Taking a Look Back on the Year of Lou Williams

HE'S ON THE GROUND HOLDING HIS KNEE, STILL HOLDING HIS KNEE, HOLDING HIS KNEE............... oh sorry just reminded me of some commercial I have seen about a thousand times.

In case you guys have forgot, us Atlanta Hawks fans celebrated our "Hawks Independence Day" July 2nd with the trading of Joe Johnson. For a short time after this trade after the excitement died down, I know myself and a couple others probably wondered who is going to be the new go to scorer on this team now that Joe is no longer with the team. Well a week later the wizard Danny Ferry answered my question and brought in Georgia native Lou Williams.

This year Lou has been are scorer off the bench in a similar role that we have seen with Jamal except he not only scores, but also helps with managing the game and acting as a point guard. In fact i think Lou was having a great year as a bench player. His field goal percentage is up from last year as well as his assist rate. Aside from this, my favorite thing about Lou is how he was having a career high in his free-throw percentage at 87% until his injury. Let me say this again in a way that should resonate with you Hawks fans. Lou Williams was shooting about 87% from the line on a team that is last I checked 29th in the NBA in team free-throw percentage. The incredibly awful team free-throw percentage is something else that needs to be discussed another time, but for the time being I will be reflecting on Lou Williams and the Hawks.

Lou has brought something to this team that I haven't seen in a long time or really at all in my history of being a Hawks fan, he can draw contact and actually get to the line. So far this year, Lou has been number 2 on the team in getting to the line on average 3.1 times per game while making about 2.7 of those free-throws and once again shooting a career high of 87% from the line. Now if you guessed correctly, then your right the #1 on the team seems to be Josh who gets to the line 4.1 times per game and hitting about 2 of those shots. I will comment another time on Josh's horrible numbers from the line but again we will stick with Lou for the time being.

Outside of Lou's ability to get to the line, his field goal percentage is up this year which is 42% and averaging about 3.6 assist per game and about 1 steal. The only negative that I can see is that he is averaging a career high of about 2 turnovers a game but at the same time I can see this because he is playing the role as the distributor.

I think that this loss will hurt the team but it won't end our season. After watching these last couple of weeks, I think his loss will hurt but it doesn't mean that our season is collapsing. As long as we still have Teague, Horford, and Josh playing well and can get our role players to do what they need to do we should be okay. Hopefully we will get some of our injured players back and feeling good and oh yes, this possibly means we can finally see more form the rookie John Jenkins for the rest of this season. Needless to say, Lou will be missed this season and we hope that he has a quick recovery and will be ready for the 2013 season. With the time that we have seen here I can't say that the Ga. native is a bad teammate and a bad person on and off the court. Outside of players like Morrow and Jenkins getting more of an opportunity, the only other positive I can think of is that this will hopefully help Teague grow so we can decide if it is best to bring him back next year. And oh yes, hopefully we can see who the best rapper is on the team now that he will have a little free time. Well anyway once again we wish for a speedy recovery and I can't wait to see what he can bring to the Hawks next year.