Paging Dr. Northcyde...

[ATL_BALLER]

Tell us, oh eternal optimist, why we should feel good about this team?

No "LOL, you people crack me up with your overreactions." Serious, legitimate reasons why you so believe in this current squad?

[TheDude]

if you were to ask someone to help you feel good about the team in an honest way, i can see someone replying....but the fact that you are actually calling out someone FOR BEING POSITIVE is a little over the top.

[ATL_BALLER]

Not calling him out for being positive. I want to feel positive, and he always gives a good spin.

Sheesh.

[AtLaS]

Quote:

---

why we should feel good about this team?

---

Because Woody is our head coach!!

[TheNorthCydeRises]

LOL ( my bad for laughing ), but I saw this on my cellphone this morning.

Here's the thing Baller. I'm not going into panic mode about this team, until

1) I see that we still struggle with Acie in the lineup,

and 2) we start losing at an unacceptable rate.

I said at the beginning of the season, that the Hawks needed to have at least 6 - 7 wins at the end of the month. And to me, it didn't matter which 6 or 7 games we won, just as long as we got to that mark by December 1st. If we get that, I'm cool.

The problem though, is that we came out the gate looking like a world beater, when we took out Dallas and Phoenix. That elevated expectations beyond belief here, and even amongst the major sportswriters. So it always seems worse, when we lose games to teams like Seattle and Chicago, who can't seem to beat anybody.

We're 5 - 8 right now, and because of how we played last night, 75% of the fan base expects us to lose tonight. Well, this was the same thought most everyone had after the San Antonio loss. What do we do? We beat Miami. Then we beat the T-Wolves in a game we definitely should've lost. Both were ugly games, but they count as wins in the win column.

This fan base should stop expecting the Hawks to "bring it" every night, and expect them to be "schizophrenic" every night. We truly don't know which Hawk team will show up on a nightly basis.

I mean, what happens if we win 2 in a row? We're 7 - 8. If we lose 2 in a row, we're 5 - 10. If we split, we're 6 - 9. If we fall to 5 - 10, I won't mind Woody getting the axe one bit.

The crazy thing about the East, is that only 5 teams have records above .500 . . . five. Everybody else is just a schizophrenic as we are. We're nowhere near being a good team yet. We might play well on occasion, but we can't sustain it right now.

Here's something to look at though. We play 9 of our next 12, and 15 of our next 22 games at home. The season will probably be made or broken during this time. If we take care of business at home, people will definitely be talking about us, come February.

If we don't win at least 1/2 of these games, Woody probably should be shown the door and at least a few trades talked about.

If we can't make a major move in the standings in December and early January, we're looking at 2 Armageddon asteroid type road trips in late January and in February, that can kill the season. During that time, we'd have to play 14 out of 20 games on the road.

So let's see if the Hawks can make that move in these upcoming home games. The name of the game for November, was survival. If we can win at least one of these next two games, I'll chalk that up as surviving November.

[TheDude]

Word.