TheNorthCydeRises

Quote: West should be playing PG and SG minutes for us. There is no reason to play JJ 42 minutes a game. It is insane. West should be playing around 15 minutes a game, and JJ's minutes need to go down to around 35-36. Why do people keep saying this about JJ? The minute JJ goes to the bench, all hell breaks loose 80% of the time, and we can't do anything offensively. While he doesn't have Lebron's talent, his importance to us is equal to Lebron's on the Cavs. Chill stepped up last night with JJ out, but it has to happen on a more consistent basis. Either Chill, Marvin, or Smoove need to prove that they can sustain the offense . . . or play stellar defense, to not lose ground on the scoreboard with JJ out. Until then, JJ has to play 40 minutes a night, in order for us to win . . . just like Lebron, D-Wade, Iverson, and all of those other cats.

Good. that means we'll win tonight. Hawks 95 . . . Jersey 88

It's official then. The Hawks will go 16 - 36 for the rest of the year, and finish with a 31 - 51 record. The season is over. Oh woe is we.

Quote: Quote: You know better than that Ex. Just check 82games.com, I did. I guess you must be including dunks and tips to get to 70%. When i look at inside numbers i always look at the number not including dunks at tips. But that's just me. And looking at that same page his percentage on jumpers is down 15% from 2 years ago. Quote: OK . . . name 2 plays that he's messed up in crucial situations this year? Or are you going to back to past seasons to make your case. I am looking at his whole career. Just off the top of my head there was the intentional foul against Arenas when we didn't have to foul, the half court shot with several seconds left, letting his man go the length of the court for a layup on an inbounds play, and no telling how many blown inbounds passes. If you look at this season if i am not mistaken the Hawks have won every game he missed. Quote: Most of his turnovers come when he's trying to create for himself going to the hole, not when he's bringing the ball up the court to set up the offense. When he brings it up under pressure he has to bring it up slowly. He has trouble getting the offense started. if the big backcourt was so effective they would use it more often. You don't look at dunks and tips? OK man . . LOL. Most of his dunks and tips come off of him being aggressive and active on the inside. That's the energizer part of his game. And I was right, you're going into other arguments in your rebuttal. I'm glad some people don't hold Smoove's past faults against him this year. And the big backcourt is one of our better backcourts defensively. The length of Chill and JJ defnitely affects teams, especially at the end of games. Chill's rebounding ability is especially important during this time. It is also one of our lesser backcourts offensively. Chill isn't the playmaker in that backcourt, JJ is. JJ will normally go a lot of one on one, especially at the end of games, when paired with Chill in the backcourt.

I have no problem making a deal involving Chill. What I do have a problem with, is trading him for a lesser player. His value is much more higher than trading him for a BU shooter or PG off the bench. Guys like Kareem Rush only make an impact every now ad then. Most of the time, players like him are a liability on the floor. Chill is too good to be trading for a role player that you can get for MLE money. Chill, Smoove, or Marvin should only be moved for players that can consistently impact a game on a nightly basis, not every 3 games.

Quote: Marvin can do it easily. Frequently when he posts up he will turn and face the guy then shoot right in his face. Smith just can't shoot but he can definitely drive past guys even when they are playing off him. If Marvin could consistently do that, he'd be a 20+ ppg scorer, and we could run the offense strictly through Marvin when JJ is out of the game. Smith can drive past bad defensive bigs, so I'll give you that. Part of the problem with this team, when they go through those offensive lulls, is that the guys outside of JJ can't convert when JJ is also ice cold. That's when they try to attack the rim, hoping to draw a foul. They do that well, so that's definitey not a complaint from me. Quote: If his ball handling skills are so good why does he have more turnovers than assists? Most of his turnovers come when he's trying to create for himself going to the hole, not when he's bringing the ball up the court to set up the offense. And Chill isn't a playmaker for others. His role is to be the attacker and be the energy guy off the bench. Quote: He is too slow to guard 1s and 2s and too small to effectively guard 3s. That may be so, but the man that he's guarding still doesn't light him up on defense because of his length. He's an average to slightly above average defender in this league. He's not Shawn Marion, but he's not Kareem Rush on defense either. I have very few complaints with him defensively. Quote: You just made that up. OK . . . name 2 plays that he's messed up in crucial situations this year? Or are you going to back to past seasons to make your case. Quote: Quote: He's finishing at a 70% rate on the iniside, No he isn't. You know better than that Ex. Just check 82games.com, and look at what he's shooting on the inside. He was right at 70% before last night's game. He may be over 70% now, once they update the numbers. LOL @ no he isn't. Like I'd just pull something like that out of the air or something. Quote: He's also better defensively this year, than in past years. Faint praise. LOL . . I see what Diesel is talking about now (( preparing for your rebuttals, that will probably go in another direction ))

