ZaZa sent to the showers early by Woody

[Lascar78]

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It's not his fault the players don't rotate on D.

nope . . not his fault.

WE HAVE A SUPPOSED DEFENSIVE SPECIALIST COACH, AND IT'S NOT HIS FAULT THAT OUR TEAM DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO ROTATE PROPERLY ON D??? Then why is he here? If you are a defensive specialist, your #1 responsibility is to get the team to play good individual and team defense, and make sure they know when to rotate and switch in different situations. How is this not his responsibility?

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It's not his fault Smith shoots 3s.

nope . . not his fault, because Smoove knows that Woody and can't afford to bench him for bad shots

Ridiculous again. If you want a player to stop shooting 3s you can make him. You can send him to the bench every time. Even if it costs you in the short run it will pay off in the long run.

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It's not his fault that Joe isn't motivated.

LOL @ JJ isn't motivated. JJ plays his azz off just about every game. He just isn't a rah-rah type of player

It's got nothing to do with rah-rah. Do you think he looks as good as he has the past 2 years? He's playing about 50% as much defense as he was, his shooting is way down. It's been obvious since preseason that he's not the same guy and not fully motivated.

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The pattern here is a team that underachieves, that has started to get tired of him.

Only Zaza, Shelden, Salim, and sometimes Lue, are underachieving. Evrybody else is either playing at, or above the level where they should be playing.

The team is more than the sum of the parts. The team as a whole has shown us in brief spurts what it can do. Then we come out and look like complete crap because when we don't completely shut down a team defensively we have no offensive set to fall back on. Last I checked, offense is half of the game. Our chemistry and overall team play should be much better.

Looks like Tim Legler agrees:

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Atlanta Hawks (Grade: C) -- It's funny how some people think the Hawks have arrived. Yes, they can be great on given nights and have played their best basketball against the NBA's elite teams. But this team has far too much talent to be so inconsistent. I don't want to hear about their youth … they can compete NOW in the East, but they haven't figured out how to focus and mature to the point where they can be taken seriously.

[Guest Walter]

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Do you think a poor game by Paul or Deron would stop people from playing "what if" about Marvin? I don't.

Plus, even with a poor game from Roy, Portland's game revolved around him. Shelden didn't even play a single minute. I don't care how poor Roy's game was - that is some kind of stark contrast.

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Don't get me started AHF. It wouldn't be good for my health. However, to sum it up. Clearly the drafting of SW at 5 over Roy was amongst the top 10 most ignorant GM move ever made. SW was a "bust" 1/2 into his 1st season and Roy is a pure baller. We might even be talking about what we could get for JJ if we had Roy, but we might also have the point finally sufficiently manned.

I'll never understand why anyone including many at this site wanted SW much less over Roy. Never. Boggles my mind. Question? Could we even get a 1st rder for SW? Anyone?

W

[TheNorthCydeRises]

1) We actually play pretty good team defense, but certain players always find themselves out of position. When certain players always do the same thing, that has to be attrbuted to the player, not the coach.

It's amazing to me that you don't believe a defensive coach like Woody doesn't get on these guys every single day about defense. That's all these players talk about after victories . . how they played together and how they defended. Defense is the main reason why we're better than last year. But I don't care who is the coach, he's not going to make AJ faster, or make Lue have more awareness on the defensive end.

2) Smith these days, shoot the vast majority of his 3's at the end of the shot clock, only after JJ or AJ passes him the ball. Even Monday, Marvin passes up a jumper late in the clock, gets it to an open Smoove, who shot the ball with like 3 seconds on the shot clock. I'm not mad @ Smoove for taking that shot . . he had to take it.

And if Woody constantly benched Smoove for taking a bad shot, that means that one of our inconsistent bench players has to enter the game. Smoove is just as important to our defense, as JJ is to our offense.

3) To say that because JJ isn't playing at the same level as he was last year, that he's not motivated, is a bad assessment on your part.

This fan base doesn't realize that JJ played at an almost SUPERSTAR level last year. This fan base expects him to be Superman every night. When he plays like Batman or Aquaman, he's now not as motivated as he was last year? You can do better than that Las. JJ brings it every night. He knows he needs help. Even the fan base knows he needs help. But every night, he just goes out and tries to do whatever he can to carry the team.

