thecampster

Watching the game tonight, I'm finally comfortable I can make some points. 1. I'm starting to scream at the t.v. when we are on defense. We are young. You cannot afford to let the offense get set. We need to be taking the risk of other teams dribble driving and we need to be playing much, much tighter on the outside. We should be picking up dribblers at 35 feet and our wings need to be giving no more than 3 feet cushion. We need to be inviting the dribble drive and forcing opposing point guards to beat us. This playing off people to discourage the dribble drive is getting us killed on 3's. Every team is stepping into 3's which is instant death. 3 point shooters need to be uncomfortable and you do that by crowding before the catch. 2. Alex Len struggled some as a starter but Dedmon is getting killed as a starter. Tonight in reversed roles....Dedmon was -38, Len +22. Backup center is a much better place for a borderline starter to shine. Dedmon was doing it to the tune of +5....Len is showing he is just better. 3. We need to stop trying to run sets like the 85 Celtics. We are not a vet team and with every game we are getting slower and slower entering our offense. We are 2 years away from being vet enough to out scheme teams. We are running less and less and its killing us. We need a guard leaking out every play and need to get that ball up court. If we keep letting teams set up their defense, it doesn't matter what is on the white board. 4. Justin Anderson needs rotational minutes. I know he's been hurt and working his way back in but in 3 games, under 33 minutes he is +19. He's been positive in the plus minus every night he's played. He's active and meets the ball early on defense. I don't care whose minutes are taken....he needs 15+ minutes a game.

Actually I'm assuming we move the contracts of either and or both of Baze/Plumlee for longer more talented contracts. Maybe at the deadline for someone injured but better. I don't believe we're bringing in talent at first without trading for it.

What I think most people forget when looking "forward" is that there are $31 million in unknowns going into next year. That's 30% of the cap taken up by Baze and Plumlee. The current roster is under spent $28 million due to Melo and Crawford. We gain $28 million in talent we didn't have this year but still have $31 million tied up. Playoffs or not are in Schlenk's hands when you look at how he handles those 2 contracts.

Actually, the below is not crazy when you look at the cap situation going forward. Money committed next year is 66 million (ish). Players on the roster are: Young/ Baze/Bembry Prince/Huerter Collin/Spellman Len/Plumlee Plumlee + Baze will both be expirings and totally $31 million. So looking at the above, you can subtract Baze + Plumlee and say there is only $35 million committed to our core. There is another $10 million committed to 2 incoming draft picks. This leaves as much as $63 million available for talent acquisition via trade or signing. Competing to make the playoffs isn't crazy. Stating we'd be a 2 seed...that would be nuts. But seeing as almost 70% of next year's roster is unknown and buildable...not crazy. Overly optimistic...yah....crazy...no.

Actually, I'm highly encouraged by what I'm seeing. What we had when the year started. 3 rookies all coming from college systems, transitioning to pro style defenses and expected to play rotation minutes. A new 1st time starting center changing systems. An injured previous starting Center. An injured anticipated starting PF. A 3rd year SF stepping up in role. A 3rd year G/F coming off a season of major injuries. A 1st time new head coach with a mostly new staff. A new offensive system. A broken locker room due the departure of a problem starting PG. A dependence on a 41 year old player to play starter minutes due to other injuries. Chaos surrounding the completion of the upgraded stadium. When you consider those things to start the season and that we've won 3 games and been competitive in 4 or 5 others....I'd call this a decent start. My target was 20 games to figure out what we had. To get John Collins back and healthy and for the rest of the league to start having injuries so we could have fair roster comparisons. My expectation was always for us to be terrible at the start of the year and get better as the season wore on due to cohesion and rookies adjusting. Anyone expecting what we had day 1 to be what we'd have day 120 is delusional.

Jimmy Butler = 1 of my top 3 favorite players in the NBA. The East just got very complicated.