Quote: Nobody should be surprised with our hideous performance last night. Our team gets its identity from its coach, and that coach is clueless. The good thing is that overall throughout all the losing he has kept the team motivated and hustling, never feeling sorry for themselves and never giving up. On the other hand, his whole MO is for us to play hard on defense, and the offense will take care of itself. And that's exactly what it looks like out there. We have nothing that even resembles an organized offense. Woody is nowhere near a championship caliber coach, but that is championship philosophy he pounds into the heads of these young Hawks. Every single coach that has won a title in the last 20 years, has won it off of the strength of their defense. A team like Phoenix, no matter how exciting or how well they play offensively, will never get past a team like the Spurs, if they don't play defense. Quote: We hope to win games by having more hustle, talent, and effort than the other team. And a lot of times, it actually is enough because we have a lot of talent here and we REALLY want to make the postseason after all those years. A lot of times we grind our way back into a game when another team thought they already had the win. Once again, that's a quality that championship caliber teams exhibit. Quote: But when it's not enough, we have no plan B. When we play a smart team, they slice us up. No disagreement there. A lot of the games we've lost, has also been because the other team has out-hustled us and given more effort than we did. Last night was a case of that. Quote: Even when we were winning games, I didn't think we looked that great. We just play so dumb. And not just on offense. The other day we played zone against the Cavs for way too long and let them light us up. Against the Pacers we doubled JO over and over even when the rest of the team was on fire, shooting over 50% from behind the arc. We're an athletic, but undersized team on the frontline. A lot of the stuff we do on defense, is to protect Al and Smoove from getting into foul trouble. In the times that JO did get to go one on one, he ended up getting lay-ups. They hit 13 threes though. When we stopped leaving Dunleavy and Rush, Granger killed us. Those 2 quick fouls on Horford last night really hampered us and may have kept us from getting a nice lead early, instead of constantly playing from behind. The Cleveland game was just a superstar taking over a game. Quote: But the real problem is the offense. Problem #1 is that I don't recall us setting a screen away from the ball in the entire Woodson era. I mean seriously. JJ should be starting near the baseline, running behind a screen or two, and catching the ball for an open shot. That should be a big part of our offense. I think that as he starts to light teams up they would have to respond with the player defending the screener popping out to guard JJ. At that point the player setting the screen (Horford, Smith...) can roll to the basket and the PG can hit him instead of JJ if he's open. This is not complicated. It's basketball 101 and we never even attempt it. This is why I record and watch games maybe 2 - 3 times. If you do that, you'll see what they try to do on offense. The offense definitely isn't pretty, but they do run offense. But once there is 10 seconds left on the clock, the ball almost always goes to JJ, and it is up to him to make a play. Quote: Hell we can start easier than that with a simple pick and roll, which we hardly ever do. The only 2 guys we have who know how to set a screen are Lorenzen and Shelden (Horford is learning to not move), and we don't know how to run (or defend) the pick and roll at all. For starters teach all our guys how to set a pick. Has Smith ever set one? Smith should also be taking picks (or just cutting hard on his own) when he doesn't have the ball to get easy alley oops like Kenyon Martin did all the time a year or 2 ago in Denver. They should find ways to benefit from Childress's hard cuts along the baseline, as he never gets rewarded with the ball other than on putbacks. The coach should determine where and how the players should play, not let them do whatever they want. Smith should be put in the post to develop more post moves. We have FINALLY seen him start to go to this recently and get many easy points (he was abusing murphy last night). He should have been put in the post 2 years ago for him to learn how to get it done against NBA competition. Marvin should be pushed to doing more than just hitting open shots or going 1 on 1. Set some picks for him when he has the ball as he has a deadly J and can attack the rim. Make the defenders pick their poison. Instead of any of this what is our offense? Screw around for the first 12 seconds so we really only have 12 seconds to get it done. Make a couple of passes and or dribbles around the perimeter outside the 3 point line, maybe pass it inside. If the guy inside doesn't like his look, pass it back out. Whoever happens to have the ball with 3-4 seconds left has to shoot a jumper or attack the rim. It's a total joke, and we don't have the PG who can make this a decent offense in spite of Woodson. Your hatred for the coach blinds you from the obvious answer you just stated. You say that a PG would make the offense run in spite of Woody, when is that very lack of a PG that is the reason why the offense isn't fluent. The Lakers are a much better team with Fisher and Farmar running things, than Smush Parker running the point. A PG is supposed to make the game easier for shooters and bigs. There's not a single good team, that either doesn't have a good PG, or a good playmaking SG/SF making plays for others That's why it's important for JJ to at least be the playmaker in this offense, even when his shot isn't falling. There's a direct correlation between JJ scoring and creatng a total of at least 30 - 35 points, and the Hawks winning. When that number is in the 20s, we almost always lose. While I think we can make the playoffs even without a PG, because JJ is usually a good enough combination scorer and playmaker to get things done, the offense won't flow fluently until Acie establishes himself as the point guard, and actively looks to control the flow of the game. Then, you can have Acie running things, plus JJ doing his thing. When that happens, those bad offensive mid 80s games will turn into decent offensive mid 90s games, with this team also routney scoring over 100 points. Quote: And this is not even bringing up his substitution patterns, taking out hot guys for cold ones, not calling appropriate timeouts, etc... We have the talent to be a middle of the pack playoff team in the East THIS YEAR. But it's not going to happen with our offense in this shape. We might be able to grind our way into the playoffs, and then a legit coaching staff will come up with a good strategy to destroy us. The San Antonio's and Detroit's don't win just because of their defense. They have great defense and an incredibly efficient offense. If Woodson is going to completely ignore the offense, hire an offensive coordinator like NFL teams do, and let him do it. This is ridiculous. San Antonio, Detroit, Boston, and now even the Lakers, make a total commitment to defense. Their defense creates a lot of offense, and limits the scoring chances of their opponents. They worry about defense first, and offense 2nd. This offense is going to look good against teams that play bad defense. Aganinst good defensive teams, you really need a PG that can take care of the ball, and make plays for himself and others. I told people during out win streak and AJs good December, that AJ was Jon Kitna. He's a good leader and knowledgeable vet. He'll even win a few games for you. But he just doesn't have the skill and talent to keep a team at that next level. Woody was commited to hand over the reigns of the team to Acie back in November. Then Acie goes down. The one move that Woody could possibly make to help the offense and the team, is to start the guy that has the sill and talent, but lacks experence. And that's Acie.

