boxscore
Well, the Hawks showed all the naysayers.
No fourth quarter collapse there. So in your freaking face us. The homerism in all of us would like to hate on our home team, but really, there is enough hate to go around three times over. So might as well say half the reason the Hawks got dominated was because of the Heat. Good work fellas. You executed on top of your execution. You helped make us awful. Thanks for being jerks.
But it almost goes without saying that if you get beat by a team you want them to be 100% of the reason. Not the case tonight. The Hawks sucked. They sucked in every facet. Even the ones that don't involve basketball. Josh Smith was bad at complaining. Randolph Morris was borderline horrible at not smiling. Shoot he belly laughed. The team sucked. I said that already, but it bears repeating.
And the initial analysis might be ready to drop season win totals or blow up teams but that is basically absurd. What is not absurd is to say elite teams do not do this. Ever. They are neither out coached nor outplayed for four quarters like that. That is not to say the team can't outplay any team to the conference finals, but they are not going to out coach or execute a better team for seven games. Just not going to happen. And that is not a four game assessment. Nor is it a final one, but right now, the Hawks are a better looking version of last year.
It could change. The reason we all get mad is become the obvious bads could be obvious goods, but the new season optimism is clearly gone from everyone. Expectations are grounded. Fine. But now that they are, does anyone have confidence Mike Woodson can raise them again? I don't. So with that said, paging an Al Horford/Josh Smith take over.