On most nights, he has to be the scorer, the playmaker, guard the other team's best perimeter or sometimes their athletic 4 . . and do it while plying 40+ minutes a night. If he doesn't perform at a high level, fans scream . . "JJ just isn't motivated . . something is wrong with JJ . . JJ sucks . . we don't need JJ, so trade him and let the offense run through Marvin" . . and so on, and so on.

4) A team isn't the sum of the parts?

- Salim was supposed to be our 3-point specialists (( bzzzzz ))

- Shelden was supposed to be the banger, rebounder, and defender off the bench (( bzzzzz ))

- Zaza was supposed to be the starter at center, or at the very least, provide adequate scoring from that position off the bench (( bzzzzz ))

- Law was supposed to bring consistenty to the PG, and give JJ a guy to pass to and knock down the open jumper (( bzzzzz ))

- Lue was supposed to be the vet leader on the team, that would keep us afloat when the 2nd unit was on the floor (( bzzzzz ))

- AJ wasn't even supposed to play (( bzzzzz ))

- Mario was supposed to be dressed in a suit every night (( bzzzzz ))

- Wright was never supposed to see the court (( bzzzzz ))

- Solo was supposed to be a spectator every night (( ding! )) . . now people want him to play. Why? See the reasons listed above.

The fact that Al, Smoove, Marvin, Chill, and JJ have played consistently decent on both ends of the floor on most nights, is the reason why we're not further under .500 right now. They're now being asked to play even more minutes and carry the team the rest of the year, because the bench just can't be trusted these days.

Only the sulkers on this team are underachieving.

5) Legler is dead on in his assessment. We are a C-team. Legs thought we'd be a D team, according to his preseason prediction. So did every other ESPN analyst outsde of Hollinger. That talent wasn't supposed to be 5-deep though. Myself and other fans on this board, was talking about this team possiby being able to go 10-deep. LOL . . no chance at that ish happening now. The fact that Mario West hs gotten PT this year, is all you need to know about the state of our bench.

Somebody said they'd like to see the bench consisting of Chill, Law, Solo, and West. LOL . . good Lord. So much for our bench then. If that's our bench, we're transitioning into a full-fledged defensive squad. Might as well cut or trade everybody else.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Walter, I'll still defend the pick, because addressing the frontline was a more pressing need, than taking Roy. Having said that, you have been proven to be right about Shelden. I can't defend the guy anymore. And yes we can get a 1st round pick for him . . but it would be for another 1st round pick that is also underachieving. It would be for a Jared Jeffries type player or a Patrick O'Bryant.

I fully expected Shelden to do exactly what Horford is doing for us these days. When you see a player regress to the point that he can't even crack the rotation, you have to question that player's work ethic, not the coach putting him in a "doghouse". That would be the last thing I would've question about Shelden.

That's why all this blame on Wody is BS. Woody can be blamed for some of our woes, no doubt on that. But these sorry azz role players have to take responsibility for the situations they're in.

F--k a doghouse. They've built their own personal prisons.

Marvin improved. Smoove improved. Chill has improved in a few areas. But Shelden, Salim, and Zaza have all regressed. And all 3 of them got to play early in the season, but they didn't produce. They built their own prison on the bench.

And people wonder why Woody always has that pizzed-off look on his face?

I'd be pizzed too if my 2-time defensive POY in college, can't even give Smoove and Horford adequate rest and get 20 - 25 minutes a game playing PF & C . . or that the backup PG that I trust offensively, can't play defense to save his life, and can't rotate to shooters that knock down the 3 . . or the undersized, malcontent shooter from Arizona always seems to perform well when a game is totally out of reach, but tends to go 1 - 5 FG when I need him to score in the 2nd quarter . . or my supposedly big-bodied center shoots 35% FG and pads his rebound numbers by tapping his misses off the rim to himself.

LOL . . I'd be pizzed too. So if one of those players said someting back to ne, they'd definitely get cused out.

[Lascar78]

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1) We actually play pretty good team defense, but certain players always find themselves out of position. When certain players always do the same thing, that has to be attrbuted to the player, not the coach.

It's amazing to me that you don't believe a defensive coach like Woody doesn't get on these guys every single day about defense. That's all these players talk about after victories . . how they played together and how they defended. Defense is the main reason why we're better than last year. But I don't care who is the coach, he's not going to make AJ faster, or make Lue have more awareness on the defensive end.

He's the coach. His responsibility is not to just know what the players to do, it is to convey it to them and get them to do it. If you have great ideas but are unable to lead players and get them to actually follow through and implement them, you should be a great assistant coach. And that is what Woody should be. Not to say that Woody has great ideas, but the only thing that matters is what he gets the players to do.

