I wonder if that late run saved Woodys job?

[NJHAWK]

We were getting toasted with no heart and run out of the gym by a very short handed Clipper team. If the blowout continued it would hvae blatently appear Woody has completely lost the team. All of a sudden they make a run which gets them within a big shot of winning the game. Of corse we choked but they gave effort in those last few minutes. Its still an embarrasing loss but if it stayed the way it was I think ASG would have had to force Knights hand and still may.

[Atlantaholic]

If we had lost by 2000 points. Woody would still be our coach tomorrow.

The ASG think as Northcyde does: "LOLZ people. It's not Woody's fault our players suck! get real"

[TheNorthCydeRises]

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If we had lost by 2000 points. Woody would still be our coach tomorrow.

The ASG think as Northcyde does: "LOLZ people. It's not Woody's fault our players suck! get real"

---

All I do is try to tell you guys the truth, that's all. I have never said that Woody has absolutely nothing to do with our play recently. I just think this isn't entirey his fault, no way he should get all the blame for this. These players have to take a big chunk of the responsibility for this.

These guys are professionals. But some of you act like they're high school freshmen that need to be told every single little thing to do by Woody. These guys know what they have to do. They just have to do it and close games out at the end.

The Portland collapse definitey wasn't Woody's fault. That team was in cruise control the entire game. Then as soon as Portland gets the lead under 10, and the crowd really gets into it, we start messing up left and right. We couldn't do anything right offensively, and couldn't stop them defensively.

That's called players getting tight. I've seen that too many times in sports, especially on the road. It happened to my high school team back in the day. You tighten up and overthink everything, constantly looking at the clock. You try to make perfect plays, instead of just going out there playing.

If AHF reads this, I'm sure he remembers that 31-point comeback that Kentucky pulled off at LSU back in the 90s. I remember watching that. That ish was absolutely incredible. LSU was dominating that team. Kentucky slowly started to chip away. Then they hit some 3s to get it under 20. Once they got it under 10, I knew LSU was losing that damn game.

The same thing that happened to the Clips tonight. They got extremely tight and almost let us tie it. If they would've lost that game, no way you can blame that on Dunleavy.

[T21]

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If we had lost by 2000 points. Woody would still be our coach tomorrow.

The ASG think as Northcyde does: "LOLZ people. It's not Woody's fault our players suck! get real"

---

All I do is try to tell you guys the truth, that's all. I have never said that Woody has absolutely nothing to do with our play recently. I just think this isn't entirey his fault, no way he should get all the blame for this. These players have to take a big chunk of the responsibility for this.

These guys are professionals. But some of you act like they're high school freshmen that need to be told every single little thing to do by Woody. These guys know what they have to do. They just have to do it and close games out at the end.

The Portland collapse definitey wasn't Woody's fault. That team was in cruise control the entire game. Then as soon as Portland gets the lead under 10, and the crowd really gets into it, we start messing up left and right. We couldn't do anything right offensively, and couldn't stop them defensively.

That's called players getting tight. I've seen that too many times in sports, especially on the road. It happened to my high school team back in the day. You tighten up and overthink everything, constantly looking at the clock. You try to make perfect plays, instead of just going out there playing.

If AHF reads this, I'm sure he remembers that 31-point comeback that Kentucky pulled off at LSU back in the 90s. I remember watching that. That ish was absolutely incredible. LSU was dominating that team. Kentucky slowly started to chip away. Then they hit some 3s to get it under 20. Once they got it under 10, I knew LSU was losing that damn game.

The same thing that happened to the Clips tonight. They got extremely tight and almost let us tie it. If they would've lost that game, no way you can blame that on Dunleavy.

---

Remember that, just before the season begun, we all agreed that one of Hawks' biggest assets and weapons was young and athletic roster, which was suppose to be used to out-run opponents with intensity and hi-octane-tempo! That can only be done with extended rotation... We saw glimpse of that during pre-season...

Since then, we shot ourselves in the foot! Our rotation was shortened, our starters play way too much minutes (fadding away late in the games, having occassional black-outs), 1st round draft picks are kept on the bench (with already lost confidence)...

All this points to one direction - Woody! I'm not saying he's a bad coach, but he simply doesn't get the most out of our team, and ignores our strenghts! It seems that sometimes we lose before we even stepped on the floor...

[Diesel]

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If we had lost by 2000 points. Woody would still be our coach tomorrow.

