Game Recap, Philadelphia 76ers 105 Atlanta Hawks 100: Running Out Of Gas
by Kris Willis on Mar 24, 2011 8:27 AM EDT
Email
PrintThis game started well enough with the Hawks trailing by two after one quarter and actually taking a six point lead into the half. Atlanta played the third quarter to a stalemate before Philly started the fourth on a run and outscored the Hawks by eleven to take home a five point victory 105-100. Atlanta scored 59 points in the first half but could only manage 41 in the second. 20 of those second half points came in the fourth quarter. The Hawks allowed the Sixers 31 points in the fourth quarter alone.
When looking back over this game a couple of things stand out. After utilizing the bench for much of the season through the good and the bad, Larry Drew elected last night to go with just a seven man rotation on the second night of a back to back. Granted that a lot of the regulars didn't play in the fourth quarter of the Chicago blowout but as Drew has reminded us this team is 70+ games into the season and is suffering from physical and mental fatigue. Philly's bench was the deciding factor in this game as Lou Williams and Thaddeus Young combined to score 33 of the Sixers 39 bench points. Zaza Pachulia and Jamal Crawford combined to score 14 for the Hawks.
Post game, AJC writer Ken Sugiura asked coach Drew about the seven man rotation and the decision not to use Jeff Teague.
"That wasn’t the problem," Drew said of the defense of Williams. "I thought we did a really good job on Louis. A couple times we played him a little too soft and he just jumped right up and shot it. We actually fouled him twice at the 3-point line to send him to the free-throw line. That wasn’t the problem. We had the game under control. We just let it get away."
That answer left Sugiura puzzled and it does myself as well.
Coach Drew's quote does bring me to the next topic which is Atlanta had this game under control until a late Philly run. Atlanta looked powerless against that run and after they gave up the lead it looked like they once again checked out. I think a direct relation can be drawn from the play of Josh Smith for the Hawks added energy early. Smith stayed closer to the basket for much of this game scoring 33 points while grabbing 12 rebounds. When this team has an inside threat their offense is better and flows much more so. The problem is they may go several games without establishing anyone inside. Once the second half rolled around, the offense once again started to drift away from the basket and in that decisive fourth quarter the Hawks settled for the first available jump shot more times than not.
Post game Ken Sugiura caught up with Joe Johnson with shot selection and more importantly who is taking the shots was the topic.
"Down the stretch, I just think we don’t understand who should get the ball. Throughout the game, everyone’s free-flow playing, taking shots, making plays. … (But in the last five minutes), we don’t understand or we don’t know who that person is. If you notice the last four or five minutes, (expletive), I don’t think we know who should take the (expletive) shot.
Sugiura did note that Johnson seemed to be more bothered by the loss than anyone else in the locker room.
Which brings us to Josh Smith.
"I was just trying to play off the guys that were getting plays called for them. I know they were trapping Joe heavily and I was just trying to put the onus on myself not to settle."
Is Josh defending his actions here by saying that Joe was the focal point of the Sixers defense? Is Joe upset that he didn't get the ball or just by the lack of knowing where the ball should go? Since Smith brought up putting the onus on himself not to settle, is it strange that Zaza Pachulia can get yanked from the game for taking what is perceived as a bad shot in a blow out loss yet Smith and other players have had the green light to do as they want the entire season?
Those things my friends are a lot of the small things that over time can derail what was once a very promising season.
71 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Very true.
At this point, you could almost copy and paste them and change stat numbers.
I hate to sound like a bad fan, but I am almost looking forward to a very short playoff run. Loving this team is wearing me out this season. When I expect them to be bad, it is different…like rooting for your 10 year old’s team. Still fun and encouraging. But THIS…this is like constantly having to bail that 10 year old out of jail later in life. Expectations just give way to disappointment.
So much talent…I hate to see it go unused so much.
I'm on the Twitter: twitter.com/edgrohl
This season has been very tiring
but once the off season is here and the CBA get resolved we can get down to fixing this team.
@Kris_Willis
Fixing the team
That’s if anyone thinks things need fixing. They have been able to avoid fixing the team for 3 years now.
