Mike Woodson isn't up to the job...

[DJlaysitup]

Quote:

---

I have actually written every Hawks owner and complained. Bruce Levenson and Bernie Mullen wrote back but they were the only ones. Mullen thinks Woody is young like the team, makes mistakes, but will grow with the team. My point to him was simple: We have enough "growing" going on...lets get a good coach who is already there to speed the process along. He admitted Woody made mistakes but said he would improve. Why not bring in a coach who is ready for prime time? It may just be that the team is ready for good things. And a good coach could get us to the playoffs now...

---

You are dead right TexP...and I wouldn't even bring the playoffs into the equasion. Our guys DESERVE quality coaching to improve - otherwise we are just a dog pound that players count the days to get out of.

[Guest]

Quote:

---

I have actually written every Hawks owner and complained. Bruce Levenson and Bernie Mullen wrote back but they were the only ones. Mullen thinks Woody is young like the team, makes mistakes, but will grow with the team.

---

Mullin is a complete ass and moron. He has never dealt with basketball in his whole career, and everywhere he has been he has had a mirage success. Look at the Rockies, he likes to attribute the extremely high attendance to him but in reality a deaf, blind, and mute guy could have produced the same results because it was the first time Denver ever had a baseball team and they had an EXTREMELY large stadium.

Mullin should have also said that he is very young (in the business) and constantly makes mistakes. Those mistakes would be exemplified with BK and Woodson.

[bootsybug]

Woodsen's got to go. If they can't afford someone else, promote one of his assistants, like Herb Brown or one of those other confused looking guys.

[Plastic Man]

i say at the end of the 3rd quarter, we send woody and our d-leaguers to the locker room. out top 7-8 players can finish better on their own. it seems we've lost several games solely in the 4th again this season.

[mrhonline]

Quote:

---

I'm not defending Woodson in the least but there's honestly no need to get upset over it. There's no chance of Woodson being fired until the ownership situation is finished.

On the same wavelength I've reconciled the fact we've blown three drafts under Knight. There's no need to constantly dwell on who we could have drafted.

---

LOL. Sothron has found the "Zen."

[Wretch]

Midway through last season. Our team is young and green enough as it is. We don't need a green coach trying to bring them along. I was impressed with the way these cats came out early in the season...but the constant 4th quarter meltdowns/close losses are a clear indication. As they were last year.

It is time for a change in philosophy. Unfortuneately, we may be stuck with what we have.

[jerrywest]

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

I'm not defending Woodson in the least but there's honestly no need to get upset over it. There's no chance of Woodson being fired until the ownership situation is finished.

On the same wavelength I've reconciled the fact we've blown three drafts under Knight. There's no need to constantly dwell on who we could have drafted.

---

LOL. Sothron has found the "Zen."

---

LOL.

[Swatguy]

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

I'm not defending Woodson in the least but there's honestly no need to get upset over it. There's no chance of Woodson being fired until the ownership situation is finished.

On the same wavelength I've reconciled the fact we've blown three drafts under Knight. There's no need to constantly dwell on who we could have drafted.

---

LOL. Sothron has found the "Zen."

---

It's a beautiful thing to see.

[TexasPete]

I didn't actually talk to Mullen but he left me a voicemail. I listened and then I became worried because the things this guy said in his message were a joke. I can't believe this guy actually is the President of the Hawks. He came off like a rank amateur, a guy off the street. What he said made little sense...getting a coach who could grow like the team. WTF??? Most teams hire coaches who are ready NOW. Not us. We get a guy learning on the job just like the players. I'm not kidding when I tell you he said Woody was making a lot of rookie mistakes but BK thinks he will be fine. For those fans who annoint all these "top executives" as really knowing what they are doing because of their title...think again. The Atlanta Spirit are poorly run and as FANATIC said, they are run by a guy who knows jack squat about basketball. Only the Spirit would hire the President and hope he could learn the game. Woody is a terrible NBA coach but the guys over him are no better.

[Guest Walter]

Quote:

---

I'm not defending Woodson in the least but there's honestly no need to get upset over it. There's no chance of Woodson being fired until the ownership situation is finished.

On the same wavelength I've reconciled the fact we've blown three drafts under Knight. There's no need to constantly dwell on who we could have drafted.

---

I'm not reconciled to either fact until the causes are removed. As long as BK is GM those 3 draft mistakes are front and foremost. As long as Woody is coach his juvenile in and out of game coaching is in our collective faces.

I'm sure simple practicing the 4 noble truths would cause me less suffering as a result of this team's disasterous "plan for victory" invisioned and enacted by it's "decider" and "general on the ground", but it's that same suffering that combined with everyone else's just might get something done about it.

Suffering for my Hawks,

Walter

[Sothron]

lol I'm not the Buddah

I just honestly have looked at everything and have shrugged my shoulders mentally so to speak. Everyone on this site knows how I feel about Knight and Woodson. Everyone on this site knows that I wanted Deron over Marvin or whatever other transaction is topical. Why keep repeating the same mantra?

I know, and I mean KNOW, that Knight and Woodson are locked at the hip until the ownership situation is final. There's just no logic to work up a lot of angst over them when it has no effect or even has the "haha I was right!" feeling when they do both get canned. Ditto for the draft picks...we can't redo the drafts. We know who blew them. We know whose on the team as actual Hawks too. I can either continue to hold a grudge on some level against them because they weren't "my guys" or I can fully support them and hope they prove me wrong and do something great. I don't think its going to happen but at least its something more positive to dwell on.