The ASG think as Northcyde does: "LOLZ people. It's not Woody's fault our players suck! get real"

---

All I do is try to tell you guys the truth, that's all. I have never said that Woody has absolutely nothing to do with our play recently. I just think this isn't entirey his fault, no way he should get all the blame for this. These players have to take a big chunk of the responsibility for this.

These guys are professionals. But some of you act like they're high school freshmen that need to be told every single little thing to do by Woody. These guys know what they have to do. They just have to do it and close games out at the end.

The Portland collapse definitey wasn't Woody's fault. That team was in cruise control the entire game. Then as soon as Portland gets the lead under 10, and the crowd really gets into it, we start messing up left and right. We couldn't do anything right offensively, and couldn't stop them defensively.

That's called players getting tight. I've seen that too many times in sports, especially on the road. It happened to my high school team back in the day. You tighten up and overthink everything, constantly looking at the clock. You try to make perfect plays, instead of just going out there playing.

If AHF reads this, I'm sure he remembers that 31-point comeback that Kentucky pulled off at LSU back in the 90s. I remember watching that. That ish was absolutely incredible. LSU was dominating that team. Kentucky slowly started to chip away. Then they hit some 3s to get it under 20. Once they got it under 10, I knew LSU was losing that damn game.

The same thing that happened to the Clips tonight. They got extremely tight and almost let us tie it. If they would've lost that game, no way you can blame that on Dunleavy.

Sorry North.. I don't think you could be more wrong. The coach has 3 main goals:

1. Inspire and Motivate. The coach has to motivate players to play hard at all times.

2. Draw up a gameplan that wins based on his personnel. This is one of those areas where Wood fails immensely. He has no idea of how to use the talent he has.

3. Manage the in-game play. When players "get tight", it's up to Wood to decide when to pull them off the court. Wood has made it no secret that he uses a time sub pattern so that players will know when they are going in. Watch the games and you will see it. Chillz come in mid first. Lue comes in start of the second.. His substitution is like clockwork... with no real dependence on how well a player is doing.

Right now, Woody is making Bob Weiss look like Auerbach.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

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Sorry North.. I don't think you could be more wrong. The coach has 3 main goals:

1. Inspire and Motivate. The coach has to motivate players to play hard at all times.

---

This is not college Diesel. In college, you play at the most 2 times a week, against conference rivals. A college coach can give that rah-rah speech and get people crunk enough to play strictly off of emotion at times.

In the NBA, you may 5 games in 9 days . . all away from home . . sometimes playing on consecutive nights or 3 games in 4 nights. That "Hoosiers" speech ain't working every game in this league. The best teams in the NBA try to approach each game in a business-like manner. They just go out and do their job game in and game out. I seriously doubt that Nate has to motivate that Portland team every night. Those guys are self-motivated. They go out and do their jobs each and every night.

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2. Draw up a gameplan that wins based on his personnel. This is one of those areas where Wood fails immensely. He has no idea of how to use the talent he has.

---

Most fans agree that the Hawks should play uptempo. But every time someone off the bench plays, they mess up. Lue, Shelden, Zaza, Salim, Lorenzen even Law, all come in the game and underperforms. Then the fan base whines and cries about his play.

During January, it was obvious to me that Woody shortened his rotation because he had lost all confidence in most of the bench. That move backfired, because the extended minutes are wearing the starters down. So if the bench can't be trusted, ( and most of the fan base hates our bench now ), what is a coach supposed to do?

Woody is definitely not a great strategist. You won't get any argument from me on that. He isn't going to outcoach most people. But at some point, players have to play their roles and do their jobs. Woody is not Jesus. He can't touch Lue, and give him better defensive awareness . . or make Shelden play tougher every night . . or give Zaza the ability to finish strong inside and bang people around on the boards . . or make Salim slow down so that his shots go in . . or have Law make his lay-ups around the rim.

Most everybody thought we had this tremedously deep bench. Some of them played well in spurts, but they were wildly inconsistent and routinely got outplayed as a group on a nightly basis. So much for our depth. And for you Mario West fans . . if Mario West is the difference between us being more competitive or not . . the Hawks are in serious trouble anyway.

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3. Manage the in-game play. When players "get tight", it's up to Wood to decide when to pull them off the court.