Hawk Str8Talk
by Hawk Str8Talk on Mar 24, 2011 10:52 AM EDT up reply actions
It's my job *sigh*
Not really I love doing this
I will admit, today’s was easier given that the Hawks actually were in this game
@Kris_Willis
You remind me...
Of a cheerleader (although, I’m sorry, I doubt you look at hot as one…ha) that has to keep cheering during a blowout. I’ve always admired them. Sure, they are paid to cheer for the team, but one could not pay me enough to keep smiling and cheering while my team is getting destroyed.
That brings me to you. Despite the obvious frustration that is mounting in all Hawks fans, you keep chugging along. I would have walked away pouting, or, if required to post something, it would have been NSFW.
I am bi-winning. I win not only here but also there.
The "Cooler"(Jamal Crawford)
When a team makes a “run” the “Cooler” is always in the game. LD love for Jamal is going to get him FIRED.
LD proved last night coaches can LOSE games, just like players.
groundhog day
Same sh*t, different day/season/decade.
I have tickets to Saturday's game
At least I can yell at Larry Drew and the rest of these bums.
Let's go Mets!
Exactly.
It’s not as if the owners had the ECF or bust mentality……………The thing is, he’s not going to be fired. They’ll tell themselves that this was his first year and blah, blah, blah. Also, they’re paying him pennies on the dollar, so it would be silly to assume they’re all of a sudden going to open up their checkbooks and pay for a more quality coach.
@cocoqt81
Which will make him a lame duck coach next year
and he will have even less clout in the locker room
@Kris_Willis
Just to be clear
“That wasn’t the problem,” Drew said of the defense of Williams. “I thought we did a really good job on Louis. A couple times we played him a little too soft and he just jumped right up and shot it. We actually fouled him twice at the 3-point line to send him to the free-throw line. That wasn’t the problem. We had the game under control. We just let it get away.”
Let’s take a closer look. The 76ers basically played four guards last night, and they got 60 points off 36 shots out of them. If you don’t count Iguodala, they got 44 points off 25 shots. Either way, they got excellent, efficient offense out of their backcourt. By often putting three guards on the court at the same time (counting Iguodala), the 76ers forced the Hawks into at least one, usually two, and, down the stretch for a bit, THREE bad matchups. If Larry Drew doesn’t understand the concept of perimeter defense now, he’s never going to understand it. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to understand that the Hawks “let it get away” in large part because they continued to play horrible defense on the perimeter.
Whatever the Hawks’ matchup problems with a team like the 76ers, whatever the dearth of defensive talent they generally possess, Larry Drew is exacerbating the problem by playing Jamal Crawford and Joe Johnson together. And what’s worse, he doesn’t seem to understand that. Honestly, if I didn’t still care about the outcomes of the games, it would almost be funny.
Larry Drew is exacerbating the problem by playing Jamal Crawford and Joe Johnson together.
Here let me fix that for you…
Larry Drew is exacerbating the problem by playing Jamal Crawford.
I assure you
Johnson’s reputation on defense, at least the reputation he has with his coach, is severely misplaced. He’s quite bad, especially when forced to guard small forwards or point guards—and anyone who makes backdoor cuts on a regular basis.
That said, yes, I agree: Jamal Crawford is historically bad on defense. And frankly, he’s no better than average on offense, which makes him kind of a bad player. I can’t wait for his new contract to be announced!
If you get a chance, PLEASE read the article post by Mr. Roman Pierce. a perfect assessment of the team and organization. The article is after the embarrassing lost to Chicago on Tuesday.
by Mr. Hawk on Mar 24, 2011 10:08 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
No no...he said "Own Us".
I'm on the Twitter: twitter.com/edgrohl
by Duff_Man on Mar 24, 2011 10:50 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
How does Teague not play...at all?
Seriously? Zero minutes. Gah.
I am bi-winning. I win not only here but also there.
