Woodson believes he deserves to return

[Cwell]

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Had we gotten Paul he would have been riding the bench,if we had gotten Deron Williams he would have been riding the bench.

omg omg my big toe AND I WAS ONE OF THE FEW THAT WANTED PAUL.Don't take that as defense to Billy Knight.Byron Scott gave Paul the keys from day one.If Deron didn't start for half his rookie year under a nobody what do u think Woody would do to him?Sloan would pull him and teach him on what to do here and what to do there.Woodson would just pull him and he'd be on the end of the bench sitting next to one of our scrubs.

I wanted Mike Conley,he would would have been at the end of the bench sitting between Salim and some scrub just like Acie does.Woodson can't teach Acie like a Jerry Sloan could because Woody's has not a clue as to what to tell him.

[Admin]

Oh okay, you convinced me. Every single thing a player does wrong every time is Woodson's fault.

Now that I have that logic to use, Phil Jackson is an idiot every time Kobe holds onto the ball or takes a horrible shot.

Greg Popovich is a joke of a coach every time Tony Parker takes a wild shot.

In fact, I don't think there is a single coach in the league that isn't an idiot, using your logic.

They should just cancel high school and college ball since it's the head coaches job to teach the fundamentals that way we can get players in the NBA by 18 and they can focus solely on their education in high school.

[Cwell]

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Oh okay, you convinced me. Every single thing a player does wrong every time is Woodson's fault.

Now that I have that logic to use, Phil Jackson is an idiot every time Kobe holds onto the ball or takes a horrible shot.

Greg Popovich is a joke of a coach every time Tony Parker takes a wild shot.

In fact, I don't think there is a single coach in the league that isn't an idiot, using your logic.

They should just cancel high school and college ball since it's the head coaches job to teach the fundamentals that way we can get players in the NBA by 18 and they can focus solely on their education in high school.

u said they have no problem with him.What I said was not stuff they do every blue moon.They didn it throughout the season.besides Horfords turnovers.

According to u and others nothing is a coaches fault,he just stands on the sideline talking to himself.

U know what they should no longer employ coaches on any level.They're just titles for guys to just stand there next to a team.It's just a title u get that alloys u to get front row seats at every game.

[Admin]

Really? Find ANY post of mine (almost 7,000 to choose from) where I said ANYTHING REMOTELY close "nothing is a coaches fault". I have ALWAYS said that the players and coaches share the blame equally and that Woody and his staff don't deserve all of the blame for players making mistakes. There comes a point in time where you have to call a spade a spade and believe it or not, some of our players are fundamentally challenged and nothing a coach says will be able to change that until the player takes it upon himself to correct it.

As an aside, it's just as difficult to read your posts without spaces between sentences as it is reading one in all caps or in fReaKo language. I don't mean to be offensive, just mentioning it.

[Cwell]

No matter what it's never a coaches fault.

If a guy is outmatched and his backup is a better matchup,who cares that guy better gain 20 pounds of muscle during half time and turn it arround.f matchups and adjustments.It's the players job to take him self out when he's cold and keep himself in when he's hot.If a bench players just has that feeling during a gameday that he'ss go off,he can just put himself in the game.f the NBA and refs,let them play street ball,because street ballers have better offenses sets than Woodson."AY MARV U RUN AROUND ME AND I'LL GRAB PIERCE AND TACKLE HIS AZZ,CUZ THAT'S THE ONLY WAY YOU'LL GET OPEN,JUST STANDING THERE AINT GONNA WORK!"

WHO NEEDS A COACH?THEY HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHAT HAPPENS ON THE FLOOR.YOU'VE CONVINCED ME.

[thefloydian]

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Oh okay, you convinced me. Every single thing a player does wrong every time is Woodson's fault.

Now that I have that logic to use, Phil Jackson is an idiot every time Kobe holds onto the ball or takes a horrible shot.

Greg Popovich is a joke of a coach every time Tony Parker takes a wild shot.

In fact, I don't think there is a single coach in the league that isn't an idiot, using your logic.

They should just cancel high school and college ball since it's the head coaches job to teach the fundamentals that way we can get players in the NBA by 18 and they can focus solely on their education in high school.

If you watched the Hawks last year and still think Woodson is even a passable NBA head coach, then I don't think there's anything any of us are going to say to change your mind. How much worse can he be?

[Cwell]

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As an aside, it's just as difficult to read your posts without spaces between sentences as it is reading one in all caps or in fReaKo language. I don't mean to be offensive, just mentioning it.

lol man I know,but when I get going I can't stop.I misspell simple words,leave out words,type the wrong thing.It just happens.

