TheNorthCydeRises

I only partially agree with this. Solomon is a very active player, but he gets totally lost on his defensive rotations at times and will commit fouls because of that. LOL . . Lo does this too, but Lo is the veteran and will get the benefit of the doubt in that area. It's hard to give a guy minutes, when he fouls on the average every 2 or 3 minutes. Solomon's stat line last night: 7 minutes 6 points 3 - 3 FG 2 offensive rebounds 1 turnover 3 fouls That's why the kid can't see a lot of PT. He can't stay on the floor. And when you foul, you give the opponent an opportunity to score from the FT line. But once again, Woody is the idiot . . lol. Pay attention Hawk fans. Just don't be blinded by your hatred toward the coach, organization, or a particular player that you don't like.

Quote: The ball rarely came Marvins way and numb-nut Woody kept jerking him out of the game. He came out early in the fitsy quarter and he could never get a rythym until the 4th when Woody finally kept him in. He sat more minutes in the first 3 quarters than he played...why? Because Woody is a fool. His sub patterns from one game to the next are out of his left butt cheek. There is no rhyme or reason for how this man subs and it gets players out of rhythm. - Chill always subs in for Marvin midway through the 1st quarter. There's really no dropoff when Chill comes in the game. - Marvin came right back in at the end of the 1st quarter - He only got jerked in and out of the game in the 2nd quarter. And that was strictly because of the personnel that the Clips had in the game at the time. And also because of TT's 3 pointer. I thnk that kind of ticked Woody off for a minute. But he got Marvin right back in the game. In all, Marvin played 32 minutes, and the vast majority of the 4th quarter. He preserved him enough to make sure that he could be in the game at the end. But Woody is the idiot? LOL. It's like Diesel said. This is not NBA Live, where you can play 5 guys all game if you wanted to. Players get tired or have mental lapses. At those times, it is up to the coach to either give him a breather, or talk to him about his mental lapse. And once again Woody kept his rotation pretty tight. He's able to do this now, with Chill being back. Why? Because he's able to play the 2 and the 3, and even bring the ball up at times as a Point Forward. And it's so nice to see Speedy healthy enough to play 35 minutes + a game. While he didn't shoot particularly well, he had a great all-around game. The true idiots are those of you who understand nothing about how to manage a basketball game.

LOL @ that. Complete fantasyland. The only 2 things that would be remotely possible to do, would be to sign Adleman and possibly sign Randolph Morris. But I think I know where you're going with this. Sounds like some of the proposals put on this board by a certain "squawker". LOL . . genius move by putting Isaiah's name in the GM spot. It kind of shows how ridiculous 4 of those 6 things are, and how feesible they really are.

LOL . . Diesel has a way of really driving a point home. I'll even add another team to that mix . . . Denver, back in 2003. They traded away high salary players who had value, for expiring contracts of players who were flat out bums. It was a 2 year process to dump salary and obtain expiring contracts, then put themselves in position to remake the team. High salary guys like Nick Van Exel, Raef LaFrentz, and Antonio McDyess were either all dealt or not resigned in the 2001 - 2002 season. And their leading scorer in the 2002 - 2003 season, Juwan Howard, was also not resigned. That put them in position to get the high draft pick and also totally remake the team. Sound familiar? In 2004, they obtained the #2 spot, in which they chose Carmelo. They also obtained Andre Miller, Earl Boykins, and Voshon Lenard in free agency that year, completely remaking their backcourt. In fact, if you look at the top players left from that 2003 year, the only players that remained in 2004, were Nene, Marcus Camby ( who was hurt most of 2003 ), and Rodney White. Ironically, these were decent frontcourt players who now had decent backcourt players to work with. So when Denver made their quantum leap from 17 in 2003 to 43 wins in 2004, they pretty much gutted the team and brought in totally new talent. In all, 8 new faces were on the roster. The idea of "tanking", then keeping the exact same team that "tanked" the next year, is at the very least . . . foolish. Their confidence would be completely destroyed if that was the philosophy. What the Hawks need to do now, is stabilize this season by winning close to 50% of their next 15 or so games. Then, near or after the All-Star break, this team will have to go on some 5 - 7 game win streak, if they want to be a playoff contender. But this season is far from over. The players can still salvage this season with 32 - 35 wins, and even a possible outside playoff shot.