Best Thing Said..
was in the comments of the AJC to Ken and MC and that’s – your next story needs to be what is REALLY going on with Teague and Drew. Did Teague sleep with Drew’s daughter? Did he tell him that Drew Jr sucks for leaving UNC? Did he offer him a scholarship at Wake Forest and then renege? I mean what REALLY happened because it’s not what’s being reported about inner dog and results on the court and all that. Something happened that has nothing to do with basketball and it’s just being kept secret. We need to ask players, coaches, someone to reveal this thing and quickly…
Hawk Str8Talk
This is what Teague told LD
You realize the league your kid left, because he was losing his position as the point for NC, that same league, you realize coach I used to own that league. You do realize that, right coach?
Only thing I can think is that Larry Drew wants to develop Teague the way Green Bay developed Aaron Rodgers,
have him sit on the bench and hold a clipboard for 3 years.
I think a fairweather Hawks fan is an oxymoron
I'm sure there are other issues,
but the main thing is, Coach Drew has no idea what he’s doing.
@cocoqt81
I was just shocked,
That he benched Kirk in the fourth quarter considering he was the only person on the team that has been consistently making their 3-point shots in the game and gets replaced with Jamal “no defense” crawford to run the point. Then proceeds to watch the Philly lead grow even more and eventually decides to put kirk back in with 5 minutes left and down 10. Oh yeah and then decides to put Josh back in the game after the lead was already long gone. LD is a freakin moron
Partially functional, half of me is comfortable. the other half is close to the cliff like Mrs Huckstable
If Tyrone Hill and Sam Cassell had a staring contest, who would win?
On an unknown date in the year 2012, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson will come together to discuss offensive strategies.
Is it possible
That this team is seriously sandbagging?
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
I really don't think so either
I just had to propose it to the masses because I am seriously at a loss regarding this team. I thought long and hard last night about it and I just can’t understand how ownership and management don’t recognize the issues, or they do and refuse to do anything about it. I tried to look at it from a pure business perspective, but even then most of the decisions make little sense.
My only two conclusions were A) that the organization is ill equipped to run this franchise and should have never done so from the beginning, which is nothing new that we haven’t posited in the past, and B) that maybe I’m crazy and this is some elaborate plan to confuse the league in an effort to ambush the opposing team in the first round.
The latter is rather improbable, but I just had to ask. The problem with the former is there is nothing anyone can do. I’d have to do some research, but I can’t recall a single instance in any sport where the league forced an owner or ownership group to sell. Many of this teams problems are rooted in the decision making of management and ownership, so barring some hitherto person or group pops up then things aren’t changing.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
I was thinking that at first too
but they can’t beat any of the teams in the top 4. I used to think they could beat Chicago but that team has developed…and they have a winning attitude…the Hawks are done (if things don’t change) I’m talking 4-1 first round exit
i'm gonna be shocked
if we get that 1.
Hawk Str8Talk
by Hawk Str8Talk on Mar 24, 2011 4:54 PM EDT up reply actions
The only reason I don't believe they're playing for position
is because they can’t beat either of the teams ahead of them in a 7 game series. At this point, I really don’t think it matters who they play in the first round. Their season will end there.
@cocoqt81
I am sick and ready to adopt a new team...but
I am not ready to throw LD out so fast. He made some changes that i like, early in the year. The team actually has some effective go to plays that he put in ( the JJ backdoor cut, the P&R with Horford either shooting or driving. BUT the problem with this team is attitude and Josh Smith, and a good center. There were several plays in the 2nd half were Josh quit, or played 0 defense. He still takes bad shots, picks his times to defend the rim. He was out hustled by Young, and Brand. Zaza was outplayed by Spencer Hawes…SPENCER HAWES…You mean to tell me there is nobody on that bench who could defend Spencer Hawes…really??
I can understand why Mike Woodson didn’t listen to his assistants last year. LArry Drew’s decisions are piss poor and are getting worse. In the six years it took me to develop a seething dislike for Mike Woodson it has only taken 70 games for these same feelings to manifest for Larry Drew.
What did he change? The same questions I would have asked Mike Woodson over the years are the same questions I would ask of Larry Drew now.
Why don’t you play young guards?
Why don’t you build trust in your bench?
Why do you run players into the ground?
Why is the team quitting on you?
