cam1218

Seriously. I haven't heard much talk about the Hawks being without their All-Star Center. Horford is in his prime too, Allen is getting 'kind of' old. Our backup/starting 2012 Center is out and that seems to never be acknowledged. Some people must have only watched us beat Orlando last year and think that Jason Collins was our starter all year long.

Mike Woodson against higher seeded playoff teams: 3-15. All of those three wins came when we were the #8 seed too, go figure lol.I remember him referring that series to the press after the Knicks got blown out in game one. He was talking about getting back to work, finding a way to win on the road and winning at home. I was really hoping a reporter would bring up the Orlando series. "Mike, your last time in the playoffs your team set the record of the worst series defeat ever. Can we expect this trend of blowouts to continue with the Knicks? "Woodson gets it done during the regular season but his inability to change what isn't working in the playoffs is his biggest weakness.

What people?The Squawk will be relatively quiet, either because someone is afraid to swallow pride or get too excited about one win.The media will focus on what Boston did wrong and what they must do to win game 4.Chuck and Shaq will giggle like little school girls and make fun of a missed Teague dunk from the free throw line while they show highlights of the Hawks winning.Me? I won't be surprised. I'll say great game and hope they don't get overconfident before game 4. Praise what they did well, and immediately bring attention to any poor ball movement or bad D.

Can we please change the title to this thread? It's so stupid that we have to have members defending our own players (Horford mainly). If he could play, he would. Just last year, he was the guy that made the free throws to win a game after the hard foul from Griffin. He also showed his heart in the game at home against Chicago when we were down 15-2 or so? Those are just a couple quick memories while I type. Do our fans even care about our players? This thread should be about Smith and his injury updates. Instead I see a few guys defending our players because some people think Horford or even Smoove are soft? Seriously?If there is a new update about Josh playing Friday, hopefully somebody makes a new thread. Until then, get well soon Smoove, Boss and Zaza. Some of us do appreciate ALL of you.

Very true! Nobody is happy now, but we have so many more posts after a tough loss. People would rather overreact and post their feelings instead of talking about a win.

I see TNT and ESPN give love to Memphis, and they blew a 23 or so 4th quarter lead Sunday. At HOME too! Chicago got destroyed tonight. The Knicks get a lot of love too and have lost 2 games by a combined total of 40ish.I'm pissed we lost but it is annoying we must continue to battle with the media. Each loss is a lot worse because they love to hate on us. The media makes the so-so fan hate us. I mean, people from North Dakota like Miami because it is cool. It is "cool" because people allow the media to make up their mind about what is cool, and we must follow trends. Seriously, who the heck would like the Hawks unless you are from or love the city?

What Larry Drew shouldn't be saying: "ummm" "well" "uh". I do think he has a good feel for the game usually, but he can't get a point across with out those words. On camera, he doesn't really seem like a guy the players would really respect. Our offensive play seems to back up my thoughts.We still have time to regroup and win this series though. Go Hawks!

It is as if some people forgot that Horford is an all-star Center. Say what you wan about him playing out of position, the fact is he was still selected to the all-star team as a Center, not a misplaced PF. There isn't any team in the NBA that would not welcome a Horford type of player to their postseason roster.Zaza has done a wonderful job filling in for him all season. Hopefully he will be healthy enough to start in the first round, either way though, Horford at 70% is our best Center and we will need him if we want to advance against Boston or Chicago.

I was at the game too. I took somebody that really isn't a huge basketball fan and told him that it would probably be a close game with the Hawks pulling away late in the 4th. Boy was I wrong lol. It was really fun to watchloo us blow the Pistons out.T-Mac has really looked good these last couple of games. Hopefully he has been holding back all season for the playoffs.Pargo also had a good playoff for the Hornets a couple of years ago. I hope he has a couple of his hot shooting games in store for the Hawks this year too.