Bigs will struggle to stay out of foul trouble, guarding Brand and Kaman. Hopefully, this team will play well enough offensively to stay in the game. Look for another 20 point + game from Marvin. We need to win a home game, especially one like this, so I'll be an optimist. Hawks 98 . . Clippers 94.

The next level . . . Pacers are currently 17 - 16 . . but safe in the top 8. I guess that means that O'Neal is gone then.

Quote: ...about Marvin being a terrible player with a bad attitude, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I only found 1 positive post about his play last night. He was the most assertive and vocal Hawk, and he had a pretty solid game. He had an excellent offensive game, and an average to above average defensive game. Everyone's been asking for him to step up, make a difference, try hard. Well he did last night, and only one poster has a comment? Typical. The reason why they don't do it, is because they don't want to be wrong about a player that they don't like. It's almost like they'd rather see the guy fail and the Hawks win, than to see the guy that they hate be a reason for the Hawks winning. You saw it with Smoove before he went down. Now everybody realizes just how important he is to the chemistry of this team. You saw it with Speedy at the beginning of the year, when he obviously wasn't anywhere near 90%. But now, he's playing decent basketball and isn't a complete liability. You definitely saw it with Shelden. A lot of posters were absolutely convinced that he'd be a bust, even before he played a regular season game. And you see it with Salim all the time. When he's struggling, he shouldn't play much. But when he's on, he's definitely an asset to this team. Yet, people don't like him even when he's on. It's one thing to criticize players. But you also have to give them props when they play well. If they don't, then you know their true agenda when it concerns a particular player.

LOL @ the posts on this board. I saw a Hawks team that moved the ball about as well as they have the entire year. They didn't go into that high post offense that slows everything down and tries to get the ball to Joe. They actually moved the ball around last night. And once more, guys didn't hesitate to take open shots. Marvin played with extreme confidence. Shelden looked very good. And while Joe was hobbled a little, he didn't try to force it and played a decent game as well. About the only guy who couldn't get it going last night, was Chill. We lost last night because we couldn't get to loose balls on the defensive end, which gave the Raptors too many 2nd and 3rd chance opportunities. Offensively, we were playing pretty well. The Hawks were shooting over 50% for most of that game. But the Raptors were over 60% for most of the game, and we couldn't overcome that. And I'm surprised that no one has commented on the fact that Woody shortened his rotation last night. ( couldn't complain about the substitutions pattern last night . . lol ) If he could've, he would've only played 7 guys last night. And that's exactly what I was trying to illustrate in some of my posts last week. If Smoove and Lue were back, guys like Ivey, Salim, and maybe even Lorenzen would hardly ever see the court. We'd have a solid 8 man rotation here that could play decent defense and be solid on offense. Then the fringe guys could play spot minutes just to spell people. It was disappointing to see Toronto get to every loose ball and have free run when in the paint. But I liked what I saw last night from this team offensively.

Quote: Would you guys trade Speedy Claxton for Nate Robinson? No . . but I would trade Salim for Nate in a heartbeat. We we just unlucky a few years back in the draft. Almost every draft board had Nate going somewhere in the top 10 picks in the 2nd round. Most draft boards had teams taking a lot of international players. But that year, a lot of teams chose to go with college seniors and juniors in the first round. Almost Instead of having a player like Nate or even Julius Hodge, Francisco Garcia, or Luther Head, we had to settle for Salim because he was one of the last big time college players still left on the board. When you look at that draft in the 2nd round, only Monta Ellis is arguably a better player than Salim right now. And that's only because of the J-Rich injury and Nellie coming aboard. Maybe that's the type of team Salim needs to go to. But I would absolutely love to have Nate on this team. He plays hard. He plays with confidence. And he isn't scared of anybody. LOL @ one of you posters calling him a "thug", just because he got into that fight. Nate, like everyone else in MSG that night, got caught up in the heat of the moment. It isn't Nate's fault that he was pound-for-pound the strongest man on the court. Nate would be an excellent backup PG to bring off the bench to up tempo.

