TheNorthCydeRises

LOL . . I should've taped this game while watching it. Hawksquawk has been known to see ish that really didn't happen on occasion. Maybe I imagined Mario being on Outlaw, seeing that it would make no sense for Smoove to be guarding anybody out on the perimeter, with Horford out of the game. Hawks lineup on the floor JJ Chill Mario Marvin Smoove I'll take your guys word for it though. My bad ( waitng to see the higlights of this game )

Interesting rebounding point you brought up. Marvin has to really start attacking the dwfensive glass. Smoove and Horford may be ubdersized at the 4 and the 5, but Marvin is bigger than most 3's. When a shot is taken by our opponent, he needs to put a body on somebody and go to the boards. For the record guys, Mario West was on Outlaw at the end, not Smoove. Woody subbed Horford out the game, and put in Mario.

Outlaw is a nice player. Ironically, Woody had subbed in Mario West to defend Outlaw, because he's too quick for Smoove. This is the guy that most of Hawksquawk loves. With 4 seconds on the clock, I see Mario giving him too much room. I yell . . "Close him out Mario!" . . because I know that Outlaw can knock down a 21 footer as well as drive the ball. Or course, that's exactly what he did. Woody made the right substitution, probably thinking that Roy might still get the ball. McMillan made a great counter, by attacking the rookie. Mario will learn from that. But just a great shot by Outlaw.

Portland adjustment predction: Tie game. Watch and see if Roy drives and passes this time. One again, everybody needs to stay at home. Make Roy beat JJ for the score himself.

Quote: And the play after I typed that we hedged (one minute, 45 seconds for anyone with dvr who wants to see what I was describing). I'm telling you guys, it's Lue and Smoove that are the culprits on the pick and roll most of the time. Lue is especally horriblem LOL . . what in the hel is up with these statisticians?

Good point made by Smitty. JJ made Roy go right, instead of left, forcing him toward Smoove. And the Hawks didn't run out to help. Ahh . . JJ missed the fade. Kind of wished he'd went to the hole to force the issue a bit more. I can live with that shot though. Question now is this: Does Woody stick with the JJ - Chill backcourt . . or does he bring back in Lue or Acie?

JJ vs Roy. Brandon is the truth. And so is JJ. Hawks need a big stop here. Got it. And JJ getting "star" calls for once. Tie game.

Woody goes big, but no Law. JJ - Chill is the backcourt.

How long will Woody go with Lue, is the ultimate question right now. Hems providing offense, but defensivey, he's a liability. At some point, this team has to get some stops. Lue is just to small out there.

Quote: Exactly, at some point it has to come back to the scheme...Players have seen it a ton and still dont defend it well. That seems like scheme problems to me. Defense is a lot about awareness, regardless of scheme. Good defenders in this league can play man or zone. You stick a Trenton Hassell or a Raja Bell on the Hawks, and they're not going to b hampered by Woody's scheme. See . . another poor job by mainly Lue and Smoove that led to Jones' 3.

34 created points by JJ already, which is usally enough for us to win, but this Portland team is hitting damn near every 3-pointer and jumper they throw up now. He may have to get 48 created points today. The first team to have a good 4 minutes straight of defense, will probably win this game.

Quote: Actually that isnt true. Acie and Horf(Two guys who many consider quality defenders.) are now struggling with it as opposed to Lue and Zaza(Terrible defenders) in yrs past. Nice job, Acie! Steal that job!!!! They handle it better than Smoove and Lue. And I'll give the rookies more leeway because they've only been in the league for 3 months. Smoove and Lue have seen it enough, to know what to do when they see it.

Quote: So you are saying that Woody has done a good job teaching pick and roll defense?? Gotcha I don't know. Marvin, JJ, and Acie ( nice 3-ball Acie ) seem to have little problem with the pick and roll. Smoove, Lue, and Chill seem to have a problem with it. Lue especially, because he routinely finds himself out of position when he gets picked off. Smoove tends to either not close out on shooters, or tries to trail a guy going to the hole, to block a shot. Acie is playing very well now.

Quote: A coach cant control that kind of stuff...We have not stopped the pick and roll consistently in his 4 YEARS AS A HEAD COACH! There are a lot of teams that seem to do just fine defending it, why cant we??? The same reason why Larry Brown couldn't teach the Knicks to "play the right way". If you notice, the same people keep messing up defendint the P & R.

Woody is also to blame for the price of gas, global warming, and the Packers loss last night.

Next, Woody will get blamed for T-Lue's lack of defensive awareness . . and Chill's jumper.

I had planned to be in ATL last night, and stayed for the game today. Someting came up, and I couldn't make it. Hawks are 4 - 0 with me @ Philips. My bad if we lose.

He's back in after the cheap foul call on Acie.

Yeah I figured that. A flagrant 2 is an automatic 1-game suspension. The only thing that could be discussed is whether he deserved it, like Diesel pointed out. The league isn't reversing anything for us, that's for damn sure.

Quote: All this board then bitches about is how Curry isn't a "Perfect" big. But guess what HS...ain't no perfect big comin! Horford is playing out of position. There are no free agent bigs that are available that aren't stiffs. We have no draft pics so we can't draft one. Therefore since we can't have a perfect big, we have to build one from parts. Curry is the offensive part, and Horford is the rebounding, defensive part. Even though Curry isn't a defensive stalwart, he helps us when we play teams that have big front lines..i.e the Bucks Excellent post. ( talking like Rick Pitino ) "Moses Malone ain't coming through that door folks. Dikembe Mutumbo ain't coming through that door."