[Cwell]

lets tell the spirit group.since they love being cheap,they can save their pennies in the astray they were planning to give Woody.They don't even need to hire a coach.They'd love to hear that.A coach effects nothing on the floor.They're just there.who needs em?

[Admin]

There are less than a handful of "good" NBA coaches and the Hawks won't be getting any of those coaches anytime soon. The rest are degrees of "bad" and all have their good traits and bad traits. Woody is far from perfect but the players (other than Josh Smith reportedly) all respect him and when the captain of our team says that he wants Woody back why should I believe anything other than Woody isn't actually any worse than the non "good" coaches?

When our scoring went up 10ppg after trading for Bibby, did Woody suddenly learn to coach offense or did he finally have a PG capable of running an offense? I am a firm believer that Woody can be every bit as good as the non "good" coaches but he needs a complete roster to do so, just as any other coach would.

Who's to say that bringing in someone like Avery Johnson would help? He got run out of Dallas and while I think he is a "good" coach, he may have just been the product of having a superstar and a large number of quality NBA vets around him.

The only reason I would be okay to see Woody replaced would be the hope that you Woody bashers will realize that Woody wasn't as bad as you thought. I believe that JJ sees it, I believe that the ASG sees it, and I pray that Sund sees it and replaces the players that need to be replaced rather than dropping the coach.

[Admin]

I can't speak for everyone but misspelling words isn't a huge deal to me, but all caps and writing without spaces between sentences and after punctuation marks makes it really difficult to read and follow your thoughts because it seems like one huge run on sentence.

[Diesel]

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What am I assuming too much about?

This is the particular statement that caught my eye:

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The point is that we were a better team with Bibby than without, which proves to me that we can win with Woody and all he needed was a PG.

You make the statement because we won the games, that means that we're automatically good.

Here's the facts.

1. Bibby took time to get healed and to get used to Hawks way of doing things.

2. Our schedule was filled with below .500 teams and teams with nothing to play for.

Therefore, the water is really muddy as to what was behind our winning. Maybe it was a combination of both. However, over the last 3 games we played ~winning teams and we needed a win and they needed a win.. and we couldn't win.

The fact that we won games with Bibby cannot be quantified as to Woody needing a PG because to be honest, those games don't give us a clear conclusion.

Moreover, as far as running the system, Bibby was a turnvoer machine and honestly as far as pure PGing go, Anthony Johnson was better.

However, Bibby gave us what Johnson couldn't in scoring and what Lue couldn't in running the show.

Still, it remains to be seen...

[bronnt]

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I can't speak for everyone but misspelling words isn't a huge deal to me, but all caps and writing without spaces between sentences and after punctuation marks makes it really difficult to read and follow your thoughts because it seems like one huge run on sentence.

Gotta agree with you there. I would have said something myself, but when I saw a big block of words with no sentance or paragraph separation, I refused to even read the post.

Mispelling happens all the time, and I can deal with it, but some things are just too much. I mean, I don't expect people to proofread all their posts for correct grammar, and no one is a perfect typist. But damn.

[thefloydian]

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There are less than a handful of "good" NBA coaches and the Hawks won't be getting any of those coaches anytime soon. The rest are degrees of "bad" and all have their good traits and bad traits. Woody is far from perfect but the players (other than Josh Smith reportedly) all respect him and when the captain of our team says that he wants Woody back why should I believe anything other than Woody isn't actually any worse than the non "good" coaches?

When our scoring went up 10ppg after trading for Bibby, did Woody suddenly learn to coach offense or did he finally have a PG capable of running an offense? I am a firm believer that Woody can be every bit as good as the non "good" coaches but he needs a complete roster to do so, just as any other coach would.

Who's to say that bringing in someone like Avery Johnson would help? He got run out of Dallas and while I think he is a "good" coach, he may have just been the product of having a superstar and a large number of quality NBA vets around him.

The only reason I would be okay to see Woody replaced would be the hope that you Woody bashers will realize that Woody wasn't as bad as you thought. I believe that JJ sees it, I believe that the ASG sees it, and I pray that Sund sees it and replaces the players that need to be replaced rather than dropping the coach.

What is Woody good at?

[Cwell]

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I can't speak for everyone but misspelling words isn't a huge deal to me, but all caps and writing without spaces between sentences and after punctuation marks makes it really difficult to read and follow your thoughts because it seems like one huge run on sentence.

