Atlanta Hawks: Off Day News & Notes

A couple of things to discuss from yesterday's off day. There are a few questions in my mind about the team going forward. the first is will we see the starting lineup that we saw against Portland again and will it become the norm going forward? Michael Cunningham asked the same question yesterday at practice and got what I thought was an interesting response.

"I certainly can see it. I have said it from day one with Jeff’s speed and quickness, we don’t have anybody on this team that comes close. When he’s playing at a high level it makes us better. Kirk has played some two a great majority of his career. When he was in Chicago, he played alongside Rose. He played some up in Washington alongside Wall. He’s used to it. It’s something we are looking at. It moves him to the two, it moves Joe to the three. We will probably look at it even more as we wind down the stretch of the season."

Notice LD stopped short of saying that it would become the norm and didn't even suggest that it would be the lineup tonight against Milwaukee. If Jeff Teague's performance proved anything the other night, then it proves that he does need more time. Whether that is a starting role or not is up to the coach to decide but Teague needs minutes at the point and his play of late should prevent LD from even thinking of using Jamal at the point guard position.

It might be crazy for us to expect the kind of performance that Teague put up against Portland nightly the challenge is for him to find some consistency and he can't do that if he doesn't get consistent minutes. MC might be the closest person to this team in terms of seeing the day in and day out stuff. He also posted yesterday an excellent piece where he discussed Teague's season and how at times there has been no rhyme or reason it seemed for his playing or not playing. I thought it was interesting that MC doesn't buy in to one of the most popular theories around here as to why Teague wasn't playing.

(I’ve seen theories among my blog people that perhaps L.D. hasn’t given Teague more of a shot because he concerns about job security made him stick with Bibby. That wouldn’t make sense considering Woody’s reluctance to give Teague more burn was a strike against him in management’s view.)

There are still more questions here than there are answers. The good thing is that Atlanta broke their losing streak and we can tune in tonight to see what kind of impact Jeff Teague will have tonight on the game. Will he start? Will he be aggressive? Will he play? At this point how can we really be sure?

In other practice notes MC reports that Al Horford intends to return to action tonight against Milwaukee. Although coach Drew took more of a wait and see approach. Hopefully Al will be able to return to the lineup.