I speak for no one but myself and cast no judgements on others. I just don't see the point in living in the past or in denial of the reality of the current ownership situation. So I choose the "Zen" approach.

[Guest Walter]

Quote:

---

We know whose on the team as actual Hawks too. I can either continue to hold a grudge on some level against them because they weren't "my guys" or I can fully support them and hope they prove me wrong and do something great. I don't think its going to happen but at least its something more positive to dwell on.

I speak for no one but myself and cast no judgements on others. I just don't see the point in living in the past or in denial of the reality of the current ownership situation. So I choose the "Zen" approach.

---

I can think of no other way to best support the troops than can (as in kick out) our version of Rumsfeld and his handpicked general. That and if we're going to keep JS and MW, knowing they are the two forwards who must succeed starting together if this version of the Hawks are to succeed, get a GD center that we can actually pair with them!

I hear what you are saying. It sounds very nice over there. I'm just not there yet and I don't believe I can get there as long as BK and Woodson remain in a position to damn this rebuild. Maybe it's petty. Maybe amongst 10,000 other like-minded fans it means change. Likely a little of both.

If you could bottle your "zen" secret I could no doubt use hits of it from time to time. Especially after 21 pt. 4th quarter collapses.

W

[Sothron]

Once the ownership situation is settled, either way, it means Woodson *at least* is gone. That helps bring me peace.

[KB21]

Quote:

---

Midway through last season. Our team is young and green enough as it is. We don't need a green coach trying to bring them along. I was impressed with the way these cats came out early in the season...but the constant 4th quarter meltdowns/close losses are a clear indication. As they were last year.

It is time for a change in philosophy. Unfortuneatly, we may be stuck with what we have.

---

I'm not following this line of thought. Since when does a young basketball team require a veteran coach? You know, Cleveland tried that with Paul Silas. They had just drafted the 18 year old LeBron James and had basically retooled their entire team around him. They had the veteran coach. However, it didn't quite work out the way they wanted. The veteran coach kept putting the shackles on the young star's game, and the young star eventually got the veteran coach fired. In comes the "green" coach, Mike Brown.

Even the veteran coaches started out as green coaches at one point in their careers, and not all of them got their first job on ready made contending teams.

[AHF]

Quote:

---

Once the ownership situation is settled, either way, it means Woodson *at least* is gone. That helps bring me peace.

---

Agreed. Unless we are just kicking arse, Woodson will be gone when the ownership situation is resolved. And if we are kicking butt, then there will probably be fewer complaints about Woodson anyway!

[Wretch]

I don't know if it is the greenness so much as it is the mentality. Obviously, I think it would benefit a young team to have a coach in there who knows what's going on...but at the same time, if they just allow a young team to do what it wants then does it matter if they are a vet coach or not? Conversely, a veteran group may do better with a coach who allows special players (and veterans who know what they're doing) more freedom.

In our situation, a hard nosed coach may be just the thing to get these guys in line; a guy that knows what he's doing would only be an added boon. That would spell Veteran. The Cleveland situation is different, simply because LeBron is a different kind of player. The guy hasn't played like a rookie since his first NBA dribble, and as more veterans were added to that team and the players got older...was a hard nosed, "do it my way", veteran coach what they needed?

I'm sure any of this can be argued from any angle. But how can young players, making young player mistakes...coupled with an inexperienced head coach, making inexperienced head coaching mistakes...ever be a good thing? Perhaps initially, a rookie coach gives these players the freedom they need. At this point, these young guys need all the help they can get as they learn to win.

I don't think that Woody is an outright terrible coach, but I don't feel that he can take this team any further.

[KB21]

I think you have to pick the right veteran coach for the situation. There are a lot of veteran coaches out there that are set in their ways and will not bend at all, and with a lot of them, I'm not sure a player like Josh Smith would have ever been given the opportunity to develop like he has under Woody if a guy like Larry Brown, Lenny Wilkens, or Paul Silas were in place when we drafted him. I don't even think any of those guys would have been interested in the job back in 2004.

When this job was being filled back in '04, there were two finalists: Mike Woodson and Mike Brown. There may have been a third whose name has slipped my mind, but I do know that those two were in the mix. I'm not convinced that things would be markedly different now had Atlanta chosen Mike Brown back then. Mike Brown has proven to be a pretty good head coach, but he also went into a much better situation than he would have been in had Atlanta hired him.

Atlanta has done this before though. When the Hawks hired Mike Fratello back in the early '80s, it was a situation where a young, green coach was coaching a young, green team. Now, that team wasn't quite as youthful as this one, but it was still young. At that time, Dominique Wilkins, Doc Rivers, Antoine Carr, and Cliff Levingston were all young players with 2-3 years of experience on the team, and the team eventually added young guys like Kevin Willis and Spud Webb to the mix.

[Sothron]

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Once the ownership situation is settled, either way, it means Woodson *at least* is gone. That helps bring me peace.

---

Agreed. Unless we are just kicking arse, Woodson will be gone when the ownership situation is resolved. And if we are kicking butt, then there will probably be fewer complaints about Woodson anyway!

---

That's what I like to call a win/win situation. Either the guy continues to flounder and gets canned or he finally leads the team to a winning season. Either one is good for this Hawks fan.

[jerrywest]

Sothron - before you give him your therapist's number you should see "What about Bob".

[Sothron]

lol that's classic. I might be the only person in America who liked that movie too. Bill Murray = greatness.