A lot of what you're posting here we covered in the draft threads. Let me sum up. 1) Best reason to take Trae, is he's a unicorn in modern basketball. He's an eye's up passer. He isn't a blow by point guard but instead uses a series of stop and goes to get separation and gets the defender on his hip, in order to keep his eyes/elbows up to make the pass first. 2) This was talked about extensively in the predraft threads but the transition from the college/Euro 3 to the NBA 3 is very complicated. First, the players are almost all a bit taller longer than in college and it changes angles slightly. The zone vs man to man means that the college 3 is almost always off the catch and shoot. The NBA 3 is much more often a dribble pull up or a pull up off the screen. Not all, but a much bigger percentage. Lastly, the NBA 3 is 2 feet longer than college and a bit longer than the Euro 3. All of these factors lead to 3 point shooters needing about 2 years to adjust. It takes a very long time to forget muscle memory. 3) The NBA game is 8 minutes longer and teams play on average 3.5 games per week. In college they play a shorter game with quicker player substitutions, zone defenses and play at most 2 games per week. Legs are much fresher in college. These are all adjustments. They take time.

I want no part of that young man slamming his million dollar fingers against the rim. I'm alright with the layups.

Just did some basic math. Considering the Hawks are average about 107 possessions per game due to pace...the points against aren't crazy.

He isn't the only one its been happening to the last few weeks. Just took the opportunity to say something on that particular offense.

Nope, but I've noticed a trend and someone needed to say it.

Not playing the majority of their games against the west they don't.

If the season ended today we'd get the 6th pick and that's it. No other picks would transfer.

18.63 t/o per game

Player G Min TO PF TO/48 F/48 Trae Young 8 247:32:00 29 18 5.63 3.5 Taurean Prince 8 230:27:00 31 29 6.46 6.04 Kent Bazemore 8 234:57:00 17 27 3.48 5.52 Alex Len 8 188:02:00 13 22 3.31 5.62 DeAndre' Bembry 8 199:51:00 17 18 4.1 4.33 Jeremy Lin 8 125:31:00 15 11 5.76 4.21 Vince Carter 8 165:41:00 7 15 2.04 4.35 Omari Spellman 7 126:29:00 6 13 2.28 4.94 Kevin Huerter 8 111:31:00 5 5 2.16 2.16 Dewayne Dedmon 5 91:31:00 1 14 0.53 7.36 Alex Poythress 5 89:20:00 4 16 2.15 8.6 Miles Plumlee 5 44:22:00 4 4 4.34 4.34 Tyler Dorsey 5 51:48:00 0 4 0 3.73 Jaylen Adams 4 12:58 0 0 0 Corrected

might have made a minor mistake or 2 in there but Prince's numbers are concerning....screwed up Len's turnovers Distracted by tv

Turnovers are the real issue right now. Player G Min TO PF TO/48 F/48 Trae Young 8 247:32:00 29 18 5.63 3.5 Taurean Prince 8 230:27:00 31 29 6.46 6.04 Kent Bazemore 8 234:57:00 17 27 3.48 5.52 Alex Len 8 188:02:00 13 22 5.62 5.62 DeAndre' Bembry 8 199:51:00 17 18 4.33 4.33 Jeremy Lin 8 125:31:00 15 11 4.21 4.21 Vince Carter 8 165:41:00 7 15 4.35 4.35 Omari Spellman 7 126:29:00 6 13 2.28 4.94 Kevin Huerter 8 111:31:00 5 5 2.16 2.16 Dewayne Dedmon 5 91:31:00 1 14 0.53 7.36 Alex Poythress 5 89:20:00 4 16 2.15 8.6 Miles Plumlee 5 44:22:00 4 4 4.34 4.34 Tyler Dorsey 5 51:48:00 0 4 0 3.73 Jaylen Adams 4 12:58 0 0 0

Lets stick to attacking the post, not the poster.

Then sportrac is wrong not me. The math is there in plain english. We chose other priorities. It was completely plausible to make Carroll's contract work as well. It only took a little reworking on the roster. The cap is very simple. The rules governing resigning the players wouldn't have mattered if we had cleared just a few million in room and or not traded for Hardaway which we had no intention of keeping, not traded for Thabo before and not valued other talent we were just shipping off in a year. We managed the situation badly, there was money for both. L2Cap.

and before even one of you starts in with some maddening posts of "they would have if they could" or "everyone knows they couldn't", argue with sportrac's official salary figures. You aren't arguing with me, you're arguing with them.