I wouldn't necessarily put Horford on the bench. Sure, it would be unpopular to bring a guy off the bench making the money that Curry does, but I would do it initially. Horford is important from a defensive and rebounding standpoint to start and finish games, so I'd definitely keep him as the starter. When we're winning games at the end, Horford would be in. If we're losing at the end, and need offensive options every trip down the floor, Curry would be in. The dimension that Curry would give us, is a guy that someone like JJ could get the ball to down low, when teams try to double JJ on the perimeter when the shot clock winds down. Curry also forces people to defend him down low. He draws a foul 20% of the time when he shoots, which means he can get the opposing center in foul trouble. But to obtain Curry and not lose Chill, may immeadiately make us a contender in the East. Then the decison will have to be made on Chill over the summer. JJ, Curry, and Smoove would give us 3 players making 10+ million, but we could still be just slightly over the cap if we lost Chill and kept everybody else. But if we lost Chill, a guy like Mario West has to immeadiately be able to somewhat fill the backup 2 role. Then you'd have the MLE to possibly go out and get a shooter that you can bring off the bench . . or you can move Shelden ( possibly for a pick ), to draft a late 1st round or a 2nd round shooter. Let's see if I can give a minutes breakdown, to justify this deal. C: Horford 20 minutes / Curry 28 minutes PF: Smoove 34 minutes / Horford 14 minutes SF: Marvin 34 minutes / Chill 10 minutes / Smoove 4 minutes SG: JJ 34 minutes / Chill 14 minutes PG: AJ 22 minutes / Law 20 minutes / JJ 6 minutes JJ - 40 mpg Smoove - 38 mpg Marvin - 34 mpg Horford - 34 mpg Curry - 28 mpg Chill - 24 mpg AJ - 22 mpg Law - 20 mpg ( by the way, this is why teams have TIMED SUBSTITUTIONS, in order to properly try to separate the minutes. All basketball coaches have a set ideal of when and how much PT a player will get. ) That's pretty much a solid 8-man rotation, that can be tweaked depending on foul trouble, matchups, etc. Against a team like Phoenix, Curry would probably play much less. Against a San Antonio, much more. JJ and Smoove would still have to play a lot. Chill's minutes would be reduced to make room for Curry. Curry is an offensive player, so you use him in that regard. Don't have any illusions that he will dominate the paint on both ends of the floor, because he's not. Smoove would still have to roam to block shots and rebound, along with Horford. Horford might become a more potent offensive weapon because he'd be able to play PF for 1/3 of the game. I can see everybody's scoring averages staying the same, with maybe Horford's scoring being up slightly. JJ's ppg numbers may stay the same, or go down a little. If it goes down, expect his assist numbers to go up. As for Curry, he'd replace offensively what Shelden, Lue, Zaza could give us. 14 ppg - 5.5 rebs - 56% FG . . and considering that Zaza and Shelden routinely shot in the low 40%, that's a big improvement. Curry's offense in the beginning of the 2nd and 4th quarters, may make us a much more consistent offensive team for an entire game.

I misses the end of the 1st half in which AJ got ejected. If he got called for a Flagrant 2 right off the bat, that means he won't be available on Monday. If he got 2 technicals called on him one right after the other, then he can play. So how did the refs call it?

Let me rephrase this another way. If you knew the west coast offense works, but Mike Vick is your QB, do you make a commitment to run it?

And I'd tell Sekou to refer to his paragraph about the PG situation here. The I'd ask him to name one good running team that doesn't have a good PG running the show. I believe the Hawks can't run for that exact reason. The "truth" is that good running teams don't have their main finishers leading the break and being the playmaker ( Smoove, Chill, and Horford ). Good running teams also have good shooters to toss the ball out to on the break. If the Hawks want to run, play defense, get in the passing lanes and deflect some balls, and run when you have the advantage. Don't run just to be running, and watch the crowd and fan base whine and cry about committing turnovers when we try to play too fast. Play defense and rebound the basketball. Whenever you can outscore your opponent 25 - 2 in fast break points, but still lose the game, running or playing fast isn't the problem.

So should we run plays for Salim, seeing that he was a very good collegiate shooter as well? See, this what I'm talking about. If you play JJ Redick for 25 minutes a game, you better make sure that the 2-guard going up aganst him, doesn't go for 25 or 30 points. And in this league, some of your most prolific scorers play the 2. If a guy like Joe Johnson sees Redick opposite of him, he salivates. He's way too strong of a player for Redick to handle. A guy like a Monta Ellis is hard for most people to contain. For Redick, it would be a nightmare. So if Redick has an off game, and is giving up a ton of points on the other end, that spells disaster for the Magic. Same goes for Salim with us. Any big PG can have his way with Salim. And the quick PGs can go right by him. So if he's not completely on his game, he becomes an instant liability. That's the major complaint about Salim, and especially Tyronn Lue. Lue's defensive awareness when his man doesn't have the ball, is just absolutely horrible. Like I said . . you can run an offense through a player like Redick in college, but it's extremely hard to do it in the pros. Most of your decent offensive threats in the pros can create their own offense. Like Salim, you'd almost have to use Redick as a first option type player when he's in the game, just to see if you can get quick offense from him. If not, you better play defense or get him out the game real fast.