Atlanta Hawks: Perception & Reality

are going to bring me out of my blogging hiatus. You all make good points. I might just meet you guys in the middle somewhere.

We don’t want Sund to be a fan, but is it too much to expect him to show passion and knowledge of his craft? Has he forgotten what it took for him to become a GM in the first place?

When I look at Thomas Demitrioff, he seems energetic, into it, knows players from colleges inside out, other teams players, what he needs to improve Falcons. I feel we are in good hands with a man with vision and passion.

When Sund talks as he did recently and compared us to Spurs, or talked about Bibby being in prime of his career, or Hawks being elite, frankly it disturbs me. I wonder if he cares or if he knows his trade well enough. We don’t want Sund to tell us the secrets. We want to see him show passion for his trade, that he knows about our weaknesses, our strengths, and is working towards improving.

Like any line of work, just having experience does not make you good. Over time, if you lose passion for what you do, you become stale and lose your edge.

Tell us players in college that you like for next year that you think can help Hawks. Tell us some of the other players that you like on other clubs in NBA. Then let us dream, because that is what we need. We want to know that the guy in charge of improving the club, has the passion and the vision to learn and wants to do what he can with current limitations of owners, to improve the team. Even the owners should want that. Why is that so difficult for him to communicate? Why is it so easy for Thomas Dimitrioff? While we may disagree on BK’s vision, he had a vision and passion for improving Hawks under difficult circumstances also. I see none of that passion and commitment, and instead the disturbing things that we hear on the commercials about the Hawks are what come across in Sund interviews. That should be alarming for Hawks fans and owners alike.

No matter how well they play, his articles tend to highlight the negatives more. At this point, I may be the one with the bias. It’s like the bbasketball guy from Youtube. He HATES Jamal. Therefore he never highlights the positives he brings to the game. In my eyes, Bret articles accomplish the same task.

Effort is a part of defense, however, Bibby works hard and puts forth a ton of effort and yet he is not going to get any better defensively because he has maxed out his skill. JC seems to put no effort into it and he really isn’t that much worse than Bibby, nor is he going to get any better defensively because he has maxed out his effort. So right there you have the two contrasting opinions played out and it’s easy to see that both skill and effort are both equally important and that it takes a combination of both to be a sound defensive player. You are both wrong and right.

As for players changing in general, there is much more evidence of players not changing their stripes than there is of players changing. Sure, every once in a while you see it happen, but not often. Bibby, JC, JJ, and Smith are all going to be who they are. How many really think that JJ is suddenly going to get to the line 10+ times a game? That Bibby will turn into a shutdown defender? That Smith will smarten up and recognize his strengths and weaknesses? Not I, that’s for sure. That’s like asking Dwight Howard or Rasheed to not get a technical just about every other game. Or Thabeet to be a useful post player.

Also, I don’t recall too many people laughing at Sund’s comments about keeping JJ because we though it wouldn’t happen. We laughed because we knew he was serious and that the ASG would overpay and laughing was the only way to fight the fear. There’s a clear difference between believeing in your team and believeing they are something they’re not. My personal opinion is that the ASG don’t care what the team is so long as it results in extra playoff games. If they and Sund truly believe that this team is elite and championship caliber, then that is scary and I think that’s Bret’s point.

I honestly could care less what Sund says, or any GM employed by the ASG for that matter, because he’s just a mouthpiece. He’s going to say what keeps him his job and he’s going to do what he’s told until a better opportunity presents itself. I believe he is working with clipped wings so to speak. The heart of every matter lies at the feet of the ASG. While essentially that holds true with every pro team, I think we all know that some are less hands-on than others. Al Davis cripples the Raiders because he doesn’t allow the people under him to perform their duties. Whereas the Steelers, Patriots, and now the Falcons are much better because they owners that trust and let their staff do their damn jobs.

So, nothing Sund says moves me one way or the other and I think you guys are both right to an extent.

yes

I get the feeling that maybe you are not correctly interpreting the messages that Bret is trying to convey. I mean no disrespect by this, it is possible that I am the one who is misinterpreting the messages, but at any rate, I just feel like you and Bret are referring to slightly different things in your arguments on the same topic. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

Bret mentions that “Larry Drew appears not to have made the adjustment from thinking, during his 18 seasons as an assistant, about how he would coach an NBA team in the abstract to coaching the particular team he was hired to lead.”. I believe that he saying that Drew’s theoretical coaching ideals are sound and would be very effective in the ideal situation with the ideal roster of players, yet Drew has failed to realize that some of the goals he is trying to accomplish may never be possible with the personnel that he has to work with. I agree with this to some extent, because many times Drew’s strategies contradict eachother. For example. many people have been saying for the last couple of years now that we are never going to have a great defensive backcourt when we play both Bibby and Jamal together. It’s just not possible, regardless of how good the help defense is. I have no problem with Drew encouraging more effort out of these guys on the defensive end, but at some point, he has to realize that regardless of how much effort they put into defense, both career long habits and physical limitations are going to ultimately prevent them from being great or even above-average (average may even be a stretch) defenders. I’m sure that Drew realizes that he is going to have to make some trade-offs as far as offense and defense goes, based upon who he puts on the floor, and up to this point, he’s done an okay job of this, but I definitely feel like he could do better. I think eventually, Drew will realize, if he doesn’t already, that there is always going to be some defensive slippage when he plays his poor individual defenders at the same time, even when everyone is giving maximum effort.