Quote: I agree, our Defense isn't the problem at all. We lack offensive efficiency and sometimes we also lack rebounding. I have watched all but maybe 4 games this year and only a few times I thought we broke down defensively. Defense was definitely the problem last night. Believe it or not, because of the efforts of Chill and Smoove, we had a 37 - 36 lead late in that 2nd quarter. Then Rush and Dunleavy started to rain the 3s, and Indy outscored us 18 - 6 to close the quarter. Until that point, we had played fairly well defensively, even with us struggling offensvely. Then we come out in the 2nd half, and give up 4 lay-ups. People can say all they want about the offense, but this team can't have defensive lapses like that. If you add the 18 points of the last 4 - 5 minutes of the 2nd quarter, and the ridiculous 33 points they scored in the 3rd, we gave up a whopping 51 points in about 16 minutes of playing time. Ish like that just can't happen. Normally, we'd only give up 30 - 35 points in a 16 minute stretch. Quote: Our most consistent offense is a JJ step-back midrange shot and a fastbreak, Woodson's disregard for an offensive scheme makes it aggrevating to watch when we slow the game down. Most really good offensive teams either have a good PG running the show, or a good low post scoring option to throw the ball to on the blocks. We have neither right now. Because of that, we wll continue to be erratic on the offensive end. That's why this team has to commit to winning games on the defensive end every night. If we'd played decent defense last night, we could've won a game played in the 80 - 85 point range.

