, seeing problems, imagining how you would fix them, getting the job, then trying to fix—you get the point). I’m really glad he is trying to use the bench more but do we really need to use it if they are playing so poorly? Bob Rathbun said something tonight along the lines of “the difference between Terry and JC11 is that our bench player admits he is a bench player.” Well, if he knows his role, don’t play him when he is so horrible. Did anybody think tonight that he would actually get it going in the 4th quarter? Or did anybody feel Zaza might do something productive or Evans wouldn’t find a way to turn the ball over? Plus, I wonder why he pulls starters in the first when we are playing well. How many games have we scored 14 points in the first 4 minutes and score 10 during the last 8 minutes. The only positive tonight was JC55 took some of tentative Teague’s minutes. Also, why was Smith out of the game with around 6 minutes left?

2) Our offense is made for guards, but our best players are forwards? Look, I really believe Joe Johnson is going to get it going. Either way, he doesn’t look confident on the court. I pretty much started watching the Hawks again because Joe was so good when he came here. Does he have a problem not being the go to guy every friggin play? Being comfortable and confident for a jump shooter is KEY in basketball. I really don’t think Joe has either of those going for him right now. How can we get Joe feeling good about himself again?

Horford has been amazing this year and Smith has been really good too. We talk about Smith taking more jump shots but Horford is too. The thing is, Horford is making them, and even though JS is too—we are afraid he will start to shoot like the JS of the past. As I said, the offense is made for guards and it’s making our two forwards into jump shooters. It looks pretty when they are draining shots in the 1st/2nd/3rd quarters. Then comes the fourth and nobody, guards or forward, can make a jump shot. Mainly guards because they are the ones taking those shots. It's so backwards right now.

There are other problems too. At home games we are waiting for our runs and not committing to defense—the problem is those runs aren’t coming.

We have two ways to score. Either we are hitting the J’s or we are scoring in fast break. We can be good at both but the Hawks haven’t shown they are consistently committed to playing great defense (especially at home—I was at the Bucs game and it was bad).

I think most of us agree that I’d take less than 50 wins if it meant our team would be better in the playoffs. It just looks like the players are expecting the playoffs right now and just want to show they can win games in the second round as opposed to playing well in the “meaningless” games. They forget that most of the good fans are going to still judge them based on how they player during the season. Why do they think home attendance is so bad?

The last two second round exits have been a buzz kill and really ruined the season until you took tame to look back and reflect. I do remember things like those 9-0 home stands, come back victories at home, consistent effort at home. This year I haven’t really been able to enjoy our games yet. I hope things get better. GO Hawks!

Honestly, anybody that is thinking this game should be an easy W is probably fooling themselves. This game reminds me of our home opener against the Mavericks a few years ago. We were a talented up and coming team that was finally ready to take the "next step" and wanted to prove it with a big win against a playoff team. Memphis hung around the playoff mix last year for the 8th seed for a decent chunk of the season. They are out to make some noise tonight and I hope our guys are ready.