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So who do we pull in that Portland game? JJ? Smoove? Marvin? Because they were the main players who were playing tight that day. He took Zaza out, after his foul on Roy cut the lead to 8. We even push the lead back to 10 a few times. Then everything went to hell on both ends of the floor, with our best player being a big reason why. So do you take JJ off the floor in those last 3 minutes?

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Wood has made it no secret that he uses a time sub pattern so that players will know when they are going in. Watch the games and you will see it. Chillz come in mid first. Lue comes in start of the second.. His substitution is like clockwork... with no real dependence on how well a player is doing.

---

Yeah I know his sub patterns. Woody is the only coach in the history that uses timed substitutions. I watch a lot of this league, and can tell you what a lot of teams sub patterns are. And those coaches will also pull a "hot" player out of a game in the 1st half, in order to stick with their rotation.

Most coaches agree that it is more important to keep players relatively fresh for the 2nd half. That's why a bench player is more likely to see most of his minutes in the 1st half, than in the 2nd. But in Woody's case, he plays JJ to death because no one steps up to sustain leads or at least keep the Hawks from losing ground, when JJ does go to the bench. We all know that he plays too many minutes. But we all should also know that the team goes brain dead without him on the floor.

It's just like the isolation plays at the end of games, that everybody hates for JJ. Even you acknowleged that coaches have been doing that for their star or best player, for years. Yet, when Woody puts a game in JJ's hands, it's the worst possible move in the world.

Diesel, if the Hawks have a better coach in mind, I'm all for replacng Woody. But just like in Chicago, Memphis, New York, Milwaukee, Sacramento, New Jersey, Philly, and Sacramento, those teams may need much more than a coaching change, to get things right.

But changing a coach is almost always the first move. That's just how sports work. It satisfies the fan base . . for about 2 weeks. The the fan base usually says . . "Hey wait a minute. We got rid of the problem ( coach ), so why isn't this team getting better?"

Go get Lenny Wiklins or Larry Brown. Maybe they can magically fix what's wrong with us.

In the meantime, the best chance this team has to win, is if they play defense every night. If we start stopping people like we did in Nov and Dec, this team, horrible coach and underachieving players and all, can get back on track.

[thesheedera]

I completely agree that firing Woody probably won't solve much until we have a stable enough ownership to replace him with a legit coach.

There is a chance that all these players need in order to start playing well again is to get rid of the albatross of the coach they have no faith in, but I agree that unless he's replaced with something solid that will be short lived.

HOWEVA...you're really sticking your neck out (in a very meaningless massage board kind of way of course) for Woody while you play Devil's advocate, and it's gotten to the point that you sounds like you really do support the job he's doing.

My question is, what are his good qualities as a head coach?

When has he won games for us?

What makes him better than any of the assistant coaches on the bench?

I'm well aware of his cons, I'm not familiar with his pros.

The best thing I can say about the guy is that he's handled one of the most difficult jobs in the history of coaching with absolute class. I've said it before, I respect the hell out of him as a man, just not as a coach.

The team's in a tailspin. What's the worst that could happen from firing him and handing over the reigns to someone else on the staff? We give the Suns a decent pick?

[Guest Walter]

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All I do is try to tell you guys the truth, that's all. I have never said that Woody has absolutely nothing to do with our play recently. I just think this isn't entirey his fault, no way he should get all the blame for this. These players have to take a big chunk of the responsibility for this.

---

And so does the GM for putting together a frankenstein team lacking positions, talent, and many important skill-sets despite more draft and cap capitol than any other team save arguably Portland.

I'd say in order of importance the problems are BK, Woody, and the players themselves.

I'd say the ease with which we can change them are Woody, BK, and the players themselves.

We at least need a new coach to evaluate the players differently. A new GM to do the evaluatING.

W

[DrReality]

Woody interviewed by AJC and sounds to me he is trying to save his job. Change for change sake is not good???? He sounds desperate.

HAWKS: Woodson wary about change for change's sake

By Sekou Smith

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 01/31/08

Los Angeles —- From a strategic standpoint, nothing has changed for the Hawks from December to January.

The same plays that worked during the Hawks' glorious 9-4 run through the final month of 2007 are the same plays that haven't during their 4-10 swoon in the first month of 2008.

That's what makes the Hawks' recent struggles —- they're 18-23 at the midway point of the season —- so perplexing for coach Mike Woodson and his team. They know something isn't right, but putting a "finger on it" isn't nearly as simple as it sounds.

