Atlantaholic

Hardaway came into this team with a reputation of being a chucker and a poor defender. Obviously with the coaching staff indicating that team play and defense are requirements for getting into the game, Hardaway is making a concerted effort to not look for his shot and to defend well; can't really blame the guy as he has played like a total of 20 minutes on the year and is trying to demonstrate to the staff that he is on their same page. As his role and minutes start becoming more regular and better defined I'm sure we will see him let it loose.

Tim Hardaway's defense has been good honestly, he is sticking with his guy and fighting hard through screens.

Rudish was torching us because we insisted on trapping the point guard on the wing and leaving him open; not Tim's fault as Rudish had plenty of looks with Thabo in the game as well.

Look, we all know we aren't gonna get the calls against the Cavs, who does? But what has bothered me this year is our lack of calls against teams like the Timberwolves. I mean really, the freaking timberwolves get more respect than us? Why do refs hate this team year in and year out? It definitely feels personal sometimes, like they flat out just don't like us for whatever reason.

Boston had a point differential of close to +5 before our butt whooping. They aren't my grandfather's Celtics but they aren't exactly chopped liver. If we play like we did last night we will beat almost any team. But sure, let's panic and look at the negatives instead. Let's ignore all the reasons to believe that we will be getting better as the season goes along, such as Korver and Sef continuing to get into better shape, the potential for our young wings (Baze, Holiday, Paterson, Hardaway) to develop into key contributors, Edy Tavares slowly working himself up the rotation, the odds that Thiago and Schröder start picking up their games considering they are both playing at well below the level they did one year ago, Teague getting healthy etc. This team started 8-1, is currently on pace for 51 wins despite just going through one of its worst slumps in the last two years while dealing with key injuries. This is still largely the same team as last year - Carroll, and while obviously he is a a nice player, let's not act like he is not replaceable. Thabo and Baze are both putting up PERs equal to or better than Carroll did last year and Thabo is a much better defender. Hawks fans complain about the national media overlooking us, but at the first sign of trouble it seems like its the fans that are the first to turn on this team.

We get our starting PG back and who would have thunk it? We look pretty good again.

Looked pretty good tonight; maybe a little early to start waiving the white flag eh Hawksquawk???

Let's wait for this team to be fully healthy before we jump out of the bandwagon. It doesn't look good early on, but let's consider that we are STILL really early on in the season. Nobody saw us blowing up last year, and there is still a chance it can happen this year. If it can happen when the playoffs roll around well then, who knows what can happen? Obviously a fully Cleveland team are gonna be an incredibly tall order for any team on the east to beat; and obviously barring a series of major injuries nobody is challenging the Warriors who are off to the best start in NBA history, but we could still make some noise, no reason to give up on what Koonin and Bud have built just yet.

Good Grief, overrate a guy much? You think Carroll's 12 points and 5 rebounds, 15.9 PER and .150 WS/48 minutes would mutate this team into a title contender you are dreaming. Carroll isn't Tony Allen on defense either, he is solid and versatile but he isn't a lockdown defender, and we saw last year he isn't the one that is going to stop Lebron single handedly. Carroll wasn't even a huge factor during our best play last year, he picked up his game when our other starters were injured/slumping. There is a reason we had 4 All Stars and non of them were Carroll. BTW, Carroll hasn't done squat in Toronto outside of getting credit for their hot start despite shooting under 40%. Carroll is a good player but he isn't a transcendental talent that puts you over the top, the difference between him and Bazemore is not more than 2 or 3 extra wins this year. Literally any other starter on this team would have been harder to replace than Carroll.

Dennis is definitely not starter material yet, and his great defense is a bit of a myth to me IMO; the guy constantly gets beat putting pressure on our bigs (one of the reasons we can't rebound is our bigs constantly out of position due to helping out on dribble penetration) does an average at best job on screens and his ball pressure is hit and miss, as more often than not it leads to a personal foul; he also is too aggressive getting out on lackluster shooters and is a non existent source of steals... I do think he has some moments but overall his defensive impact is average at best. Teague is light years ahead of him at this stage, and truth be told I'm not sure how much better Dennis is a 22 than Jeff Teague. He is a serviceable backup PG, but definitely not the sixth man of the year type of player we were all hoping for so far. Hopefully he gets better as the season goes along.

Horford was never good at scoring efficiently in the paint or drawing fouls honestly. He is actually probably better at scoring inside now than he was before, he just doesn't do it enough

Has he played a game yet? Would like to see how he does.

He is completely one dimensional.

Our offense has been pretty great since the Miami game; just need to give more of a consistent effort on defense and we should be good to go.

Did you watch the game? Just because they weren't getting threes doesn't mean they weren't draining jumpers. Rubio, Zach Levine, and Andrew Wiggins were nailing jumper after jumper after jumper.

you need a larger sample size for any of these stats to mean anything IMO

I'll join the chorus in stating I'm not overly worried about our defense and chalk it up to Minnesota having their best shooting game of the season. Most of their players had been ice cold coming in so they were due to bust out and return to the mean. Reminds me of the first Cleveland game where they made like 13 three pointers in the first quarter.

It was clearly personal with the refs tonight. They had some ulterior motives with those whistles no doubt about it.

Or the clear touches to balls out of bounds, the Korver charge, the bailout of Wiggins when Baze and Korver bottled him up on a drive, Teague getting bodied all game and no whistle, while they breath on Kevin Martin and it's a shooting foul. It was BS. A farily officiated game during that final quarter would have resulted in a double digit win the other way.

When Minnesota was getting 100% of the calls in the first half I chalked it up to the 'ol give the more aggressive team the benefit of the whistle; but in the fourth quarter when we we had them on the ropes after outplaying and outhustlin the crap out of them? Why the hell do we get no respect whatsoever? Did Bud sleep with the head officials wife?

So did the refs, my goodness. You'd think a first place team at home would get a call every now and then, but Minnesotta got treated like the Lakers tonight.

Every contract the last couple years has looked like a mistake. Parson's, Harrison Barne's, Terrance Ross's contracts all look like a joke. Gotta just accept that middling talent is getting paid what was traditionally a star salary on this league. That's the market.

Happy birthday Dolfan, thanks for giving us the best Message Board in sports; much appreciated!

Taking our time with THJR is an interesting move. I will say that observing the bench reactions it doesn't seem like Hardaway is at all bothered by the decision seeing as he is consistently the first one off the bench fist pumping and congratulating players from the sideline. Coming from a cesspool that was last year Knicks into a well oiled machine probably requires a fair share of detox. Also, let's not forget we are still not even a tenth into the season; ThJR will get his chance eventually, and I have no doubt that when he is in there he will be playing with a hunger he hasn't shown yet in his career on both ends of the floor. My expectation is that in a month or two he will take Lamar Patterson's spot in the rotation.

Yes, f*** the Wizards. OVERRATED team the last several years. Their best player cares more about looking good than playing effective basketball, and their bigs are dirty overrated stiffs. The whole John Wall wrist baloney, where the whole freaking team faked a hand fracture to have a built in excuse for a second round exit puts the cherry on top of the crusty shit cake that is the Wizards franchise. Only guy I can respect on that team is Beal cause the dude showed he can flat out ball during our playoff series.