Quote: congratulations. you can now post from the bathroom in your favorite truck stop lol. once i start to post, i only have 4 or 5 minutes to type. and a 512 character limit. so i gotta keep it short

wow it worked. gotta love technology. if shelden can keep bosh off the boards and stay out of foul trouble, we have a shot. speedy also needs to contain ford.

i'm on my cellphone viewing this site. just seeing if this will post.

Diesel, you could be right. If we can get Lue back to playing like he was at the beginning of the season, we could survive January enough to stay at least 7 - 10 games under .500 A cold shooting Salim shouldn't play 20 minutes a game. But right now, he has to, because of our guard situation and our limited options on offense. With Lue back, he'll be back in the role that he should be. "Hired gun off the bench . . if he's hot". But this team desperately needs that #2 scorer right now. And if Lue can provide that for this team, we'll be OK in January. LOL . . as for 4 straight? I don't know about all of that. I'd be happy with 2 home wins vs the Clips and the Hornets. This team really needs to start taking care of business at home, just for the sake of the fans.

Just one question to the board: Right now, we're sitting at 9 - 20. What would the Hawks record be if no more than 1 out of our top 7 players were hurt? Our top 7 players, in no particular order, are: JJ Chill Speedy Lue Smoove Marvin ZaZa . . . with Shelden being the only guy outside of that group gathering 15 - 20 minutes a game. Salim and Lorenzen should be the other 2 guys complimenting the top 7. But they should never play more than 10 minutes a game, unless they're playing real well. Interesting facts here. Here is our record for each of our top 7 players, when he doesn't play: ZaZa ( 2 games ): 1 - 1 Marvin ( 17 games ): 8 - 9 Childress ( 19 games ): 5 - 14 Speedy ( 8 games ): 2 - 6 JJ ( 4 games ): 1 - 3 Lue ( 7 games ): 0 - 7 Smoove ( 4 games ): 0 - 4 Total games missed by at least one of the top 7 players: ( 61 games ) When you look at these numbers at first glance, two things should stand out. (1) When one of the Hawks guards are out, it's a loss more than 75% of the time. Why? Because we're forced to give guys like Ivey, Salim and Bozeman ( formerly ) extended minutes. Ivey is an offensive liability and Salim is a defensive liability, who may even be an offensive liability when he's not on. Boze could play decent defense at times, but he was horrible offensively. This team could fully function with Speedy, Lue, JJ, and at times, Childress playing the guard spots. But when one of those guys are out, it hurts the entire team. (2) The team at least survived without Marvin in the lineup. That's true. But that was in large part of JJ's ability to play the 3 at times. And he was only able to effectively play the 3, when Speedy and Lue was healthy, giving us a viable offensive threat at the 2 and the 3, with Speedy at the point. The interchangeable parts we have with our 6 - 7 to 6 - 9 guys, can enable us to survive with one of those guys out of the lineup. But not when we have more than one of those guys out, or playing hurt. With Marvin in the lineup, there wouldn't be a dramatic dropoff in talent when a guy like Chill or Smoove came out of the game. He's not as good as those guys yet, but the dropoff wouldn't be significant. Think of it like the Clippers subbing in Shawn Livingston for Sam Cassell. Sam is the better player, but subbing Shawn for him doesn't cripple your team, because he can do some things better than Sam. But when we were without Chill and Marvin, and Smoove and/or JJ needed rest or were in foul trouble, our options were very limited. We either had to play Salim extended minutes, or even put a stiff like Freije out on the floor. One more thing to note about this team. Even when the Hawks win, it has been a struggle most of the time. And we struggle to win, because we have been forced to play guys like Lorenzen, Ivey, and Salim way more than we should be playing them, when a guy is injured. Think of the Hawks as a very fragile ecosystem, that can be disrupted with one slight change. Complain about the coaching if you want. But fully understand that injuries to our key guys, is the #1 reason why we are where we are right now. Record with the top 7 fully healthy: somewhere between 15 - 14 . . and 13 - 16.