Quote: Quote: Chillz doesn't need to be set up. Actually he needs to be set up more than anyone in the half court set. If his defender is in position he can't shoot over him or drive by him. You could say that about just about everybody on the team though. Neither Smoove or Marvin or Chill shoots over people or drives past them for a score, if their man is in positon. What all 3 can do though, is draw a foul while going to the hole. Each one of those guys do this at a pretty high rate. If you can draw a foul more than 15% of the time when you're going to the hole, that's pretty good Quote: Quote: Chillz can defend. Anyone almost from the 1 to 3 spots. Problem is he can't defend them well. He doesn't defend them terribly either. Chill doesn't normally get lit up by his man. In fact, the numbers suggest that he's pretty good at keeping his man from scoring. Next to Law and Mario, Chill may be our best perimeter defender. He and JJ are about equal defensively. Chill guards PGs better, JJ guards tweener SFs better. Quote: Quote: Chillz can bring the ball up to set up that half court set. Anyone could bring the ball up when there is no defensive pressure. When there is defensive pressure Childress struggles. He only struggles against very good defensive PGs who pressure the ball. A guy like that will make most guards struggle bringing the ball up. In the JJ - Chill backcourt, it's a luxury for JJ to be able to hand it to Chill to bring the ball up. Quote: Quote: Chillz has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Take for instance the game he won for us recently at the buzzer on a putback. Remember him finishing under the rim backwards against Cleveland off that baseball pass from Horford in the 2nd half? Childress' list of late game blunders is the longest on the team. But he does more things well in those situatons, than he does bad. He'll do someting to win a game, far more than he'll do something to lose a game. Quote: Quote: He's only going to improve as well. What part of his game has improved over the last 3 years? He's finishing at a 70% rate on the iniside, which has led to him shooting a career high FG% to this point. He's also better defensively this year, than in past years.

Quote: This team might be in worse shape than I thought heading into the allstar break. Change your prediction then. I think we'll be 3 games over .500 at the break.

And have the lead down to single digits by the 5 minute mark. Then let's see how Indy responds down the stretch. LOL, they have to go cold from 3 at some point. The Hawks will show how mentally tough they are.

A very shaky 1st. It too bad Chill is so non-aggressive. We'd be right back in this game if he'd just take the ball to the hole.

Quote: Can we get a sticky on this please Chillz? It's amazing how left and right people go with 3 wins, then 2 losses. Everyone calm down, we are still the same team. No doubt GoDawgs. I know whatit is though with some of our fans though. 1) We've been losers for s long, that they're afraid to believe in this team, for fear of being let down. And because of that . . . 2) They fear that every 2 - 3 game losing streak is a pre-cursor to the 7 - 9 game losing streaks we've had in the past. But as long as JJ, Marvin, Smoove, and Al stay relatively heathy, we shouldn't have t worry about that. ( knock on wood )

Quote: The fact that he keeps playing Zaza and Lue just pisses me off, I can't help it. The thing is he keeps putting them back in even after they screw up. He won't give Shelden a chance at all, and he won't give Salim a chance at all. I'd rather see those 2 over Zaza/Lue ANYDAY. Not to mention they will at least play better defense than Zaza/Lue. And Woodson's offense still sucks. When your major complaint is that a few underachievers aren't getting enough PT, that's nitpicking. LOL @ you can't help it. I understand. You kind of feel like Chris Rock in the movie "New Jack city" when he was trying to keep from smoking that crack. You can give Woody a thumbs up for now. We won't be mad at you.

LOL @ Woody receiving a negative approval rating, when we've won 12 of our last 19 games and are over .500 for the first time in 8 years. What an ungrateful fan base!

( Pretending I'm on the Budweiser commercial, giving Sturt a "will you let this ish die look", while saying . . .)Dude.

excellent post.