Why are some players aloud the freedom to choose their shots while others may only shoot when you crack your fairy wand?
Why does the defense suck?
Where are your eyebrows?
Where is your backbone?
Why dont’ they follow your game plan?
Why don’t you quit?
What did Larry Drew fix? What did he change?
Usually I'm mostly over specific stuff by the next morning
But I am still just furious over the last few minutes. We’re down around 8-9 points through there consistently, but what happens? Our jump shot happy team suddenly decides to take time working the ball inside for a 2 point shot. WHEN YOU ARE DOWN 8-9 POINTS, YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO PLAY EVEN!
It’s not even necessarily the fact that we went for 2 instead of chucking 3s there. It’s the speed with which they played.
Josh gets a basket (off a goal tend) to make it an 8 point game with 1:43 to go, we foul 15 seconds later.
Joe makes a basket to make it a 7 point game at 1:21 – that’s 22 seconds between shots.
We’re down 7. We don’t foul. I think it’s debatable, but Sixers did miss. Only now we get a Josh miss 13 whole seconds after the Sixers miss. Still down 7, :46 to go. We’re down by multiple baskets, yet in nearly a minute of game time we’ve only gotten 3 shots up.
We don’t foul. Philly makes after milking another 23 seconds off the clock. Now we’re down 9 with under :30 to go.
And FINALLY the light goes on for our team. Hey, we need to score a bunch of points in not much time. Maybe we ought to put up some 3s, foul right away, at least give ourselves a chance….
I’m getting even more angry looking at the play-by-play.
JJ has no sense of urgency
If we need a quick basket, he will hold the ball and dribble himself a shot for 20 seconds, even if there is only 30 seconds left in the game
Which is a problem - but doesn't excuse the other guys
either in their shot quickness or delays in fouling. Except, of course, if the don’t foul decision was on LD, in which case I’m happy to blame him for it.
I get that logic (defend instead of foul) if you’re down a bucket in the last minute, but not last seconds. I don’t get it when you’re down 7 and have had no success stopping the other team from getting good shots.
Does Drew not recognize
That Jamal Crawford plays alot better in shorter spurts than over extended periods in the game. Where his Bibby like defense mitigates any positives he gives us on the offensive end.
How about that Jamal hasn't played well in months
and hardly has at all since his contract demands weren’t met.
@Kris_Willis
Thank goodness he wasn't re-signed
…of course, I figure Hawks management will re-up him during the offseason somehow
Let's go Mets!
If Jamal has decided to not play up to par because of the contract
his butt needs to go. That would be the most selfish, team affecting act for a millionaire to do.
by Hawk n the Ham on Mar 24, 2011 10:11 PM EDT up reply actions
Wow, I just saw this
Kirk Hinrich sprained his right thumb in the second quarter. He still ended up playing 38 minutes, but he only scored three points after that. He said he’d be fine.
And JT still can’t get in the game…. We have, in no particular order, attitude issues, tired bodies, nagging injuries, and offensive slumps happening among the 7 guys who played. And the solution is to play them more?
Its literatly night and day
when we decide to play Jamal Crawford at the one instead of either Heinrich or Teague. Its almost a forgone conclusion that we are going to lose any momentum that has been built up during the game
Even The Loss I think Clinched Playoff Birth For Atlanta....
I think they clinched the Playoff Birth ……. Charlotte nor other team can Catch them in Standings.
"accidental champions"
lol, yep those teams are forcing the hawks to be the 5th seed. I’ve never seen the hawks play so horrible at the end of the season and still make the playoffs….its like getting a trophy after finishing 5th in the 100m dash.
Atlanta will win a championship....someday
that's there problem
nothing to fight for…no sense of urgency…to what flip-flop with Orlando…results still the same 1st round exit 4-1
I have a friend
Who doesn’t even watch basketball ask me after the bulls game, “why don’t they play that #0 guy? He seems to be doing the best”
Partially functional, half of me is comfortable. the other half is close to the cliff like Mrs Huckstable
If Tyrone Hill and Sam Cassell had a staring contest, who would win?