I can't believe I have to go back in detail and defend this. Things that led up to Carroll and Millsap leaving. 1) On June 25th, the Hawks added Tim Hardaway Jr. and 2 2nd round picks for the draft rights to Jerian Grant. Salary added $1.3 million 2015 and 2.2 million 2016. 2) On July 9th, the Hawks added $8.8 million with trade kicker on Tiago Splitter for draft considerations. 3) The previous season, the Hawks acquired Thabo Sefalosha at $4 million annually. 4) In 2013 the Hawks gave Jeff Teague a 4 year extension at $8 million annually. 5) The NBA salary cap in 2015-16 was only $70 million. Remember the cap jumped over 20 million the next season. So using the above numbers, The Hawks committed $22 million dollars or 31.4% of the cap on players who were all phased off the roster in the short term but who denied the $5 millionish difference needed to keep both players. The example of Horford was just used to stop idiotic challenge posts...was not the "serious" consideration and was spelled out in the post. Yes I'm having a bad day and yes having to constantly defend fact on the board gets old. https://www.spotrac.com/nba/atlanta-hawks/cap/2014/ Here you can see the salary from the 2014-15 season. https://www.spotrac.com/nba/atlanta-hawks/cap/2015/ Here is the 15-16 final cap numbers. You can see that in 15-16 we ended up 1.4 million over the cap but $13 million under the LT. Carroll's 2015 salary from the Raptors was $13.6 million. Tiago's cap hit was 8.8 million. A difference of 4.8 million. So the difference between keeping Carroll or not was $4.8 million. Mike Scott + Thabo in a salary dump created that space. Considering Mike was a near total loss that year, not a bad plan. Thabo moved and don't make the trade for Hardaway and you can sign Carroll or....wait to make the Hardaway deal until after signing Carroll, you had an exception to use for the Hardaway salary. Other things not considered here, the salary in Sportrac includes all of Hinrich's salary but he wasn't acquired until mid year. Simply dumping Scott + Hinrich's salary would have been enough. Conclusion: There was absolutely enough there to sign both players for what they both signed for. Some of you are maddening.

Not true. We were able to sign both for more but we would have had to make decisions with other players. An easy scenario (only one I'm suggesting in hindsight) would have been assuming we were losing Horford the next year and flipping him for a player and a pick. We were about $5,000,000 from retaining both. There were options, we just didn't want to commit to them long term.

Yes, I'm claiming "The Farm". So serious question. Anyone else whose been down to the new stadium have a terrible concessions experience? I waited in line over 10 minutes to be told I'd have to wait 15 more minutes for a hot dog or pizza. The was the shortest line and this was middle of the 2nd quarter. I almost missed the entire quarter. Went back later hoping it would be better and got a cold, boiled hot dog and some flimsy thing resembling baked vomit. Both times at the stand, no pepperoni available at a place that only sells 3 things...hot dogs, cheese and pepperoni pizza.

Thoughts from the new arena. Much better sight lines from the cheap seats. The vibe in the new stadium is pretty electric. It has a much better "feel". The new central scoreboad is amazing, even distracting. I kept noticing I was watching the game on the screen and not the floor. Concession price changes are a welcome change but concession lines were awful and when I got up there, they didn't have any food ready (Hot Dogs and Pizza vendor), never had cookies even though it was on the board and the food was below par. Guy near me brought back one of the gourmet burgers and I was very jealous. As far as the game goes, my perception changed dramatically. Huerter looked much better on the floor overall. Trae really looked to be pressing. Dedmon on the floor filled up stats but the offense stagnated with him looking out of place (like he was running last year's sets). I'm going to chalk this up to him not having time practicing with the guys.

Going to be sitting in T7, row G, Seats 17,18. If you're at the game tonight, come by and say hey to me and the wife.