thecampster

Bah! Tony Brothers.

I'll take the first championship years of the Bulls. Yes, Pippen/Jordan are a hard cover...But Trae, Capela, Collins vs Cartwright, Grant, Paxson....There isn't a gum covered gym floor in America where Cartwright/Grant could cover these 2. I'm an old timer but Jordan/Pippen never faced a team they had to chase around 40 screens a night each. That era was all about ISO basketball. This super fast, kick the ball around the horn 5 times and chasing corner 3's defense would have 1/2 of the Pistons, Lakers, Bulls champions of old completely gassed by the end of the 2nd quarter. For heaven's sake, Darko used to smoke. No athlete these days does that. Jordan, Nique were who they were because they were in the most incredible shape for the time. I love old school and maybe the teams of the early 2000's would have struggled but these old fools forget that they weren't switching, chasing, screening all night. They could hand check. Chasing screens takes your legs out like nothing else. Its a 100% different game. Today's rules, old school teams stand no chance. Yesterday's rules, we'd get bulldozed. Its as simple as that. We don't have anyone as strong as Kevin Willis. But there are only a handful of 80's players who could guard a modern point guard, without help...more or less Trae Young or Westbrook. Devin Booker would get 40 a night against old school players. Nobody from that era is covering him 1 on 1 with today's rules.

See "The good JuJu thread".

Here here! I 100% agree here and would never comment about another poster. Now that moose licking, back hair grooming, closet Boston fan @kg01 with his ignorant muffin opinions and immoral use of Lysol as deoderant is the one you have to watch

Forget everything else Cam brings. Cam drives ball handers nuts (as does Dunn). You put Cam, Dunn in the game and offenses take 5 extra seconds every trip down the floor just getting into their sets. Its ugly but 2 turnovers turning into easy transitions is an 8 point swing in most games. My favorite part of last nights game was watching Milwaukee flounder getting into sets. All the long clocks, the turnovers, the forced jumpers. There is a huge difference in rhythm jumpers and forced jumpers. On ball defenders change everything at both ends of the floor. The NBA game is won in transition 9 nights out of 10. Give me Cam tipping rebounds, disrupting passing lanes, stopping ball handlers. I'll take the little bit of bad with the electric.

On the couch with my wife as he laid on the ground and I watched the replay. "Oh F$%@", "What?" she asks. "Oh man, I didn't want to win like that." "Like what? What happened?" a little concerned at my mood. "Giannis just tore his ACL! Man he's a good dude. Type of guy you'd love to have on your squad. He's a gamer. D@&#!" The second it happened, that was my first thought. I'll be shocked if the MRI comes back and says he's okay/a game time decision. Its the way it extended and buckled. We've all seen that before.

more good juju to come. Remember, you make your own good juju by playing elite level team defense.

I knew they were working with Cam on his shot mechanics while he was out...but Dayamn. Elbows in, consistent lift with release on the lift. Not perfect but OMG so much better.

Yah I can't argue that.

In Dunn's first return, he looked gas'd and slower than normal. He looked better tonight, still not quite himself. Reddish looked like a good player who hadn't played in 2 months. Its obvious he worked on his mechanics shooting. His feet are together, there was consistency on the bend and push from shot to shot. His elbows stayed in. I don't think he'll ever be a 40% three point shooter but you still have to have steady mechanics.

Milwaukee just spent a ton of energy to only be up 6.

I'm treading lightly because this thread is raining on the good juju I've been trying to conjure. Speaking only for me, I was adamant that tanking is a crap shoot and works out way less than it works for. Lets take a small history lesson. In 2014/15 we won 60 games but were a very flawed 60 win team. We were heavy iso reliant and lacked athleticism where it mattered. We were much too finesse and it showed. 2015/16 and 16/17 we were paying the price for aging, bad spending, and really bad drafting. We lacked vision. The tank was on. 17/18 was the first tank season and if you're honest...lucked the hell out with John Collins. Only the best drafting teams get Collins at 19 there. Collins is not the result of tanking as he came off a 5th seeded finish the previous year. 18/19 we finish 12 of 15 in conference and somehow got very, very luck with the 3rd pick. This was Schlenk and company's first bit of magic in the draft making the trade for Young at 5 and securing Reddish the next year. Now again, we lucked out because no one expected that Dallas pick to be at 10. Everyone thought that with Luka and the money Dallas spent they'd be much better. Dirk missing 31 games and a slew of injuries doomed their season. In no world should they have won only 33 games. This was our first bit of luck. Our second bit is Kevin Huerter's bad hand (most forget about this) had him slip out of the lottery down to the 19th pick. Before he hurt his hand, he looked like a lock to go somewhere around 12. 19/20 we finish 14 of 15, 2 years of sucking and I'm spitting nails. We draft Hunter and luck into Reddish. Neither really should have been there for us. 20/21 we luck into O squared who turned out better than expected for a big rookie. We got lucky 4 straight years in the draft. 5 of the 6 players we drafted should not have been there when we drafted or we got lucky where we drafted and had a good enough GM to take advantage. Irregardless, the first 34 games of our season showed that those draft picks alone weren't enough to get it done. It was only when the vets got healthy that we started winning. The stars aligned, but we didn't plan it like this. 3-5 teams a year purposely tank and most get sent packing and lose their highly touted rookies after their 1st contract runs out and they are tired of losing.