The only time I have ever really been impressed with Drew was during the playoffs last year.His substitution patters are one of, if not the, main reason I get so annoyed with him. He doesn't seem to ever have a feel for who is playing well or who might play well in a given game.Dampier has looked decent in the minutes that he has played, and I'll take his decent over Collins horrible any day of the week. Also, earlier in the season Pargo seemed to be coming into his own and was shown to the bench once Hinrich came back. Once that happened, our offense was struggling and we needed somebody to come in to get us some points. It took Drew forever to realize Pargo could do that for us and to get him back into the rotation.And the list goes on too...McGrady has complained about playing time, Willie Green gets inconsistent minutes (especially now and it's taking him forever to get back into rhythm), he takes out Marvin when he is actually playing well, I'm not even sure what he is doing with Radmanovic half of the time, Stackhouse deserves more (not a lot more) minutes, and Ivan Johnson has gone from 9-5 to a part time role of 9-10:30.When you consider our crazy schedule this year it makes his lineup management even more questionable.

I had a topic about the Eastern Conference Standings a couple of weeks ago. It's starting to get pretty interesting. I avoid checking the standings if the Hawks lost their last game and check them constantly when the Hawks are winning. Well, we lost our last game and have had a lot of time off since that loss so it's been a few days. I checked the standings today and was pretty shocked lol.Orlando has lost 4 in a row and are now the 5th seed. We are only trailing them by one game now and play them later this month.Indiana is now the third seed, and we trail them by 1.5 games (2 in the loss column). The good news with both Orlando and Indiana is that we own the head to head tie breaker. A first round match up with either of these teams would be ideal, especially if we can sneak in as the third seed and get home court.If we finish fifth, avoiding Philly seems pretty important, but I wouldn't mind facing Boston in a 4/5 matchup. If we do finish as the fifth seed, it is very important that we have a better record than the Atlantic winner as we would still get home court advantage. Looking at our schedule this month, we have some "easier" games too. 2 against Charlotte, 2 against Detroit, and 2 against the Raptors. After this weekend we get another 3 days off before going on the road to face Boston and Orlando. Also of note, we play our last 5 games of the year at home, and the final three are against NYK, LAC, and DAL. Depending on seeding for those teams, I could potentially see DAL (old) and NYK (locked into the 8th seed) resting some of their players.

Joe deserves it too. He just would not let the Hawks lose any close games this past week. It's also a good week for me when both the Western and Eastern conference player of the week winners are on your fantasy team.

I think you are referring to the 2009 season, and we were still the third seed that year. That is when we played the 6th seeded Milwaukee Bucks. Boston won their division, but was the #4 seed and played #5 Miami in the first round. We wound up getting destroyed by Orlando and Boston beat the Cavs in the second round. Side note, it's hard to believe but we were 34-7 at home that year!A division winner is guaranteed a top 4 placement in the playoffs, but not necessarily home court advantage. If the #5 seed has a better record than them, like us against Philly this year, the fifth still gets home court advantage. I think this is a great rule too. If you win your division, you at least get to play a similar team even if you don't get home court advantage. If it weren't for that and the season ended today, Philly would be seeded #7 playing the #2 instead of seeded #4 versus the #5. This reminds me how much I hate the NFL system. As a Falcons fan, I know we have been screwed twice by playing teams that had a worse regular season winning percentage on the road (Arizona and NYG).

Yup, sorry. I've been reading up on baseball the last couple of days and must have "Central Divison" stuck in my head.