Gotta agree with you there. I would have said something myself, but when I saw a big block of words with no sentance or paragraph separation, I refused to even read the post.

Mispelling happens all the time, and I can deal with it, but some things are just too much. I mean, I don't expect people to proofread all their posts for correct grammar, and no one is a perfect typist. But damn. I know guys,and I was thinking that while I was typing it,but I didn't want to forget my thoughts.I try but it's annoying.

[Cwell]

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There are less than a handful of "good" NBA coaches and the Hawks won't be getting any of those coaches anytime soon. The rest are degrees of "bad" and all have their good traits and bad traits. Woody is far from perfect but the players (other than Josh Smith reportedly) all respect him and when the captain of our team says that he wants Woody back why should I believe anything other than Woody isn't actually any worse than the non "good" coaches?

When our scoring went up 10ppg after trading for Bibby, did Woody suddenly learn to coach offense or did he finally have a PG capable of running an offense? I am a firm believer that Woody can be every bit as good as the non "good" coaches but he needs a complete roster to do so, just as any other coach would.

Who's to say that bringing in someone like Avery Johnson would help? He got run out of Dallas and while I think he is a "good" coach, he may have just been the product of having a superstar and a large number of quality NBA vets around him.

The only reason I would be okay to see Woody replaced would be the hope that you Woody bashers will realize that Woody wasn't as bad as you thought. I believe that JJ sees it, I believe that the ASG sees it, and I pray that Sund sees it and replaces the players that need to be replaced rather than dropping the coach.

What is Woody good at? exactly what I was thinking. That's the main thing with him. I don't see anything he does well. even with bad coaches they have something they're good at .but when we say something like that certain guys say it's the players fault everytime. These guys have played basketball all their lives and i'm pretty sure that NOBODY would prefer standing still over movement constant movement. Now that I think of it, Rip Hamilton would be [censored] on this team.

I don't see postives in game management

I don't see positives in offense

I don't see positives in defense,and he's supposedly a defensive guy.

I don't see anything that would make me want him back.

[Admin]

What are the areas that you would grade Woody on?

[thescout5]

Then if it isn't the coach's responsiblity to teach the fundamentals then who is? What do the coach's do except draw up plays and substitute players? If a player is doing something wrong then the coach must correct it. What I hear many are saying its the players responsbility to learn the fundamentals. The player must correct his game if he isn't doing the job do oyu keep playing him if he continually screws up is what I am hearing.

Just maybe we have a below average basketball IQ team since the players seemingly want to keep playing the way they have. That isn't going to win any championships the Hawk's are getting by on athletic ability over teams. When you play a sloid team that has ability and knows the fundamentals the Hawk's will get torched has when they did at Boston.

Ever hear of Vince Lombardi? He took many players that were blue collar ability and made them win super bowls and the players became all stars and hall of famers.You can bet they knewthere fundamentals. Ever hear of Woody? He has taken players with seemingly high potential and devalued them has a team effort not producing what they should. High ability should = wins yet still this is a below 500 team.

[Admin]

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You make the statement because we won the games, that means that we're automatically good.

Nope, I didn't make that statement. I never said we are good, I said we are BETTER with Bibby than without as our record showed. We played some very good teams and some bad teams during the 2nd half of the season and we played .500 ball with Bibby. We lost depth, Bibby was injured, and we still played .500 ball. So what happened that made us better? Did Woody all of the sudden become a "good" coach? No of course not, but he finally had someone to steer his ship. AJ was doing that pretty well early in the season but then something happened and either his age caught up to him or his lack of speed or something, but we stopped playing well offensively. Insert Bibby and then all of a sudden we are among the best in the league in scoring and our offense looks good, for the most part. We still have issues offensively but I attribute a lot of that to the adjustment period of Bibby learning the system and players and the players adjusting to him. You have to remember that this is the first time most of them have ever played with a quality PG.

Next year I expect us to win 45 or so games. We blew 5 games this year that we had no business losing, most of them pre-Bibby. I don't anticipate us blowing big 2nd half leads next season as we have playoff experience and a real PG leading us now. I also expect that we will have better depth and that should help us win a few more games. That playoff series with Boston will be huge for our guys as it had to have given them a world of confidence in themselves to be able to play with the best team in the league, which will look even better if Boston finishes Detroit on the road tonight.