On an unknown date in the year 2012, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson will come together to discuss offensive strategies.
by Throw on Mar 24, 2011 5:02 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
Im curious as to how you respond,
I just say that our coach is an idiot and believes that the guy wearing #11 will eventually get out of his 2 month long shooting slump.
Partially functional, half of me is comfortable. the other half is close to the cliff like Mrs Huckstable
If Tyrone Hill and Sam Cassell had a staring contest, who would win?
On an unknown date in the year 2012, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson will come together to discuss offensive strategies.
I keep reading these comments and keep seeing no one point to the main problem
Do we need Teague to play? Sure we do, and he will help, but that is not a difference maker.
Do we need Lion to go back to being a Lion and fight more inside? Sure we do, but he is doing fine as is.
Do we need Smoove to work more inside? Take less jumpers? Stay foused and gamble less and let point guards bring the ball up? Sure we do, but he is still a force and not the cause of our issues.
Do we need Jamal to get hot? He can if LD allows him.
Do we need LD to learn to coach? Absolutely, but pigs may fly first.
But the biggest problem with the team, is the play of JJ. If you are not going to get at least 20 points on a constant basis from JJ, if he is not taking 20 shots, and is not making a good percentage, this team has simply no fire power. Every other team knows this. It is why they double him. Ball doesn’t have to go through Lion. It should and must flow through our best assist man, who is JJ. But if he is not scoring, this team can’t create and has no chance. Pure and simple. In Jan, when Hawks were winning, JJ was balling. This team as is, is built around JJ. It is why so many people are jumping his case and are mad at his contract, but so much of what Hawks are, centers around him. He has carried that weight for 5 years, but this year, because of injury and a nonsense offensive system, he is not getting the touches, and he has gone cold. Hawks have no chance whatsoever, if JJ is not hitting….
What we have seen more and more is that
teams are still loading up on JJ defensively. Philly was sending a couple of defenders his way last night each time he touched the ball. The offense hasn’t been moving enough of late to help take advantage of that .
@Kris_Willis
wouldn't that be on the coaching?
To make the players get into a position to help?
Partially functional, half of me is comfortable. the other half is close to the cliff like Mrs Huckstable
If Tyrone Hill and Sam Cassell had a staring contest, who would win?
On an unknown date in the year 2012, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson will come together to discuss offensive strategies.
by Throw on Mar 24, 2011 7:56 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I think everyone is accountable
It is either bad offensive design or bad execution. I think it leads to all of the frustration and the indecision that we have seen on the court.
@Kris_Willis
I think I disagree with everything you said.
This team no longer comes and goes with Joe Johnson. Joe Johnson’s play has been paltry at best for the majority of this season. Blame it on whatever you want whether it is the injury or the new offense there is no excuse for how poorly he has played. Maybe he is having a bad year or maybe he keeps wads of cash in his gym shorts now whatever the cause, the result is the same. Despite his play being bad we are still in the playoffs. And if he wasn’t here at all we probably still have the same seed.
1. Teague making a difference? If Teague got more burn we would still have Jordan Crawford, and a 1st round pick. We wouldn’t have been relying on Mike Bibby to play competent defense for thirty minutes a night. Teague has already proven he can make a difference in the way this team plays.
2. Lion is playing hurt right now, but do we need an inside presence to make a deep run in the playoffs? I think so. So while some people might be okay with his 15 footer, when that shot stops falling or people start guarding him out there he has to go inside. It is another way to control the pace of the game.
3. Josh Smith taking quick shots, taking positive plays and making them turnovers are negating the advantage completely must account for at least four plays a game. One thing I hear consistently is that when Josh Smith is playing smart and well the team matches his energy. When Joe Johnson plays well the team sits back and watches.