Quote: I would not say poor character traits but I think BK has selected guys that are not internally driven or intense in how they approach the game. While it is common to attack today's NBA player for having too much attitude, BK appears to be selecting guys without enought attitude. Salim doesn't have enough attitude? The problem with Salim, is that he may have too much attitude. He truly believes that he is a baller, a great baller. All the great ones have that attribute. He just doesn't have the skills to go along with that belief. Too bad Salim isn't a 1/2 step quicker and about 3 inches taller. We might have something great there, if we did.

LOL. T-Mac in his 2nd year in the league. 9.3 ppg 5.7 rebs 2.3 asst 44% FG His development in his 2nd year, was stunted by the injury he sustained, which kept him out for the first 3 months of the season. When he came back to the team, he slowly developed into what kind of player he would eventually become. But he was wildly inconsistent at times, but showed flashes of greatness at times. The difference between the Raptors back then, and the Hawks now, is that the Raptors felt no need to rush McGrady into stardom. They let him develop at his own pace. They felt no need to start him in his first 3 years in the league, but he was a major piece of the Raptor puzzle by Year 3. With the Hawks, they're trying to accelerate Marvin's growth at a rapid rate, instead of just letting him find his niche as a ballplayer on his own. Instead of bringing him off the bench and letting him get his 25 - 30 minutes from there, they're starting him to see if he can develop his game to be a valuable starter now, instead of next year or in 2008. Yes, T-Mac was picked 9th in the 1997 draft, but he's easily the 2nd best player in that draft, next to Tim Duncan, who went #1 overall. Bottom line. Hawks fans have NO CHOICE but to have patience with Marvin, while hoping that the coach do what is in the best interest of the team. Sending Marvin to the bench wouldn't be a demotion in my eyes, if he still played the same amount of minutes. Starting Childress right now may be overall what is better for the team. But to say that Marvin isn't that good, just isn't accurate. To me, he's on the same learning curve with T-Mac. We'll see if he can make that quantum leap in Year 3, like T-Mac did. He may even make it by the end of this season.

I heard the same thing on Cold Pizza this morning, referring to Riley being upset with his team. Riley and the Heat: 13 - 17 Woody and the Hawks: 9 - 20 One is a championship level coach. The other is the perceived Hawks anti-christ. Riley and Heat fans blame injuries and their vets not stepping up. Hawks fans blame the coach, but not injuries and the youth of the team. As Mr Spock would say . . . "Fascinating."

But we did run it pretty effectively in November. It isn't the most fluent thing to watch, but offense wasn't our problem in November. It was finishing off games and stopping people at the end of games. If you look back at those November games, we shot a good percentage in the vast majority of those games. One on one dribble penetration? With who? JJ tries to do it, but he immeadiately gets double and triple-teamed now. Speedy does it sometimes, but can't finish. Marvin does it, but either doesn't finish or draws an offensive foul. Shelden almost always draws an offensive foul when he does it. Salim 90% of the time relies on his jumper, and almost always passes when he enters the lane ( which ends up being a turnover ). Chill can do it pretty well, if matched up against an inferior defender. Now the post up game may have potential . . but it'll have to be with JJ and Childress. Right now, Smoove has no post up game whatsoever. He's trying to develop one, but JJ is easily our best post up player. But even he has to learn to go quickly, and not wait until the double team comes to him. I feel your frustration man. But you have to realize that there's not an easy fix to all of this. And when we have people out, it makes it that much worse.