[Admin]

Fundamentals are learned in high school and college. You can't compare what an NFL head coach did with a bunch of players who went to college to what today's NBA coach has to do deal with where the majority of his players have little or no college experience and many of them were so athletically gifted in high school that they were able to get by on pure athleticism. I look at a guy like Josh Smith as a prime example, when he came into the league he could barely dribble and while he still has a long way to go, he is vastly superior fundamentally to what he was just 4 years ago. A lot of that credit goes to Smoove for the work he put in on his own, but Woody and his staff also deserve a great deal of credit for it. Marvin came into this league as a PF and has been taught how to play SF and while he still has plenty of room to grow, he is a lot better now than he was.

Do you think that Phil Jackson is out there teaching the fundamentals to his players? Hell no! He is teaching them a sophisticated pro offense and defense and if they can't learn it he benches them. Look how bad the Lakers were a couple of years ago when they were a squad full of young players like the Hawks are, not even Phil Jackson could make them good. It wasn't until those players matured and they brought in some quality veterans that they have become what they are now.

[bronnt]

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So all of those other teams didn't have "weak" parts of their schedule to string together a bunch of wins? It just so happened that our "weak" games came at the end of the year.

YOU are the one who referenced this part of the schedule to point out the Hawks played well. We were no better THEN than we were during the rest of our season...that's my point. We just played a long series of weaker teams and took a lot of them. In my opinion, we were much better in December.

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LOL @ due for a winnng streak. Ish, record-wise, we were just as bad as most of the teams we played during that stretch. The entire East, outside of Miami, thought they could get that 8th spot, because of how bad we played out West in February. No one, outside of a few Hawk fans, even thought we could win 8 games down the stretch, forget 11.

I doubt other fans knew our schedule well enough to know it was so weak

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Wasington, Indy, Jersey, Chicacgo ( twice ) , Philly ( twice ), and Orlando all were either trying to catch us, or hold their current playoff position. .

Hey, except for Washington, all of those teams (we played Orlando twice) beat us during our last 17 games! If you wanted to prove a point about having something to play for, congratulations.

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Please don't use the stretch run to defend Mike Woodson. Stick to the playoff wins-at least those were against a good team, even if Woodson was less responsible for those than the home crowd.

Northcyde, your 11 wins during our MARCH to the playoffs: NY Knicks (3 times), Washington, Orlando (a nice win), Milwaukee, Chicago, Memphis, Toronto, and Philly. That's TWO teams with winning records. A nice march over poor competition.

Those 11 wins represent the best stretch of basketball the Hawks had played in 9 years. Go look it up and see.

Sure it was, if you ignore the month of December, when the level of competition was slightly higher, and no team was yet eliminated from the playoffs. We played exceptionally well that month. We had injuries to Lue, Law, Salim, and Childress at the time-less decisions for the coach to make.

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( by the way, go check and see how many East teams swept the knicks )

What does this prove, really? Plus, we played all of our games against the Knicks after the all-star break. As bad as they were before the break, they were even worse after it.

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Nobody wants the status-quo. Of course they need to be a .500 or better team next year. It's just that the majority of the fan base wants to believe it can't happen, even if woody is here. It's the pessimitic nature of this fan base that believes that we are more likely to take a step back, than take a step or two forward.

I don't know what you consider the pessimistic portion of the fan base. Here's some pessimism for you-our top 6 players are as good all around as any other team in the Eastern Conference, including Boston. Josh Smith is dynamic and uber-talented if he tempered his shot selection. Joe Johnson can score in almost any way, is a playmaker, and plays really tough defense. Al Horford is a tough defender, big time rebounder, and basically is as good as a center as anyone in the East not named Howard. Josh Childress can play for anyone.

BUT we could be better. By all rights, we should be a little better. Why? Well, because Mike Woodson believes that the offense "takes care of itself" (a direct quote). When he says this, he means, Joe Johnson takes care of the offense for him. His offensive structure involves running isos for Joe and letting him make as many decisions as possible. Woodson has never benched Josh Smith for taking too many jumpshots, even though those comprise 48% of his shot attempts and he is the 8th worst jumpshooter in the NBA (minimum 100 attempts-look it up: http://www.82games.com/FGSORT7.HTM ).

Additionally, can I point out that we were -27 points per 100 possessions against Boston when Marvin was in the line-up, but only -1.7 points per 100 possession against Boston when Josh Childress was in the line-up? Yet, Marvin had more minutes in the series at the point he was ejected in game 7, and it took Childress until the 4th quarter to pass him (thanks to Bret Lagree of Hoopinion, who pointed this out).

Bad coaching is killing us.