From Court Jester to Genius!

[Gray Mule]

If our Head Coach gets all the blame when the Hawks

loose their first game, he becomes our Court Jester.

Gotta have it both ways. He gets all the credit for

the victory #1, therefore, for the night, our Genius.

No one could get the ball to fall in the first game

and Hawks went quickly into never-never land. After

their patented "Sleepwalk" to open that game, they

did as well as A.I. and his gang. They just couldn't

recover from that awful start of the game.

Sacond game. Horrors! J.J. has 2 fouls early and all

is lost. No! Wait a minute. The Hawks didn't just

die and go away. In comes Childress and the team

goes right on playing as if nothing had happened.

In fact, things went so well that J.J. stayed on the

bench to start the second quarter. Wow!! The Hawks

CAN survive for a short time without our Captain and

our best player.

Our Genius Head Coach tonight rotated his entire bench

in and out of the game, some playing scant minutes and

some, Josh C. and T. Lue, going for extended minutes.

T.V. announcers said, "The team we saw tonight is the

team we saw in pre-season. That was not the team we

saw in the first game." Maybe they needed that first

one to get things going. We'll see.

A rested J.J. did it all in the late going. Makes me

wonder if resting him more in the early going, as was

necessary in this game, wouldn't be a wise investment

for late in the game. It worked this time, at least.

Happiness is having a Hawks victory to post about.

Here's hoping that this is the first of many more to come!!

GO HAWKS !!!!!!

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Quote:

---

If our Head Coach gets all the blame when the Hawks

loose their first game, he becomes our Court Jester.

Gotta have it both ways. He gets all the credit for

the victory #1, therefore, for the night, our Genius.

No one could get the ball to fall in the first game

and Hawks went quickly into never-never land. After

their patented "Sleepwalk" to open that game, they

did as well as A.I. and his gang. They just couldn't

recover from that awful start of the game.

Sacond game. Horrors! J.J. has 2 fouls early and all

is lost. No! Wait a minute. The Hawks didn't just

die and go away. In comes Childress and the team

goes right on playing as if nothing had happened.

In fact, things went so well that J.J. stayed on the

bench to start the second quarter. Wow!! The Hawks

CAN survive for a short time without our Captain and

our best player.

Our Genius Head Coach tonight rotated his entire bench

in and out of the game, some playing scant minutes and

some, Josh C. and T. Lue, going for extended minutes.

T.V. announcers said, "The team we saw tonight is the

team we saw in pre-season. That was not the team we

saw in the first game." Maybe they needed that first

one to get things going. We'll see.

A rested J.J. did it all in the late going. Makes me

wonder if resting him more in the early going, as was

necessary in this game, wouldn't be a wise investment

for late in the game. It worked this time, at least.

Happiness is having a Hawks victory to post about.

Here's hoping that this is the first of many more to come!!

GO HAWKS !!!!!!

---

(( clapping ))

LOL . . I pretty much said in another thread, what you typed here.

But the "squawkers" know more than our coach and our GM, so they'll never give them the credit when we win or play well.

The Hawks could've lost this game twice. Once, in the time that you stated when JJ was on the bench with his 2nd foul. Second, when the Knicks made the 4th quarter comeback and cut the lead to 3. We didn't panic and the coach didn't panic. We hit some shots and got a few stops on defense, and quickly pushed that lead back to 9 points.

But the people that constantly say that Woody is an "idiot" will never give him credit for that.

[Jdawgflow]

GM, I am honored that you are a part of this board. Great assessment and optimism. Kudos.

[DJlaysitup]

nice post...did you do that when we won 13 - or 26?

all is lovely.

[KB21]

Exactly!

I think the reasons the Hawks didn't let the game get away from them when Joe went out with his second foul in the first quarter are two fold.

First, I think Billy Knight has done a great job of putting together a deeper team. The Hawks had guys coming off the bench and making contributions like Josh Childress and Matt Frieje.

Second, the team and coaching staff didn't panic with both Joe and Zaza on the bench with two fouls a piece. They played team basketball and worked the ball to get open shots.

[Jdawgflow]

Graymule has had unwavering optimism with all things involving our Hawks (and probably most things in general) the entire time I have been on this site. He is a big part in what makes this site good IMO.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

This is a very deep team with few "scrub" players. The players we have coming off the bench are at the very least "adequate". And like you said KB, Billy Knight has to get the credit for that.

But some of these fans only want it one way. They want the Hawks to win, but they want to call BK an idiot for assembling this team.

Well, from my point of view, if people think that BK is an idiot, then they can't expect the team to win.

So if they can't expect the team to win, why even get their hopes up?