At some point, Drew has to understand that not all of his goals can be accomplished utilizing the same group of players. That’s one area where I think he needs some work. If Drew really wants the team to be great defensively, he can’t always mention energy or effort as the scapegoats for why the defensive didn’t meet his expectations. The point that I think Bret is trying to make is that if Drew really wants the Hawks to be a great defensive team, he may need to address the lineups that he has on the floor and adjust his rotations, because using the same lineups that we are using now, specifically, the Bibby-Crawford backcourt, that great defense is never going to be a reality.

Now, as far as the comments on Jamal Crawford’s game. I interpreted Bret’s comments as stating that Drew is asking Jamal to be something that he is not, mainly a playmaker. Kris, it appeared to me that you were leaning more toward Drew asking Crawford to put more effort into his defensive game, and it’s fair to assume that when we are referring to “Crawford’s game”, we can discuss all aspects of it. I agree with both of you here, but I really have nothing to criticize Bret on as far as this subtopic goes. Crawford is a seasoned NBA veteran, everyone in the league likely knows that his greatest asset is his scoring. That’s his talent and that should be his role. Jamal is not a rookie or young player anymore who is still being groomed into a niche in the NBA. At this point, asking him to play point guard is really a lost cause in my mind. Not only is he uncomfortable doing so, but the results have not been great and I feel that Crawford would be better suited doing what he does best.

It’s ironic that Sund mentioned the Spurs in his comparison, when I can quickly find a glaring difference the Hawks and Spurs, based upon the argument that I just gave for Crawford’s game. The Spurs are a team which finds talent in all places and is able to fit almost any player into their system that they draft, due to the fact that everyone on the team has clearly-defined roles. No one is asked to do things that they are not good at, nor are they asked to do things outside of their areas of strength. Bonner is a great three point shooter, and his role on the team is primarily to spot up for threes. Popovich does not ask him to post-up, even if that is what most players at his position should be doing. Gary Neal is a very good shooter, hence, his role on the team is to spot up for shots and knock them down. He is not asked to be a play-maker. These are just a couple of examples, but one of the beautiful aspects of the Spurs team is their clearly-defined roles. Everyone on the team knows his role and plays it well, and that allows for wonderful team basketball.

The Hawks are far from doing that. Jamal is asked to play back-up point guard more than Jeff Teague is, and Bibby is occasionally asked to defend the quickest player on the court, when we all know that he is incapable of doing so. Similarly, sometimes, Josh tries to do everything. I’m not sure if this is his own doing, and a display of his passion for the game, or simply him doing what Drew is asking. At any rate, sometimes I feel like Drew puts players in situations where they are at a disadvantage, and when they fail to accomplish what he asks of them in those situations, energy or effort becomes an easy scapegoat. I doubt that Popovich would ask Bibby to guard Earl Boykins, Russel Westbrook, Devin Harris, etc. with the knowledge that Bibby has slowed down dramatically and was never a great defender to begin with.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have players do multiple things on either end of the floor, but on the offensive end, I don’t think players should be forced to do things that they are not very good at when they are established veterans and have never had success doing those things in the past. I’m fine with Drew asking for Crawford’s maximum effort on the defensive end, but on the offensive end, I would never ask for him to play point guard. Similarly, on the defensive end, I don’t think it’s fair to put players into situations where you know they are going to fail and then cite effort as the cause.

That’s all I have to say for right now, as this post is getting far too long far too quickly. I’ll stop here for now. As far as Sund’s comments, I have nothing to say on that aside from the fact that I don’t think anyone who follows the Hawks, outside of the “casual fan”, is going to buy any of that for a second.

but since Sund became the GM of the Hawks in what 2008, what has San Antonio done in that time that makes the an elite team? If the bottom line is winning championships, then SA has not done anymore than the Hawks have I think. People want to bring up the draft picks, coaching moves etc. but I think ASG hinders a lot of what Sund may want to do. And with his track record that may be a good thing. But I’m curious about how we deal with JC at the trade deadline. The season is far from so who knows, maybe Sund was more on point than everyone thought.

Hell I once saw Kevin Willis average 15.5 rebounds in one season largely because he simply wanted to get every rebound.

And the first thing I thought of was that year when Wilt felt he wanted to lead the league in assists. He went crazy passing up shots to get assists. Ridiculous.

Wow…15.5 rebounds didn’t even lead the league that year.