One more Babcock nugget . . his draft picks 1990 Rumeal Robinson (10th pick) 1991 Stacey Augmon (9th pick) 1992 Adam Keefe (10th pick) 1993 Doug Edwards (15th pick) 1994 none 1995 Alan Henderson (16th pick) 1996 Priest Lauderdale (28th pick) 1997 Ed Gray (22nd pick) 1998 Roshwon McLeod (22nd pick) 1999 Jason Terry (10th pick) Cal Bowdler (17th pick) Dion Glover (20th pick) 2000 DerMarr Johnson (6th pick) 2001 none 2002 Dan Dickau (28th pick)

LOL . . this (( bleep )) had me thinking about Phoenix. Manning went to Phoenix. The Clips got the 1994 1st round draft pick that year. It was a late round pick that they used to choose Greg Minor, from Louisville. A decent college player, but turned out to be much of nothing in the pros. The best players remaining in that draft, if we'd kept our pick, turned out to be Charlie Ward and Howard Eisley. So at the worst, we traded Nique and Charlie Ward, who could've been a serviceable PG behind Mookie, for nothing.

LOL . . what a great thread. Hilarious even. My vote. BK, by a hair . . only because it's ovbious that we have talent on this team, and BK had to completely unravel the mess that Babock left us in. This team isn't digressing, it's improving. It may not be improving rapidly, but it is improving. As far as Babcock goes, keep in mind that he came to the Hawks right when we were still a formidible team in the East. It's not like Petey was responsible for trading for Nique back in '83, or drafting Doc or Willis. Those players, the foundation for those great mid to late-80s teams, were already in place by the time Babcock took control in '89. And for the most part, we were a VETERAN ballclub. As far as BK goes, he has completely rebuilt this team, and has put us in the position to at least be a competitive team in the East . . when healthy. His defining moment as a GM, may be to fire Woody, and bring in a good coach to maximize the total potential of this team. But right now, his defining moment is the acquisition of Joe Johnson . . with the non-acquisition of Chris Paul being a close 2nd. Contrary to popular belief, Woody and BK will not be fired together. Woody will go first, and BK will have at least another year or two after Woody is gone, to right the ship with a good coaching hire, or a good trade. They may be boys, but when it comes to business, they are NOT a package deal. The coach is almost always fired FIRST, before the GM is let go. Babcock's best move as GM wasn't any trade he made. It was the acquisition of Lenny Wilkens, which almost immeadiately transformed us from a mediocre team, to a damn good team. BK at least deseves a chance to see if Woody can turn this around this season . . or fire him at the end of the season and hire the type of "impact" coach that Babcock did. His worst move was easily the Dominique fiasco. If anything, you let Nique play out the rest of the season without a contract, and see if he could get it together enough in the playoffs, to make a major run at a title. Sothron says that Nique was "done" after he hurt his achilles. LOL . . someone has a bad memory then. If memory serves me correct, Nique won "Comeback Player of the Year" in 1993, after coming back from that injury. ( His injury occured in the 91 - 92 season by the way ). Nique struggled at times on that 93 - 94 squad, but he was still the leading scorer and the one guy that teams had to fear. The difference, is that he lost his explosiveness going to the hole and relied heavily on his jumper. But he was still the best "scorer" we had on that team. I know why Pete made the trade. But with the way the league was during that time, it was absolutely the wrong decision. Even if you lost Nique for nothing at the end of the year, his presence on that team gave us the best chance to win an NBA Title. In the playoffs, you need people who possess the ability to take over a game. Nique was the only player on that squad who could do that. When we traded Nique for Manning, you essentially gave up that threat, for an all-around player who was more of a team guy, than a superstar type talent. In the NBA, superstars win titles, not great "team guys" who aren't superstars. That Hawks team was unbeatable at home. And frankly, if he wasn't intent on resigning Nique, he at least owed it to Nique to keep him on the team, and see if the Hawks to get it done without Jordan being in the league. So what happened in the playoffs? Danny Manning PROVED that he couldn't handle the burden of being a "go-to guy". He was merely an Al Harrington type, who could flourish with great players around him, but not handle being "the man". ( with all of the critics about JJ being a good role player but couldn't be "the man", Manning was the true "role player" who couldn't be a superstar ) His play in that Miami series almost had the Hawks make history. He alone almost cost us to be the first #1 seed to ever lose in the first round of the playoffs. Thankfully, Seattle lost to Denver in that same year, to inherit that dubious honor. But the top seeds in each conference could've very easily went down that year. Then, we lose to an Indiana team in the 2nd round. That's why Hawks fans hate . . ABSOLUTELY HATE BABCOCK !! He cost us an NBA title with that Nique trade. And who's to say that Nique doesn't resign with the team, if another team doesn't give him what he wants? When you compare Peter to BK, BK looks like "Saddam Hussein" compared to Babcock's "Hitler". If given the choice, give me Saddam. No Jordan. And we had home court advantage. And we couldn't even get to the ECF with that (( bleep )) Danny Manning on that team. Why? Because we'd lost our offensive firepower with the departure of Nique. LOL . . Plus we gave Phoenix a 1st round pick in that Manning trade. And people think the JJ for Diaw + 2 picks was a horrible trade. Not compared to that. One more thing. For all of you people that think Babcock is "hands-down" the choice here . . Babcock's first coaching hire . . was Bobby Weiss.

