72 reasons to be excited about the Atlanta Hawks: #11 the Joe Johnson drive

by hawksdawgs on Oct 20, 2009 7:31 PM EDT

Joe Johnson driving to the basketball is not exciting. It is borderline anti-exciting. He is slow, he probes, he weaves, sometimes I honestly think he wanders. The whole thing is a mixture of ball handling, body control, and boredom. You would almost think the defenders have been lulled to sleep. If you can stay in front of a guy, out jump him, laterally move quicker, and have help defense already in place because Joe has been driving the ball for going on three seconds, the job seems all but done.

But somehow, Joe almost always gets his shot off, and it almost always goes in. I would call it magic if I could. At the very least, it is some kind of sight gag. There are subtle movements, slight bumps, and quick flicks and all of a sudden Joe makes an easy act that was made difficult easy again.

And like any good card trick, you want to see it again. And you do. You see it over and over. From one game to the next. And you want to figure it out. Each time you see it, you want to figure it out more and more. Everything just does not add up. How do defenders stand in a position to either foul or block Joe and somehow do neither? The questions rage and the drives continue. And the more times you see it the more crazy it becomes. And they just keep coming, and all of a sudden before you even know it, you are on your feet screaming for the most boring drive to the basket in the NBA.

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This hit home

“The whole thing is a mixture of ball handling, body control, and boredom.”

Sounds like something my prom date would have said.

But seriously, Joe has perfected that runner in the lane. He plods slowly through the lane and muscles his shot up and in. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of that one guy in the pick-up game who depends on one move that he goes to every time. You know you should be able to defend it, but you can’t and it makes you so mad.

Luckily Joe has a plethora of moves and surprises.

By the way…does any move refelct a player’s personality more than the Joe runner in the lane? I have tried to come up with something else and I can think of is the old Chuck Person 30-40 foot bomb threes. The Rifleman was a maniac and those threes fit him perfectly.

by Duff_Man on Oct 20, 2009 7:51 PM EDT reply actions