4. Sure but him being hot despite what LD says does counteract the fact that he can’t play defense.
5. No argument there
Joe Johnson led the team in scoring about 24 times this year with a record of 13-9. Now I am not sure when the offensive strategy switched, but before we went to playing with no direction and we were running the motion offense whenever Joe Johnson tried to take over we stunk. He either wasn’t hitting his shots or teams would double him and everybody else would be out of rhythm. When we played the motion who cared who took over in the game everybody got their shots and everybody was happy. Joe Johnson has carried this team for 5 years and last year was supposed to be his last, but because of his contract he has tried to play like an alpha dog and the team has suffered for it. And no I don’t agree with you. You take Joe Johnson off of this team and you run the motion with bench players getting an opportunity and you have team playing better this one with a record if not the same than better.
Mike Woodson (and his staff) and Joe Johnson should have left together. They laid their bed of iso Joe and alpha dogism and they should have both paid the equal price for it.
And if you want to make a case for him being injured he had a whole month to get better, he took two weeks because the team wasn’t devastated without him and he wanted to make the allstar game. How he got voted in over Josh Smith I have no idea. This season was supposed to be about the playoffs. Now we are playing like a lottery team without a lottery pick.
When Joe Johnson goes…. we can all move on.
You can not replacce JJ's scoring with the remaining roster
The team is not having a good enough record because exactly of the fact JJ has not produced. Hawks need that scoring. I am not trying to defend JJ, I am sayin the team was built with the assumption of getting production of 20-30 points a night from JJ on a consistent basis.
Every so often Smoove has a game like last time out at 30 points.
Or vs. Bulls first time Lio scores 30 points. But neither do it consistently. They are not scorers.
You need points in NBA. Pure and simple. This is a scorer’s league. IF you are arguing that point, then you are arguing the essence of NBA. Every NBA team has great scorers. Even players like Jamal get huge paychecks who play no D, but can fill it.
The superstars are the scorers that are unstoppable (Durant, Kobe, Lebron). Even defensive teams like Bulls or Thunder are only good teams because they have couple great scorer’s each.
On Hawks, if JJ plays at his current levels, who are you going to get the points from? Marvin? Teague? Kirk? Damien? A struggling Jamal.
People talk we need good D and Teague, you get no argument from me there. But we need scoring more than anything now. We have been struggling shooting the ball. We need points.
Don’t get my argument to be anti Teague or anti other Hawks. I want him to start and get burn, he will make a difference without a doubt. And yes him not starting caused us to lose JC2 and 1st rounder, no doubt. But my point is even with Teague starting, this team goes as its top scorer. Rejecting that point is rejecting how this team is built.
And it should have never been that way.
This article is one of the reasons why I don’t like statistics. It states that Joe Johnson is just as effective at the iso as he always been, which I don’t think is at all.
That however is not my point. Take a look at the video and tell me that doesn’t resemble a lot of the Hawks possessions lately? If the ball got to Joe and he was allowed to do his thing, previous experience tells us that, the end result is going to be a stumping in the playoffs. The whole point of this season was to go with a more balanced scoring attack. Unfortunately we have gotten away from that completely.
I will step into the realm of extreme opinion and say every game where the motion was actually ran we were competitive no matter who was leading the team in scoring. When Joe was hitting his shot and playing in the offense we were unstoppable.
However when Joe officially began to slump and when it became a priority to get him going, we went back to the iso and we eventually ended up where we are now.
Is it Joe’s team? Is it Larry Drew’s team? Why Drew, aren’t you running this offense where we could all contribute? Why are we all running iso’s? Why when I am slumping do I not get a whole game plan designed to get me out of my slump?
We have Joe leading the team in scoring 24 times out of 72 games. 40 wins and 32 losses. Out of the 24 games, 13 were wins. Which means, when the team is supposed to be coming and going with Joe Johnson he has only accounted for 32% of our wins? In my mind that is not enough to say the team comes and goes with him.
You mention superstars. They have that name and have earned that name because, as you say, they can be unstoppable. Joe Johnson has never been consistently unstoppable. He is usually difficult to handle, but so is Manu Ginobli and the spurs would be nothing if they didn’t get equal contribution from Tony and Duncan.
And how exactly was the team built to let Joe be their superstar? When Billy was here he wanted Joe to run the point and be the playmaker. Someone who could get his shot and distribute, a poor man’s Lebron James if you will. Mike Woodson had other plans, but Mike Woodson doesn’t decide how this team is built. Neither does Larry Drew who seems intent on putting back in place the same thing he promised to rid us of. Rick Sund has said countless times that this team is being built like the pistons or the spurs. Yes, I expect to get scoring from you, but also you and you. If one falls short the others step up.