Bob and Nique have been talking about playoff seeding a lot recently. We aren't there yet, but I think most of us assume we will be there. It seems logical that you want to be higher in the standings, but do we really want to be?Lets say we finish third. We would have homecourt and be playing the sixth seed. We would probably be playing Indiana or Orlando. I like both of those matchups, but we would be playing the Heat in the second round (assuming they finish second).If we finish sixth, it is probably a rematch with the Magic. In this scenario, it is obviously better finishing third because we get homecourt and are stuck with the Heat anyways.What has me really intrigued though, is finishing fifth. If we finish fifth, we will play the winner of the Central Divison. As long as we have a better record we will still get homecourt (so it might as well be the fourth seed). I worry about playing the 76ers, but they have slipped a bit since they dominated us earlier this year. Could we beat the Celtics? What about the Knicks? I feel we could take any team from the Central in the first round (if we can stay healthy).If we win the 4/5 series, we get a rematch with Chicago. Considering the injuries of Rose and how we have played the Bulls this past year, I'd much rather see them instead of the Heat in the second round.So what do you guys think?

I'd give TMAC the start and see how he plays with the starters for extended minutes. He can talk the talk, lets see if he can walk the walk.

What is the word on Rose, is he playing today? I hope everybody realizes the game is on at 4 today.

I'm pulling for Joe, but I believe Anthony Morrow will be your winner. I always got to root for the former GT player. Another former Yellow Jacket, Iman Shumpert, is in the slam dunk contest too. If Joe doesn't win, it'd be cool to see both Morrow and Shumpert represent Georgia Tech with victories in their contests during all-star weekend. It'd be the first thing to go right for GT hoops this year..

Hawes has actually been hurt for more than half of the season. He has only played in 14 of their games this year and a couple of those were games he left early with injury I believe. They have only been a .500 team though when he has been out.

Based on their play against us I have to say Philly is #3 in the East. Atlanta/Orlando/Indiana will battle for the 4-6 spots. I think the Hawks are better than both of those teams but I'm not sure how the records will turn out (who has easier schedules, etc). I wouldn't mind a first round matchup with either of those two teams, especially if we can get the #4 seed. If we had Horford I'd say we would be a lock for the third or fourth seed. Lets hope the Boss can get healthy and be ready for the playoffs.

Josh can be annoying with his shot selection, but he seemed to want this win a lot more than Joe. Joe seemed content with passing the ball to anybody that was open when we were down in the third. If we were going to win this game it surely wasn't going to be because of Joe.

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed. The ASG (or whatever they are called now) own the Hawks, so what is new? I think we all know what our owners will not do, so there is only one thing we really need to look at. January 11th, Horford's last played game. Horford has been out for over a month now. Hopefully we will be getting back a 2 time all star C/PF in a couple of months. That will be our "huge" addition. Truthfully, I think we sometimes forget how much we miss him.

The Suns really aren't that good. They do have Steve Nash though. He is a guy who I've always wanted to be a Hawk and probably one of my favorite players, but that is pretty much all they have. I initially expected us to win at home and have them to return the favor on the road. Since they beat us at Philips, I fully expect us to get a win tonight.

The missed layups were extremely frustrating. However, I'm glad they actually took the ball inside some. While there were still a lot of jumpers, I would rather see them miss layups than continue to jack up and miss ill-advised jump shots all night long.

It seemed when we were rolling early we had at least one guy off the bench hitting shots. Pargo had a lot of games where he came in and gave us some good offense. Other games he didn't shoot as much because Green, Rad, or T-Mac were hitting shots. It seemed there was always energy and offense coming from somewhere. Now with Kirk coming off the bench it seems we are only getting offense from Green. T-Mac has had his spots, but he hasn't been really consistent. Rad finally looked alive against the Lakers. We really need to get Pargo some minutes with the second unit. I've been very disappointed Drew hasn't put him in the game that often. I know Drew is very concerned (or so it seems) with changing the starting five, but we could really use some change. He doesn't seem willing to bench Teague, so we need change in either the starting SG or SF position. I wouldn't be opposed to moving Joe to SF, sending Marvin to the bench, and starting Hinrich (defense) or Green (offense) depending on the matchup. Another option is moving Marvin to the bench and starting McGrady in hope that Marvin would feel more comfortable knocking down threes with the second unit. If he is playing well he could still finish out games with the starters. I just really think change would potentially bring more balance and really benefit this team right now.