So the real quandary now becomes figuring out what the Hawks can do to reverse their fortunes in time to save their playoff hopes —- and despite their losing ways, the Hawks haven't faded nearly as fast as it seems.

"You can look at trades and all that," said Woodson, whose team carried a 1-3 mark into Wednesday's finale of a five-game Western Conference road trip against the Los Angeles Clippers at Staples Center. "But until something is done, we have to weather the storm and just keep playing. It's not like we're playing bad basketball. Unfortunately, we've had some tough road games, and it's not easy winning road games no matter how you cut it.

"But the only thing I see in jump-starting this team is if you look to pull the trigger on making some trades. Again, I'm the coach, but I think from a management standpoint we've seen enough in terms of what we need, so now it becomes a question of are those people out there?"

As pressing as the need is for some sort of spark, Woodson believes change simply for the sake of change could be more harmful than anything. That's why he spent much of his time before Wednesday's game reminding anyone willing to listen that the Hawks should not be ready to push the panic button on the season.

"One thing you don't want to do is make the wrong move and set yourself back," Woodson said. "We're not that far away. I don't want anybody to be in a panic stage. In my mind, we're five games out of the [southeast] division lead.

"I don't want our players to be in a desperate mode because we're still in the hunt. We've just got to get back to how we were playing early and win some of these games. I think if we had won the Portland game, nobody would really be pressing the issue, even though we've struggled a bit since the start of the month."

It's not clear right now how damaging Monday's loss in Portland really was, though Wednesday's inept performance in a blowout loss to Phoenix has to be some indication.

The Hawks lost a 19-point lead and then lost 94-93 in the final two minutes against the Trail Blazers. The Suns pounded them from the start; the Hawks trailed by as many as 37 before losing 125-92.

"We've got to figure out what we want to do as a team," Hawks captain Joe Johnson said. "Sometimes we come out and we look like we want to play, and sometimes we don't.

"But we can talk about all the trades and other stuff until we're blue in the face. We can fix all this stuff on the floor, though. We have to figure out some way. If you look at how ugly everything is right now, we're still in the playoff picture. So we just have to stay positive and dig down and play harder."

Johnson's sentiments were echoed by several of his teammates. Josh Childress went so far as to say that the Hawks have to find a way to stop worrying about the big picture and refocus on the little things.

"I think more than anything, everybody has to really commit himself to making the next guy better," he said. "We sit here and lose a lot of these games on little stuff, help defense or a missed coverage. If somebody's talking or somebody's communicating, that doesn't happen.

"If I step over and make that next help or make that next pass happen, little stuff like that, everything changes. As a team, if we make that a priority, we can turn this thing back around."

[macdaddy]

Woody may be right but basically its gone like this:

-the guys are really young

-the guys are really hurt

-its obvious we need to make a trade

The plus side of Woody is that we are a good defensive team mainly because the main core has bought into Woody's defensive scheme AND Horford is just damn good.

To me its hard to blame Woody and BK. We don't know what this team would do under a different coach and vice versa Woody may be great coaching the Bulls. But the combo of this team and Woody seems to not work.

[Diesel]

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Sorry North.. I don't think you could be more wrong. The coach has 3 main goals:

1. Inspire and Motivate. The coach has to motivate players to play hard at all times.

This is not college Diesel. In college, you play at the most 2 times a week, against conference rivals. A college coach can give that rah-rah speech and get people crunk enough to play strictly off of emotion at times.

In the NBA, you may 5 games in 9 days . . all away from home . . sometimes playing on consecutive nights or 3 games in 4 nights. That "Hoosiers" speech ain't working every game in this league. The best teams in the NBA try to approach each game in a business-like manner. They just go out and do their job game in and game out. I seriously doubt that Nate has to motivate that Portland team every night. Those guys are self-motivated. They go out and do their jobs each and every night.

Nobody said anything about a Rah Rah speech. I said Motivate. Motivation may come from benching a guy until he plays better. Motivation may comes from pulling guys into the huddle to tell them exactly what he needs from them. As far as your college rah rah speech stuff... an interesting note about coaching is that Phil Jackson would pull Horace Grant to the side in practice and take his fustrations out on him in order to motivate Scottie and MJ... He said that he knew that Grant could take it but that MJ and Scottie couldn't.

Moreover, if a coach cannot motivate his team, he will lose his team. How can you tell a player who is making 8 million dollars a year that I want you to set picks all day long and score off of garbage points... and I don't want you to think about yourself but I want you to think about the team.... if you're not a motivator??