And forget AJ and Lue. Marvin Chill Smith etc... are frequently very slow / confused when rotating. We frequently switch (or not) on screens in ways that don't make sense. Against us, if you penetrate, kick out, then swing the ball to the other side of the floor, you will almost always get an open shot. That does not happen against other teams.

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And if Woody constantly benched Smoove for taking a bad shot, that means that one of our inconsistent bench players has to enter the game. Smoove is just as important to our defense, as JJ is to our offense.

This should have happened 2 years ago and would be a long gone issue by now. He's shot 26% on his career. Just like he should have been in the post practicing his post moves. As always, Woody is 2 years behind, just like he suddenly figured out maybe we should push the ball this summer.

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3) To say that because JJ isn't playing at the same level as he was last year, that he's not motivated, is a bad assessment on your part.

You are out of your mind. If you don't believe me, make a "does JJ look significantly less motivated than the past 2 seasons?" poll and watch the results.

His motivation on D is way down and doesn't seem to care on offense. He shot 46%-45%-47% the last three years and is shooting 41.5% this year. It was obvious from the open scrimmage and preseason and has carried over.

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4) A team isn't the sum of the parts?

No it's not. If you don't have the right system to get the best out of your guys and get them to work well together, it can be a wasted effort. Like having 5 forwards, no C and no PG.

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5) Legler is dead on in his assessment. We are a C-team.

Did you read it?

But this team has far too much talent to be so inconsistent. I don't want to hear about their youth … they can compete now in the East, but they haven't figured out how to focus and mature to the point where they can be taken seriously. We have the talent to be much better than we are, RIGHT NOW. We don't have the system, the motivation or the discipline that we are supposed to get through our coaching to go from being very average to being pretty damn good in the East.

It's BK's fault that there is no PG, no C, and that we're not championship contenders. It's Woody's fault that we have no system, are so wildly inconsistent (no backup plan if we don't shut the opponents down), and haven't won more games than we have THIS YEAR.

[DJlaysitup]

Yep, I remember the Shelden discussion W. I was personally for getting Shelden over O'Bryant since it seemed obvious that BK was gonna take a big. In hindsight Shelden has been better than O'Bryant - but not appreciably enough to matter. I didn't know that much about Roy...but obviously he was the right pick. He looks like he could be a D. Wade type player in the future to me.

[coachx]

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1) We actually play pretty good team defense, but certain players always find themselves out of position. When certain players always do the same thing, that has to be attrbuted to the player, not the coach.

It's amazing to me that you don't believe a defensive coach like Woody doesn't get on these guys every single day about defense. That's all these players talk about after victories . . how they played together and how they defended. Defense is the main reason why we're better than last year. But I don't care who is the coach, he's not going to make AJ faster, or make Lue have more awareness on the defensive end.

2) Smith these days, shoot the vast majority of his 3's at the end of the shot clock, only after JJ or AJ passes him the ball. Even Monday, Marvin passes up a jumper late in the clock, gets it to an open Smoove, who shot the ball with like 3 seconds on the shot clock. I'm not mad @ Smoove for taking that shot . . he had to take it.

And if Woody constantly benched Smoove for taking a bad shot, that means that one of our inconsistent bench players has to enter the game. Smoove is just as important to our defense, as JJ is to our offense.

3) To say that because JJ isn't playing at the same level as he was last year, that he's not motivated, is a bad assessment on your part.

This fan base doesn't realize that JJ played at an almost SUPERSTAR level last year. This fan base expects him to be Superman every night. When he plays like Batman or Aquaman, he's now not as motivated as he was last year? You can do better than that Las. JJ brings it every night. He knows he needs help. Even the fan base knows he needs help. But every night, he just goes out and tries to do whatever he can to carry the team.

On most nights, he has to be

the scorer, the playmaker, guard the other team's best perimeter or sometimes their athletic 4 . . and do it while plying 40+ minutes a night

. If he doesn't perform at a high level, fans scream . . "JJ just isn't motivated . . something is wrong with JJ . . JJ sucks . . we don't need JJ, so trade him and let the offense run through Marvin" . . and so on, and so on.

4) A team isn't the sum of the parts?