And why act like we DO have talented players on this team, if BK is an idiot, and they don't expect the team to win?

Either we have talent on this team, or we dont. If we do have talent, then BK gets the credit for that.

But I guess if we lose to Orlando tomorrow, then BK and Woodson will go back to being "idiots". On the other hand, they'll get no credit for the victory, if we win.

[TexasPete]

A win over the Knicks doesn't change the fact that we need a better coach and GM. That is...if we ever want to be a real factor in the league.

[AtLaS]

I can't believe noone has mentioned this, but the one thing Woodson did that really pissed me off was at the end of the second quarter. We had just built up a BIG lead by running, and the last 2 and a half minutes he put in ALL of our backups (including Freije and Bozeman), pretty much like we'd just cruise into the half and keep the lead. Well we didn't and ended up making a 15 point lead about 6 or 7, I can't remember exactly.

Either way that was a HORRIBLE coaching decision..

[TheNorthCydeRises]

That may be true. But you people that constantly criticize the coach and the GM have to let this year play out.

People act like that if we were to bring in Phil Jackson right and Jerry West right now, that the Hawks would win 55 games this season. LOL @ that.

We're a young team, and we make the mistakes that young teams make all the time in this league. The key for us, is to have some stability with players and coaches, and show that we're progressing in the right direction, which is exactly what I think we're doing right now.

The past 2 seasons, the Hawks have stared out 2 - 12 in October/November. The best record we've had in the past 5 years, was an 8 - 9 record in 2002 ( the JT, Big Dog, Reef, and Ratliff squad that started the season 3 - 1 and disappointly won 35 games that year )

Let's see where this team ranks with the teams we've had the past 5 years. Do we start out slow, or do we at least play close to .500 ball?

With 13 games in Oct/Nov, I say that we are at worst a 5 - 8 team . . at best an 7 - 6 team

Let's see where this team falls before everyone decides to throw the hammer down on Woody and BK.

[KB21]

If the Hawks had Jerry West, they might have gotten into the playoffs. However, it's pretty obvious by the job he has done in Memphis that the Hawks probably wouldn't have won any games in the playoffs.

I think the difference between Billy and other GM's is that Billy had the guts to take his time building this team and didn't start throwing around big money at every so called big name free agent that was available. He also had the guts to completely blow the team he inherited up. That had to be done, and it was going to take a while to dig ourselves out of that hole no matter what happened.

And here is another difference. There aren't too many coaches that would have come into the situation Mike came into when he took this job and done well. Instead of panicking and making a coaching change every year, the Hawks owners and front office has allowed Mike to grow as a coach along with his team. This is only his third season as the Hawks head coach, and I've seen enough improvement in his coaching to believe that he can hold onto this job long term. Larry Brown even stated that Mike is the best coach he's ever coached with, and that's saying something. Larry Brown has coached for a long time and has had several assistants go on to become head coaches.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Quote:

---

I can't believe noone has mentioned this, but the one thing Woodson did that really pissed me off was at the end of the second quarter. We had just built up a BIG lead by running, and the last 2 and a half minutes he put in ALL of our backups (including Freije and Bozeman), pretty much like we'd just cruise into the half and keep the lead. Well we didn't and ended up making a 15 point lead about 6 or 7, I can't remember exactly.

Either way that was a HORRIBLE coaching decision..

---

LMAO . . . do you people even watch basketball?

JJ had 2 fouls. So in a situation like that, most SANE coaches will pull a guy out so that they won't get a 3rd foul. Speedy picks up his 2nd foul with 1:39 to go in the half. So Woodson gets him out the game, along with Smoove, who also had 2 fouls.

It's 1:39 to go in the half . . . and the Hawks are up 44 - 31.

So the lineup we had on the floor to end the half was:

G - Lue

G - Bozeman

F - Childress

F - Shelden

C - Lorenzen

So here's what happened during that stretch at the end of the 2nd quarter:

- David Lee was at the line at the time of the substitution, and he makes the 2nd free throw.

- Bozeman Travels

- Lee hits a jumper

- Lorenzen misses a jumper

- Curry makes a lay-up, is fouled and adds a free throw

- Lue makes a jumper

- Francis misses

- Lorenzen is fouled and makes 1 of 2 free throws

Half is over.

So in that stretch of "horrible coaching" that you say Woodson done . . he not only kept Smoove, Speedy and JJ from getting their 3rd foul each by getting them out of the game, the Hawks were only outscored in that stretch by a 6 - 3 margin.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?g...01&period=2

LMAO . . . some of you guys are so obsessed with this "Woody is a bad coach" thing, that you start to make up stuff to try to prove your point.

This board is pure comedy.