Come on Northcyde... you can do better.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

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Remember that, just before the season begun, we all agreed that one of Hawks' biggest assets and weapons was young and athletic roster, which was suppose to be used to out-run opponents with intensity and hi-octane-tempo!

That can only be done with extended rotation

... We saw glimpse of that during pre-season...

Since then, we shot ourselves in the foot! Our rotation was shortened, our starters play way too much minutes (fadding away late in the games, having occassional black-outs), 1st round draft picks are kept on the bench (with already lost confidence)...

All this points to one direction - Woody! I'm not saying he's a bad coach, but he simply doesn't get the most out of our team, and ignores our strenghts! It seems that sometimes we lose before we even stepped on the floor...

---

The problem here latey, is that our bench has played far below expectations. If you really look at the team, not too many people can complain about the play of Smoove, Marvin and Horford. They have done their job. JJ has been erratic and is now hobbled, so while I don't agree with people clowning him, I see why people are irritated with his play. AJ at the point has been serviceable. Chill is the energy guy, and provides that on most nights.

Those are the core 6. I don't have many complaints about them, for the most part.

The rest of the bench has pretty much been garbage. So how do we do all of the things that we thought we could do, if the rest of the bench plays like crap on a nightly basis?

Everybody has their own favorite bench player that they want to see get more time. If the fans had their way, West would be the 6th man, Law the 7th, Solo the 8th, with people split on whether Chill should be immeadiately traded for a shooter. That tells you all you need to know about the state of our bench.

- most agree that Shelden was the wrong pick from the jump, but blame Woody for his lack of development and desire to impact a game

- most agree that Zaza never accepted his role from the jump this season, but pitches a hissy-fit when Woody suspends him for one game

- most agree that Woody plays Lue too much ( and I'm in that camp ), but Lue sometimes is the only scorer we can bring off the bench.

- most agree that Law should play more so that he can gain more confidence ( I'm in that camp too ), but it's hard to stick with him, if he plays timid.

- some want West and Solo to get time, but Woody would rather go with the starters than play them . . ( and if those 2 are the key for us, God help us forreal )

- some want Salim to get more time, but gets mad at Woody for pulling Salim, after he goes 1 - 5 FG in 4 minutes of play.

Yet, fire the coach, and everything is A-OK.

Sorry, I just don't believe that.

If Woody is fired, the ASG should force BK to coach the team . . ala what Isaiah is doing. And if BK can't get them to play better, then they should fire him. After that, they should sell the team to a group of Atlanta-area rappers. Let Ludacris, T.I., and OutKast own the Hawks. Hell . . might as well givve them a shot.

[Diesel]

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2. Draw up a gameplan that wins based on his personnel. This is one of those areas where Wood fails immensely. He has no idea of how to use the talent he has.

Most fans agree that the Hawks should play uptempo. But every time someone off the bench plays, they mess up. Lue, Shelden, Zaza, Salim, Lorenzen even Law, all come in the game and underperforms. Then the fan base whines and cries about his play.

During January, it was obvious to me that Woody shortened his rotation because he had lost all confidence in most of the bench. That move backfired, because the extended minutes are wearing the starters down. So if the bench can't be trusted, ( and most of the fan base hates our bench now ), what is a coach supposed to do?

Woody has far more choices than you suggest. For instance, he can hand out 10 day contracts to NBADL players who will come in and do exactly what he tells them too. Part of that problem with the bench as you have described it... is Motivation... See Point #1.

Woody has to be able to motivate his players to do what he wants them to do. Moreover, you make it sound as if Woody has ever coached uptempo... He hasn't. He needs to go out and find an assistant who can teach uptempo if he wants to run uptempo. Look at the assistant we have....

Herb Brown... A defensive specialist... as supported by his book...

"Let's talk defense"

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Let's Talk Defense! will help take you and your team to the next level." --Scottie Pippen, 10-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team and six-time NBA champion "Herb Brown's experience and defensive knowledge makes Let's Talk Defense! a mustread for any basketball player or coach. The concepts demonstrated in his book are the same ones I use when guarding some of the best players in the NBA." --Rasheed Wallace, NBA All-Star "Herb Brown understands the most fundamental aspect of the game and that is great defense wins championships. This book will explain the basic concepts of how it is done." --Joe Dumars, general manager of the Detroit Pistons and former six-time NBA All-Star Endorsed by top NBA players, this is the essential guide for coaching defense. Loaded with drills, tips, and step-by-step diagrams as well as official NBA photos, Let's Talk Defense! includes: Making the transition from offense to defense Out-rebounding opponents Causing turnovers Stopping fast-break opportunities Eliminating penetration Creating havoc for the opposition and much more

and

Larry Drew... Drew is prolly the offensive coach. However, here's his experience: He has previously served as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards, and New Jersey Nets.