- Salim was supposed to be our 3-point specialists (( bzzzzz ))

- Shelden was supposed to be the banger, rebounder, and defender off the bench (( bzzzzz ))

- Zaza was supposed to be the starter at center, or at the very least, provide adequate scoring from that position off the bench (( bzzzzz ))

- Law was supposed to bring consistenty to the PG, and give JJ a guy to pass to and knock down the open jumper (( bzzzzz ))

- Lue was supposed to be the vet leader on the team, that would keep us afloat when the 2nd unit was on the floor (( bzzzzz ))

- AJ wasn't even supposed to play (( bzzzzz ))

- Mario was supposed to be dressed in a suit every night (( bzzzzz ))

- Wright was never supposed to see the court (( bzzzzz ))

- Solo was supposed to be a spectator every night (( ding! )) . . now people want him to play. Why? See the reasons listed above.

The fact that Al, Smoove, Marvin, Chill, and JJ have played consistently decent on both ends of the floor on most nights, is the reason why we're not further under .500 right now. They're now being asked to play even more minutes and carry the team the rest of the year, because the bench just can't be trusted these days.

Only the sulkers on this team are underachieving.

5) Legler is dead on in his assessment. We are a C-team. Legs thought we'd be a D team, according to his preseason prediction. So did every other ESPN analyst outsde of Hollinger. That talent wasn't supposed to be 5-deep though. Myself and other fans on this board, was talking about this team possiby being able to go 10-deep. LOL . . no chance at that ish happening now. The fact that Mario West hs gotten PT this year, is all you need to know about the state of our bench.

Somebody said they'd like to see the bench consisting of Chill, Law, Solo, and West. LOL . . good Lord. So much for our bench then. If that's our bench, we're transitioning into a full-fledged defensive squad. Might as well cut or trade everybody else.

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Amen !

Any player should know their minutes are contigent on your floor production. When you don't produce you don't get minutes. I guess some people are just saying that ZaZa is so stupid that he has to be told this ? Maybe their intellegence level suggest they would have to be told such a thing b/c they don't seem to grasp it on their own.

You act like an 11 year old and you get treated like an 11 year old. You play like a bum and you get the playing time of a bum. That is about the only advise I can give ZaZa.

Oh ya Woody, don't forget to tell ZaZa his playing time is directly contingent on how he produces on the floor. Please remember to explain to him that if you go 9 minutes and give up points on the defensive end, with 0 blocks, 0 rebounds, 1 point, 0 FGS, 1 turnover, 1 foul......if that is all you can do you better expect your sorry a** to be going to the bench no questions asked.

Is that Woody has to do to make some of you happy ?

I go on the premise that MEN should have the intellegence to grasp some simple things on their own without training wheels.

ZaZa is simply pouting b/c an undersized rookie is playing well enough that his only purpose is to now spell Horford for two 4 minute breathers per game. If ZaZa would produce anything he would see more playing time. Again, he acted like an 11 year old. Head coaches shouldn't have to be baby sitters but it seems Woody is stuck with a big baby (who flops alot).

[TheNorthCydeRises]

So Larry Brown should be an assistant coach. Pat Riley too. Because Brown couldn't get that individually talented NY Knick team to play defense, and Riley can't get his current Heat team to play good offense, even with Wade and a slowed down Shaq playing.

Las, coaches can only do so much. They can't hold their hand on the court, and drag them to the right spot on the floor. You also need players to execute. Hell, we beat Utah. And Jerry Sloan is a far superior coach over Woody.

Players tend to do what is comfortable for them to do. Marvin needs to rebound and drive more, but he's not the type to constantly mix it up. JJ doesn't drive nearly as much as he should. You even brought out the point at the end of regulation of the Portland game.

JJ goes to the hole 4 consecutive times, drawing 3 fouls and hitting 6 FTs. On the last possession, he settles for the fadeaway jumper, because that's his comfort zone. But it probably wasn't the best offensive play at that time.

Now Woody CONSTANTLY tells these guys to go to the basket. So I guess it is Woody's fault that JJ settled for that jumper? Please. That was a decision that JJ made, not the coach.

The same goes for defense and crashing the boards . . and rotating on defense . . and boxing out for rebounds, which no one but Horford and Shelden do. So whenever a team starts to kill us on the offensive boards solely because we're not boxing out, that's on the players. Boxing out is taught on every level of basketball. So if a pro basketball player isn't doing it, that's on the player. Woody stresses defense and rebounding. So when the team doesn't do it, it's al on Woody? Hogwash!

As for Smith and his rotations, you're right. He's notorious with either givng a guy too much room, or not rotatng fast enough. But this is also a guy that Hawk fans consistently talk about having a low BBIQ. It's not shocking to me at all, that he'd do the same incorrect things over and over, no matter what the coach says.