I would love to see Woody shake up the lineup a bit, just to see if he can get a positive response out of the team. How about this lineup to start the game: G - Salim G - JJ F - Childress F - Shelden C - Solomon You don't have to stay with this group for long. Just stay with them to see what kind of energy we can come out with to start the game. If you go with this lineup, you're basically telling Speedy, Marvin, and ZaZa to step up their games. I'd still play those 3 at least 30 minutes, unless Salim and Solomon really responded to being in the starting lineup. But it's the type of thing a coach can do to really shake up his team, and try to get a positive response. Salim is a "me-guy", so he may not even deserve to start. But I've long said that even with all of his flaws, Salim has the "mentality" of a big time scorer in this league, even if he can't run the point one lick. A lot of people don't like the fact that Salim looks to shoot everytime he gets the ball. But that's the "scorers" mentality. The vast majority of the great scorers in this league have that mentality. With Salim, it's all about him taking good shots in rhythm, and not forcing the issue. And with the offense struggling, JJ would have two guys to possibly get the ball to in Salim and Childress. With that lineup, you could alternate who brings the ball up the court between JJ, Salim, and Chill . . while keeping Shelden in the game for muscle and rebounding, and having an active body like Solomon in the game. If it works, Woody looks like a genius, and may go with that group to start games for a while. If it doesn't, Woody can always say that he was just trying to shake up a few people. When you're in a freefall like we are right now, I'm game for any lineup change, for the good of the team.

Quote: Even simplier than what we can do in the Half court set is that we need to get the ball up quicker. We waste so much time walking it up. With a team like ours, from the rebound we should be running. From the inbound we should be running. If nobody comes out to meet the PG, he should go in for a layup. I watched San Antonio just out think us. They waited for us to get lazy and then they were off running. And Marvin... for somebody who is supposed to be such an Athlete, he was dragging ass like Pete Chillcut. And they're the oldest team in the league, and know how to play at any pace. That's what experience will do for you, even if athletically, you don't have the superior team. Conversely, we're the youngest team in the league, and make a lot of "young" mistakes. That's why I ask some of you guys "what kind of team do you want to support?" - Do you want to trade some of our kids right now, to bring in veteran players that know how to play the game? - Or do you want to stick with the kids, and continue to let them go through their growing pains, even if it still means that they may not reach that 35 win level this year? You gotta pick a side Hawks fans. It's either go with the kids . . or give up with what we've acquired over the last 2 - 3 years, and start anew. Risk #1: The kids may not develop into stars, even though Chill and Smoove are easily better players than they were in their rookie seasons. But there is no guarantee that anybody, outside of JJ, will be a star on this team in 2 years. Reward #1: Keeping the kids around may be good for the overall chemistry of the team, when in turn, may elevate one or two of these kids to that "star" level. Risk #2: Trading the kids for veteran players is the same thing that the Hawks used to in the Babcock era. If we don't acquire the right players or have the right coach, we're still at the same level and we're screwed for the future. Reward #2: Bringing in veteran players, while keeping at least 2 of our best young players, may be the quickest way to getting this team back to respectability. So pick a side Hawks fans, and learn to accept the risks and rewards of the decision.