Which one of those teams was uptempo? Where would he learn such a thing?

During his career, he played on one good offensive team Click here that would be the Los Angeles Lakers when he played behind Magic... the year before he retired. Most of his career, he was on a team that ranked last offensively... and he was the PG.

[Diesel]

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Sorry North.. I don't think you could be more wrong. The coach has 3 main goals:

1. Inspire and Motivate. The coach has to motivate players to play hard at all times.

---

This is not college Diesel. In college, you play at the most 2 times a week, against conference rivals. A college coach can give that rah-rah speech and get people crunk enough to play strictly off of emotion at times.

In the NBA, you may 5 games in 9 days . . all away from home . . sometimes playing on consecutive nights or 3 games in 4 nights. That "Hoosiers" speech ain't working every game in this league. The best teams in the NBA try to approach each game in a business-like manner. They just go out and do their job game in and game out. I seriously doubt that Nate has to motivate that Portland team every night. Those guys are self-motivated. They go out and do their jobs each and every night.

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2. Draw up a gameplan that wins based on his personnel. This is one of those areas where Wood fails immensely. He has no idea of how to use the talent he has.

---

Most fans agree that the Hawks should play uptempo. But every time someone off the bench plays, they mess up. Lue, Shelden, Zaza, Salim, Lorenzen even Law, all come in the game and underperforms. Then the fan base whines and cries about his play.

During January, it was obvious to me that Woody shortened his rotation because he had lost all confidence in most of the bench. That move backfired, because the extended minutes are wearing the starters down. So if the bench can't be trusted, ( and most of the fan base hates our bench now ), what is a coach supposed to do?

Woody is definitely not a great strategist. You won't get any argument from me on that. He isn't going to outcoach most people. But at some point, players have to play their roles and do their jobs. Woody is not Jesus. He can't touch Lue, and give him better defensive awareness . . or make Shelden play tougher every night . . or give Zaza the ability to finish strong inside and bang people around on the boards . . or make Salim slow down so that his shots go in . . or have Law make his lay-ups around the rim.

Most everybody thought we had this tremedously deep bench. Some of them played well in spurts, but they were wildly inconsistent and routinely got outplayed as a group on a nightly basis. So much for our depth. And for you Mario West fans . . if Mario West is the difference between us being more competitive or not . . the Hawks are in serious trouble anyway.

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3. Manage the in-game play. When players "get tight", it's up to Wood to decide when to pull them off the court.

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So who do we pull in that Portland game? JJ? Smoove? Marvin? Because they were the main players who were playing tight that day. He took Zaza out, after his foul on Roy cut the lead to 8. We even push the lead back to 10 a few times. Then everything went to hell on both ends of the floor, with our best player being a big reason why. So do you take JJ off the floor in those last 3 minutes?

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Wood has made it no secret that he uses a time sub pattern so that players will know when they are going in. Watch the games and you will see it. Chillz come in mid first. Lue comes in start of the second.. His substitution is like clockwork... with no real dependence on how well a player is doing.

---

Yeah I know his sub patterns. Woody is the only coach in the history that uses timed substitutions. I watch a lot of this league, and can tell you what a lot of teams sub patterns are. And those coaches will also pull a "hot" player out of a game in the 1st half, in order to stick with their rotation.

Most coaches agree that it is more important to keep players relatively fresh for the 2nd half. That's why a bench player is more likely to see most of his minutes in the 1st half, than in the 2nd. But in Woody's case, he plays JJ to death because no one steps up to sustain leads or at least keep the Hawks from losing ground, when JJ does go to the bench. We all know that he plays too many minutes. But we all should also know that the team goes brain dead without him on the floor.

It's just like the isolation plays at the end of games, that everybody hates for JJ. Even you acknowleged that coaches have been doing that for their star or best player, for years. Yet, when Woody puts a game in JJ's hands, it's the worst possible move in the world.

