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A brutal and honest assessment of Josh Smith

txsting

By txsting
in Homecourt

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ATLBob Rookie

ATLBob

Posted
Posted

Y'all should read all of the articles: Sund, Woody, Joe, Josh, Bibby, Flip, Al, Marvin ...

While you might not always agree with all of the points, they remain very reasonable throughout.

We need to build around Horford, make him and Marvin a more integral part of the offense (if we can resign him for a reasonable price).

Consider trading Josh not to get rid of him but to a get a player who improves the team.

PG is a toss-up: do we resign Bibby, or try to replace him through both FA and a draft pick?

Can Joe accept that he isn't a true #1 option on a championship contender?

The Woody problem remains: the decisions that need to be made this off season depend heavily on whether he is our coach long-term.

Pretty sound stuff. This off season is filled with huge decision about our identity as a team, despite any arguments that we simply need to add pieces.

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Admin Newbie

Admin

Posted
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Y'all should read all of the articles: Sund, Woody, Joe, Josh, Bibby, Flip, Al, Marvin ...

While you might not always agree with all of the points, they remain very reasonable throughout.

We need to build around Horford, make him and Marvin a more integral part of the offense (if we can resign him for a reasonable price).

Consider trading Josh not to get rid of him but to a get a player who improves the team.

PG is a toss-up: do we resign Bibby, or try to replace him through both FA and a draft pick?

Can Joe accept that he isn't a true #1 option on a championship contender?

The Woody problem remains: the decisions that need to be made this off season depend heavily on whether he is our coach long-term.

Pretty sound stuff. This off season is filled with huge decision about our identity as a team, despite any arguments that we simply need to add pieces.

This might be the wrong thread to discuss this but I believe that Joe Johnson can be a bona fide #1 player for the Hawks ... but I don't believe that he should be the primary or even the secondary ball handler. In a perfect world (for me) we'd have a PG that controlled the ball and controlled the offense and we'd run screens and picks for Joe Johnson and Marvin Williams and we'd also run the PnR with the PG and Horford/Smith. I think the failure with our offense (in addition to the ISO problems) are that we take away the strength of Joe which is scoring. Sure he can get his teammates involved but because the ball is in his hands so much without him coming off of picks it allows the defense to double him and on top of that we actually encourage the opposition to do so. I think if you were to put Kobe in Joe's shoes running the same offense he wouldn't look like much of a legit star player either.

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ATLBob Rookie

ATLBob

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This might be the wrong thread to discuss this but I believe that Joe Johnson can be a bona fide #1 player for the Hawks ... but I don't believe that he should be the primary or even the secondary ball handler. In a perfect world (for me) we'd have a PG that controlled the ball and controlled the offense and we'd run screens and picks for Joe Johnson and Marvin Williams and we'd also run the PnR with the PG and Horford/Smith. I think the failure with our offense (in addition to the ISO problems) are that we take away the strength of Joe which is scoring. Sure he can get his teammates involved but because the ball is in his hands so much without him coming off of picks it allows the defense to double him and on top of that we actually encourage the opposition to do so. I think if you were to put Kobe in Joe's shoes running the same offense he wouldn't look like much of a legit star player either.

Your suggestions would go a long way toward maximizing Joe's scoring ability. Could that team win a championship though?

I'm not sure, and without a coaching change though I doubt we get to find out.

Getting a legit, consistent post scorer (and not letting Woody exile him outside the arc for spacing) would help though. Kobe's life is much easier with Shaq ... er Gasol scoring down low.

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Duff_Man Newbie

Duff_Man

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LOL... His opinion means nothing, just like I could also careless what anyone on this board says about Smoove either.. Everyone has their own opinion, Doesn't mean they are right...

As much as I think numbers aren't the be-all, end-all ways to judge athletes, numbers and statistics are not opinions. He did a good job of stating hypotheses based on solid numbers. I've been reading Hoopinion for a few years now, and the author is fantastic at analyzing numbers and breaking down games.

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macdaddy Grand Master

macdaddy

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Obviously, i like Smoove. But hey I yell at him more during the course of the game than any player on the team. He screws up a lot, but he screws up a lot because he's actually trying to make an impact. I can live with that from somebody with his physical skills because we've seen over the last 4 years that he does improve. I just don't see us getting that kind of impact player in return.

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Admin Newbie

Admin

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Obviously, i like Smoove. But hey I yell at him more during the course of the game than any player on the team. He screws up a lot, but he screws up a lot because he's actually trying to make an impact. I can live with that from somebody with his physical skills because we've seen over the last 4 years that he does improve. I just don't see us getting that kind of impact player in return.

That's one reason to yell at him I suppose, although personally I rarely yell at him for screwing up over giving effort. To me the FAR bigger issue is when he's not giving an effort and he's complaining to the refs and takes himself out of the game mentally. Once that happens you can pretty much forget the rest of the game from him and quite often it infects the team (just as his good emotions infect us positively) and we lose the game.

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thefloydian Newbie

thefloydian

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... I must say that I agree with most of points from the blog... However, I must also point out that it was written in a very bad and negative tone...

I know that we all get frustrated watching Smoove take ill-advised jumpshots, when he could feast down-low... but we also must realize that he's still very, very young... yet, he proved year in and year out that he's improving and that he is willing to go that extra mile to work on his game and come back better! That's a process... it takes time...

Smoove is a unique talent (we all must agree on that), that you don't find that often... He can change the game single-handedly (unfortunately, sometimes for the worst)... but I still believe in him... sometimes he reminds me of young Shawn Kemp, and just remember how long it took for Kemp to reach his true potential...

And finaly to those who constantly try to wheel and deal Smoove from ATL... You don't subtract such a talented young player from your team. We have already invested too much and dealing Smoove would mean givin' up on these Hawks... just as they have shown steady progress...

No! You add more pieces! That's what we need! And for that my friends, we need our ownership to make it possible with key strategic decisions which would allow our management (Sund) to make necessary moves to round up Hawks and create a window of opportunity for our team to contend and hopefully win it all in the next couple of years...

The biggest reason I see for not dealing Smith is that he's not really making that much. Even if he never becomes great his salary is pretty nice relative to a lot of other less talented players.

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thecampster Grand Master

thecampster

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All I know is that this player with "so little skills" led our team in scoring in the playoffs.

2009 playoff stat line

17.1 ppg

7.5 reb

2.2 *ss

1.1 stl

1.5 blk

1.9 TO

Not bad from a 23 year old considering other guys on the team just flat disappeared during games.

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Dexmethylphenidate Explorer

Dexmethylphenidate

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Posted (edited)

Wow. That guy knows what he's talking about. Good article. I agree with everything to the end... even he knew about Woody 2 foul and sit last year.

The only real change one saw with Mike Woodson last season was a greater willingness to play players after they picked up their second foul in the first half.
Edited by DeerPark
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Bahamut Newbie

Bahamut

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Obviously, i like Smoove. But hey I yell at him more during the course of the game than any player on the team. He screws up a lot, but he screws up a lot because he's actually trying to make an impact. I can live with that from somebody with his physical skills because we've seen over the last 4 years that he does improve. I just don't see us getting that kind of impact player in return.

EXACTLY!! :beer11:

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