Our team isn’t built like any of the teams you named because they encompass the greatest players in our league. First Team NBA people, who actually get voted into all star game and will be, even when they don’t deserve to be. Our team is built to get scoring from everyone. So no, I am not going against how this team was built. This team was built with the idea that anyone of the players from 1 to 5 and now 6 could win us a game. Whether or not that actually is implemented or not is out of the Designer’s hands. And the Builders unfortunately, have taken that blueprint and design and used only sections 2 and 6 of it.
You should look at JJ across the years as opposed to what is happening now
You are letting his performance this year, cloud your judgment on how things were when he was signed to the contract he was.
The contract that was signed, valued JJ at about 30 points a game. That is about 20 points of scoring and about 5 assists. If you quote stats from this year, and the slump he is in, and make an argument for the fact that Hawks are built to get equal value from 1-6, you have a point. But that is not the way JJ had performed prior to this year. He had played at a much higher caliber. No I would not compare him to Manu, to me prior to this year, JJ was number 3 or 4 shooting guard in the league. After D-wade and Kobe, and along with Roy. And you can not tell me BK went through all he did to get him here, thinking JJ would play at same level as the other players on the roster at the time. JJ was head and shoulder above them at the time.
It was definitely JJ’s team. Remember who the rock went to when the team is in trouble. Remember ISO Joe. Remember who the other teams focus on. Without a doubt, JJ is the most versatile Hawk. Inside and out. He can create his own shot. He can score from outside, and he is usually a mismatch for most 2 guards.
Just because D-wade or Lebron or Kobe are better players than JJ, doesn’t change the concept. JJ was Hawks go to man. In that regard he is like them. Remember there are only a handful of players like those I mentioned. IMO, Hawks should have tried to keep JJ, but not at the cost of the contract they did. A 4 year 15M per year contract, was what was needed. Instead we went to max and that was wrong. The concept of keeping JJ at his production levels of years past was legit, because otherwise you could not replace that production as you were then limited with salary cap limitations.
Again, the point of my initial post, is if Hawks don’t get 30 points total production from JJ they are in trouble. That is what is happening to them. And that is the blueprint we had. Even a better Smoove and Lion are not changing that fact.
yahoo article
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=Anxw4iFRRBSrAVqhffGocJW8vLYF?slug=ap-reelinghawks
Atlanta will win a championship....someday
sounds like some anger is brewing in JJ
I still support him, if he would just lead this team. He is still a top 10 talent at his position. Teams still throw 2 & 3 defenders on him. I would trade everybody but Joe and Al right now…..The coach needs to call some players out right now in the media….and it better not be Zaza. Start with Josh Smith, then Jamal, then tell Marvin and Joe to step it up….then call out Josh Powell ( who is suppose to be a champion)
My friend said to me today,
“When zaza is yelling at the coach, then that coach seriously gets none of the players respect”
Partially functional, half of me is comfortable. the other half is close to the cliff like Mrs Huckstable
If Tyrone Hill and Sam Cassell had a staring contest, who would win?
On an unknown date in the year 2012, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson will come together to discuss offensive strategies.
While I agree with the respect
Zaza battled with Woody many times the last couple of years.
@Kris_Willis
Doesn't that just prove your point?
Team had clearly stopped listening to Woodson too, probably before his final year. We all saw clips and pictures of guys clearly ignoring everything he was saying during timeouts.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Peachtree Hoops
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
In Association With
Ball Don't Lie - NBA - Yahoo! Sport
- Behind the Box Score, where the Heat grabbed control behind LeBron James’ amazing afternoon
- Behind the Box Score, where the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the fourth quarter. Again
- Kevin Durant’s game-winner beats the Lakers in Game 4 (VIDEO)
- Behind the Box Score, where the Los Angeles Lakers answered at home
- Pau Gasol wins the 2011-2012 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award