Diesel, if the Hawks have a better coach in mind, I'm all for replacng Woody. But just like in Chicago, Memphis, New York, Milwaukee, Sacramento, New Jersey, Philly, and Sacramento, those teams may need much more than a coaching change, to get things right.

But changing a coach is almost always the first move. That's just how sports work. It satisfies the fan base . . for about 2 weeks. The the fan base usually says . . "Hey wait a minute. We got rid of the problem ( coach ), so why isn't this team getting better?"

Go get Lenny Wiklins or Larry Brown. Maybe they can magically fix what's wrong with us.

In the meantime, the best chance this team has to win, is if they play defense every night. If we start stopping people like we did in Nov and Dec, this team, horrible coach and underachieving players and all, can get back on track.

Dude... IS Wood your daddy or your uncle or something. He's doing a horrible job... Period. It's 4 years in and it's time to change him out. You say if the Hawks have somebody better in mind, it's worth consideration. Well North, sometimes you have to change simply for change sake. Sometimes you change because you've gone as far as you can go doing what you've been doing. However, if we do nothing because "we're not sure we can find a better coach"... then really what ASG is saying is "we don't care what happens to the Hawks. We'd rather leave them in their losing situation.".

[ATL_BALLER]

[TheNorthCydeRises]

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Nobody said anything about a Rah Rah speech. I said Motivate. Motivation may come from benching a guy until he plays better. Motivation may comes from pulling guys into the huddle to tell them exactly what he needs from them.

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Isn't that what Woody tried to do with Zaza and Shelden? You act like he doesn't try to do that with guys. Except people on here don't call that trying to motivate Shelden or Zaza . . they call that being in Woody's Doghouse . . as if Woody doesn't play them, just for the hell of it.

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As far as your college rah rah speech stuff... an interesting note about coaching is that Phil Jackson would pull Horace Grant to the side in practice and take his fustrations out on him in order to motivate Scottie and MJ... He said that he knew that Grant could take it but that MJ and Scottie couldn't.

Moreover, if a coach cannot motivate his team, he will lose his team. How can you tell a player who is making 8 million dollars a year that I want you to set picks all day long and score off of garbage points... and I don't want you to think about yourself but I want you to think about the team.... if you're not a motivator??

Come on Northcyde... you can do better.

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The "motivation" excuse was used as the reason for firing Scott Skiles. That Skiles was losing his team. Do you actually believe that about him? Here's the reality about the Bulls

- PJ Brown was very important to their defense, and provided timely points. More than Wallace, he may have been their anchor. His absence was immeadiately felt.

- Ben Wallace, in everybody's eyes, is rapidly declining as a defensive player. In reality, Noah probably should be starting ahead of him.

- Ben Gordon is one of the streakiest shooters in the league. He's either red hot, or ice cold.v When he's cold, that team gets blown out because he doesn't quit shooting.

- Kirk Hinrich, until both Gordon and Deng recently went out of the lineup, was shooting like straight garbage. His decline as a player this year was probably the most shocking.

- Tyrus Thomas is a major project, and not quite ready to be a quality starter . . and migt not ever be.

- Deng claimed to be very affected by the Kobe trade talk, and that led to him playing at a lower level than last year.

They went from being one of the best defensive teams in the league, to a team that can't stop anybody. And they shot the ball worse than anybody in the entire league.

Yet, Skiles takes the fall?

Their current coach still has the same problems. I guess he'll get fired at the end of the year.

Motivation?

Please.

The demise of the Bulls is not the gritty, gutty Scott Skiles fault. I guess he forgot how to coach overnight.

Woody is not Skiles. Skiles is a much better coach. But it illustrates that even a good coach can look like a bad one, when the players don't perform.

The fact that Shelden is not playing like Karl Malone, is not Woody's fault.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

I think the only way Woody would've stuck with the uptempo style of play, is if he had Speedy available or if Salim was able to contribute as an instant offense shooter off the bench. With Speedy's defensive prowess and Salim's shooting, we would've been able to truly play uptempo. But with Speedy not available, and Salim a non factor, that forced guys like AJ and Lue back into the fold.

You guys have yet to give me an example of a decent uptempo team, that didn't have a good PG running the show.

The end of last night's game was sparked by the defense. When we play defense, we can play that uptempo style. Otherwise, without a good PG, we're going to look shaky trying to play fast. AJ just isn't the guy as a floor leader and a distributor to play like that.