Don't be fooled by the Dieselputer, and his man-crush on Damon. Hawk fans would quickly realize that he is nothing more than Salim with handles, that shoots better, but plays less defense than his cousin. Yes, Damon can run an offense, but not any more better than what AJ can. He takes a lot of quick shots in Memphis' uptempo system. 44% of his shots come before 10 or less seconds have elasped off the shot clock. And a lot of those shots are bad, long jumpers because he doesn't look to take the ball all the way to the hole and score. He's one of the worst finishing PGs in the league when he gets around the rim. Even worse than Acie. As a shooter, he is extremely streaky. Both Lue and AJ are more consistent shooters than Damon. And he is a complete liability on defense, which is the reason why Kyle Lowry routinely got more time than Damon. He's Lue-like on defense and isn't as good of a defender than AJ. AJ is also a better leader than Damon. Just like Luke Ridnour, there's a reason why a guy like Damon finds himself out of the mix. Trading our scrubs for another scrub that plays the same positon, will not help the Hawks. Especially if he's pretty much a duplicate of what we already have here.

What is this crush you have on Damon Stoudamire? The Memphis fans are flat out elated that Damon has done this. He's not a PG worthy of serious discussion, and he's going to quickly find that out when no one trades for him. And if a team trades for him, they'll give up a 2nd round pick or some scrub that they're trying to get rid of. Whatever the case, he's not going to see major PT on his new team either. As far as Navarro goes, he's stricty a scorer that plays no defense. But he's more valuable to a team than Damon.

Quote: I don't hate Chillz, but he was a Top 6 pick four years ago and has proven to be a draft mistake.He is non-aggressive player who doesn't provide any type of consistent impact on this team. He is not deserving of a new contract and the minutes he has should be given to someone else. Additionally, he is injury prone. Hopefully he and Lue and ZaZa can be traded away before the deadline.. Chillz may be 'hated' on because he is perennial underachiever who has already peaked as a player.. Non aggressive? Chill always takes the ball to the hole. He takes it there more than anyone on the team. So that 13 points he scored last night in 25 minutes of play, was really like 4 points I guess? A Chill FG is is only worth 0.333 points. But if Mario scores 2 points, and plays decent defense in the 12 minutes he's out on the floor, that's much more important?

Quote: Quote: What has he done to deserve all this hate? Shoot like a 9 year old girl? Seriously, this isn't about Childress. It's about Woodson being a total idiot that doesn't really understand what it takes to win. If you play Lue over Mario West, you don't deserve to have a job. wow . . . So a guy who has acutally won games for us, is now under an undrafted rookie who can play decent defense? If that's the case, BK is truly a genius by bringing in Mario. Lebron scored 31 points in the final 19 minutes of that game last night. The last time he did that, was against Detroit in the playoffs. I have that game on tape. Last night was a carbon copy of that game. Tyronn Lue playing or Mario not playing, was not the reason why we lost.

Wow. So now we're gettng rid of Chill, just to make more time for Mario? Damn . . Chill has been traded for Anthony Parker and now to make room for Mario. LOL, some of you must Really hate Chill. What has he done to deserve all this hate? Chill is going to start singing that rap song to all of his naysayers, that I heard on New Year's Eve when I was in ATL. He'll change up the lyrcs sligtly You know you going down for the count/ Looking at the ground/ You look like a hater/ I think you're a hater/ Haters everywhere I go/ Haters everywhere I go/ Haters everywhere I go . . where I go/ There they go

Quote: Quote: The entire process is nothing but luck because the odds are always aganst you losing That should be winning. BTW Memphis had the worst record last year not Boston. I agree with your post though. As many times as we have been high in the lottery you would think everyone would understand it by now. I had Boston on the brain for some reason. (( blaming the cold weather )) Here's something to support what you're talking about though Ex. Say if the Hawks DID win the lottery. Are we lucky to win that top slot, then select a Greg Oden who couldn't play in his rookie year? People would think the exact opposite about the Oden pick now, and hope and pray that he doesn't become the next Sam Bowie. This fan base would not only be scared to death of that, but this season might be in shambles, with Speedy not beilng able to play, and Sheden and Zaza playing even worse than last year. And good lord, imagine Horford in Memphis aongside Gasol. Even if we got lucky and got the 2nd pick, would we still be lucky to get Durant, and possiby be forced to trade Marvin, just to make room for Durant? God forbid me if I say that I'd rather have Marvin than Durant right now. We got lucky to pick #3. But we may have gotten more lucky picking there, than 1 or 2 spots higher. Because Horford doesn't have many glaring weaknesses, and because he's not prone to injury, he may turn out to be the best pick for the Hawks. That's not luck, that is God blessing us. blessing > luck Being "blessed" in that situation, is gettng lucky in a situation tat you really didn't feel all that lucky about. Good lord @ this team with Durant shooting 40% FG, and not being strong enough to even handle the average 3 in this league. We'd be dead.