As for JJ, you're wrong. Just flat out wrong. If anything, JJ just gets worn down for having to do damn near everything each game. It's not a coincidence at all that he looks real sluggish on back to backs. If you check his stats, that's the time in which his numbers really go down across the board. You see the same ish happening to D-Wade now, seeing that he's virtually a one man team these days.

He's not Flash anymore. He's taken the cape and the "S" from Shaq, and has become Superman. Meanwhile, he's playing ball with C-list "superheroes" like Hawkman, Thor, The Wonder Twins, and Captain Caveman. Hell, even the former Superman ( Shaq ), is more like Apache Chief these days. The result: Heat have lost 13 1/2 games straight . . with our game pending.

And I'll ask the question that no one has seemed to been able to answer on this board:

Name me a team that runs a good offensive system, that doesn't have either a good PG to run it, or a good low post option to get the ball to?

Woody is an average coach. He's not a miracle worker. People are asking this team to be consistent without both a PG and a low post option . . LOL.

It's funny though. The guy that many believe is unmotivated is BOTH our PG-like playmaker, and the best guy to throw the ball to in the post.

Yet, he acts like he doesn't care? LOL @ that ish.

Maybe I should pose this as a poll question:

Which player was asked to do the most, while with the Hawks?

a) Dominique Wilkins

b) Steve Smith

c) Joe Johnson

[Lascar78]

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So Larry Brown should be an assistant coach. Pat Riley too. Because Brown couldn't get that individually talented NY Knick team to play defense, and Riley can't get his current Heat team to play good offense, even with Wade and a slowed down Shaq playing.

Las, coaches can only do so much. They can't hold their hand on the court, and drag them to the right spot on the floor. You also need players to execute. Hell, we beat Utah. And Jerry Sloan is a far superior coach over Woody.

Are you serious? After Malone and Stockton left Utah had nothing left. Meanwhile, they've only had 1 season in the past 24 where they were below .500. There system succeeded even when they had crap players because the system was good. We have no system.

As for Brown, you can't do anything with a total crap team. First of all I think Brown is a highly overrated coach, and he coached extremely poorly that year. But besides that, this is not a crap team. We could be a lot better this year. Not to mention, it takes a while to get a system in place and get your team to buy into it and digest it. Brown had months, Woody has had years.

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As for Smith and his rotations, you're right. He's notorious with either givng a guy too much room, or not rotatng fast enough.

I don't know when I said it was just Smith. It's the entire team. Childress and Joe are wildly inconsistent and frequently get completely lost. Our D is decent because we have outstanding athletes that often make up for their mistakes with great plays (ie Smith's blocks), but overall our players get confused / lost on a regular basis. That is hardly the earmark of a well coached team. Certainly not great enough to make up for the atrocious offense.

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As for JJ, you're wrong. Just flat out wrong. If anything, JJ just gets worn down for having to do damn near everything each game.

Ok I'll put a poll up.

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Name me a team that runs a good offensive system, that doesn't have either a good PG to run it, or a good low post option to get the ball to?

The lakers from the past couple of years have qualified even though Bynum has developed this year. The wizards seem to be doing fine. Sacramento's offense looked fine without Bibby. Depending on who you qualify as a low post option or a good PG virtually no team fits those 2 criteria, forget about the offensive system.

If Woody had developed the players with a plan in mind, Josh Smith would probably have quite a fine low post game, and we might even have a certain Acie Law running the point with gusto. Acie can be good enough, and we have guys who can play in the post. But we let them develop and play in whatever way they fancy rather than tailoring their game.

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Which player was asked to do the most, while with the Hawks?

That is a totally irrelevant question. No one is talking about what Joe is asked to do. The point is his intensity / motivation / performance is way down as compared to the last 2 years. That has nothing to do with what Steve Smith was asked to do.

[TexasPete]

NorthC is what is known on this site as a total Woody apologist. He joins Bruce Levenson and Mike "I'm freaking clueless" Gearon in a dwindling few that think Woodson is even a reasonable coach.

I have been watching Hawks bball since age 11 in 1972. Woodson is the WORST coach we have ever had in that span and we have had some real dogs. Woodson makes Bob Weiss look like Red Auerbach.

In all my time watching and studying offenses, I have never seen one as fundamentally inept as woodson's.

If we make the playoffs in the lousy East and he gets an extension we are never going anywhere.