Let me rephrase this. I've been involved with a Youtuber recently who is starting/running a channel on sports betting. We started talking Hawks a bit ago and now email after every game. He hasn't followed the Hawks' rise and is baffled by this turnaround and keeps using season stats to justify his wagering positions. So I dropped this knowledge on him. Over the first 34 games of this season, Bogdanovic missed 1/2. In the games he did play, he only scored 20 points 1 time all the way up to March 18. So over the first 40 games of the year, BB scored 20 once and less than 10, 10 times. He played in 29 of the next 32 games and scored 20 in 19 of those games and only scored less than 10 once. We aren't the 5th seed because we tanked. We aren't where we are because we're great at drafting. We're where we are because we traded for damaged goods in Capela and waited on him to get healthy, Gallo played out of his mind at times this year, Snell hit timely 3's when we needed him, Williams came here and and showed out and BB got over Covid and injuries. We spent money on quality vets that filled specific needs. Without that, we'd just be a team with a bunch of 1st contract players.

Tell that to Detroit, Cleveland and in a few years Houston. We could have just as easily ended up with Bagley, Bamba and been watching reruns of South Park right now.

Actually I was addressing those piling on....You won the right to post that a while ago.

Tonight I believe Gallo/Collins will be the deciding factors and will have a big impact.

HIPPA - Its up to the player to disclose details on the condition. Minor means not dying, doesn't mean he can go. Whatever it is, it is probably going to affect his career going forward. The vagueness is an obvious attempt to avoid legalities. https://www.onhealth.com/content/1/respiratory_infections_causes As you can see, its a wide swath being cut.

Lets try to remember I was more on KB's side during this debate than the mob's. My position was that the contracts we were taking on for picks could have just as easily been spent on quality free agents. We had varying opinions on rebuild vs reload but neither of us wanted to lose on purpose. I just put a shinier hat on the subject. In the end, we got tired of the losing and did spend that free agent money to rebuild. This run isn't happening without BB, Gallo, Rondo (into Williams), Snell. Its easy to point at the successful picks and forget that Cam really isn't contributing to this run and Hunter barely contributed (neither of their fault). If I had it to do all over again, I would have preferred to sign vets, win some games, trade one of those vets and our low non-lottery picks for 5 or 6 and move up to take Trae. I hate losing, really hate losing on purpose and just because we struck gold on Trae, doesn't mean it works for everyone. Huerter, Collins were big parts of this run and were 19 picks. That's low to mid level playoff team level. One thing KB and I were very much in agreement on is that you spend money on scouting and scouting philosophy. Having the right scouting team is more important than high picks. That was proven with the rise of Huerter/Collins. You might want to lay off the good doctor.

If Nate were to leave and be a head coach and find his ideal situation elsewhere, it would be a PR nightmare here. He has an excellent relationship with the players, is well respected by players around the league and after this season has credential capital to burn. At this point, the Hawks pretty much have to give him everything he wants. Barring some disaster, he'll be the coach here next year. 99.234% sure of that.

This. If its me, I'm giving Bogi game 2 off and telling him to get treatment on the knee. I'm having Snell start, split minutes with Solo. I'm kicking to Snell every chance I get and letting him fire away.

Mike Budenholzer asking Thibbs how to beat Trae Young.

The wretched look on Skip Bayless' face as he comes to realize Trae is a better teammate, better distributor, more liked player than Luka is better than drinking any fan base's tears.

input, not total control

I have a different reason for saying no. When Luka was drafted, one of my concerns were the miles already on his body. He takes a beating with his play style and its shown with some tic tac injuries. I'm not a believer that he'll be able to play at this level long term. I also am not a fan of stat getters. I love players who get others involved.