Quote: What screwed Boston last year, is that not only did they not win that top slot, Portland, a team that only had a 5% chance to win, got the #3 slot.obvious typo. I know Portland got the #1 spot.

Quote: Quote: If I'm in a raffle that has 100 tickets and I have 25 of those tickets and I lose... Yes, I'm am unlucky.So you have a 75% chance of losing, you lose, and you think you're unlucky?All that means is that you didn't get lucky. There's middle ground between lucky and unlucky.Quote: It's no different if I'm in the raffle that has 100 tickets and I have 95 of those and I lose... I'm still unlucky (If that is a word). In this case you have a 5% chance of losing, which is much lower than 75% chance of losing, wich IS VERY DIFFERENT.95% chance of winning and you lose - that's bad luck.25% chance of winning and you lose - that's normal.The line you draw is somehere around 50%.If you have a 51% chance of winning and you lose you're slightly unlucky.Quote: The point that you miss is that Lucky has the line drawn between winning and not winning. Not true at all. First of all sports are not games of chance. You have a direct influence on the outcome. You can be very unlucky and win a game. You can be very lucky and lose a game. If you're supposed to win and something unlucky occurs that cause you to lose, you are unlucky. If you play bad and lose, that's not unluck.If you're supposed to win statistically speaking in a game of chance and you lose, you're unlucky, and you're unlucky to the degree with which you were supposed to win.95% and 25% are VERY different odds of winning, therefore you are more unlucky to lose with a 95% chance of winning than with a 25% chance of winning. This is exactly why a team should never concern themselves with tanking. Excellent explanation. And this was the main problem that I was trying to explain with the draft lottery last spring, but kinda got ripped for by that tank crowd that thought that increasing our "luck" by 3%, would be significant. People think a 25% chance of winning that top slot, gives them a great chance at winning. No it doesn't. It only gives you a better chance than any other team, to win. But you have to realize that the 25% that the worst team owns, has to go up against the 75% chance that one of the other 13 teams has to win that top spot. You're still likely to lose 3 out of 4 times. Losing is the expected outcome. Winning it would be luck.What screwed Boston last year, is that not only did they not win that top slot, Portland, a team that only had a 5% chance to win, got the #3 slot.So when it came time for the 2nd spot lottery selection, Boston's chance of winning that 2nd spot, didn't increase much at all. LOL, Seattle gets the 2nd spot. And to Boston's disdain, they also only had a 5% chance.That pretty much left the total of lottery combinations left on the board at around 900 out of the orignal 1,000, once it was time to select for the 3rd spot.Boston had one last chance to get in the top 3 by obtaining that 3rd spot, and I think their chance to win at that point, was still under 30%. Yes, they had a better shot than any other particular team in the lottery. But if this was Vegas, and you had to place a bet between Boston getting the final slot, or the rest of the field getting the slot, you'd obviousy bet on the field. Good thing the Hawks were part of "the field".The entire process is nothing but luck because the odds are always aganst you losing, even when your team's individual chances are better than another team's individual chances. And Boston got extremely unlucky, as well as Memphis and Milwaukee. If you're one of the top 3 teams in the lottery, you know it's pretty much the kiss of death when you see a team move up well before they even announce the top 3 selections. The team that moves up almost always has moved up to that #1 or #2 slot.In the actual process before the results are announced, a team like Boston would always prefer the #2 and #3 teams to get the top 2 picks, if they couldn't get one of the top 2. At least then, Boston would have over a 40% chance to get that 3rd spot. While Boston would still have the odds against them, their chance to get "lucky" would be better, with all of the combinations that #2 and #3 had, out of the way.