crimedog

Ex can be a lot of things but anti-Smith isn't one of them.

Basically this. These guys went to Boston, Cleveland, and SAS. The outlier here is Stro to PHX but even they are better than us, have Shaq and Nash, and have a fun system that every player to have played in it enjoys as opposed to our "system" that is designed to piss off players and fans.

haha, our team doctors suck Bibby looked sluggish as hell out there

I got lucky last night and work gave me the club tickets so I got to sit pretty close to the action. I agree that, while Josh didn't have any boards, it was more of a defensive schematics thing. He looked pissed as hell the whole game, he's starting to get his very own "Joe-face". Joe didn't have a great game but he was being aggressively doubled so we should have made them pay. Did anyone else notice that Joe shot multiple air-balls last night? What the hell is wrong with his jumper. Gallinari was fun to watch. They were gettin a little steamed at him because he wouldn't back Bibby down early, but once his jumper got going, you couldn't leave him open. I think D'Antoni has a quot though where he says that he wants Danillo to take 8 3pters a game and you can see why. I thought this was Horford's best game offensively. He stuck to his strengths. I agree though. Josh has been garbage and a half lately but he didn't seem to be at fault for this game.

Mike D'Antoni is a fantastic coach. Phoenix was a fantastic half-court offense too, they have great ball-movement and spacing and can run the hell out of the the pick and roll. I actually thought that Al and Bibby ran the pick and roll pretty well last night. Al was finishing a lot better than usual and being a lot more aggressive than usual. I'd like to see him keep that up. Other than those few plays, we didn't really run anything at all other than isolations.

Last night was an example of a team throwing a lot of doubles at JJ before he tried to penetrate or post up. It definitely doesn't happen every game though.

The best FA big men (Gooden/Smith/Stro) are going to go to teams that they think have a shot to win it all. Likely they wouldn't consider ATL regardless of what we offered.

Yeah it is true. His HS form is as ugly as his pro form, its just more effective for him. I guess his shooting coaches in the past either tried to make him shoot more traditionally or, just as likely, Shaq only listens to people he respects and Hill happens to be one of those people.

No, I wouldn't put my entire net worth into the Hawks and I doubt the rest of the league's owners would approve me for that reason.

This isn't completely true. Unless you want to imply that Tim Duncan doesn't put in the effort for his FTs. Same with Dwight Howard. Those guys obviously work on their games and have never been particularly good FT shooters. Howard shot his best in his rookie season and Duncan has always fluctuated around 70%. I think its VERY obviously not this with Smith, or at least not completely this. He was .695 in December, .506 in January, .390 in February, and has been 1-7 in March. If it were just a case of him being lazy with his contract, I don't think you'd see nearly as steady or dramatic a decline, rather just a lower % from the line than usual.

Yeah, but Marv scored 28 last night and 31 earlier in the week and Josh had a bad February so its pretty obvious who the better player is long term.

Not that any answers are right or wrong, but didn't we have a poll like this a month or two ago with just Josh and Al and Josh had the overwhelming support? What changed? One guy is having a good month and the other having a bad one?

Its very unlikely he'd even consider coming here. I'd imagine Sund has done whatever he can to get Smith or Gooden but they are both probably headed to contenders.

Greatest player in the game today? Tim Duncan or Lebron. Obviously "greatest" being a complicating factor there. I think that Lebron is probably the "best" player but Duncan is probably the "greatest" player in terms of what he's achieved and what he's still capable of achieving. Its easy to be sore about Lebron after the game last night, but even there we have a perfect example. When the time came for Lebron to make plays, he took it to the rim. He found his teamates and forced the refs to make the calls, which they did. When it came time for Kobe to make plays, he wanted to keep being the hero, or go for some sort of scoring record so he kept taking contested jumpers that, if he had continued to make them, would have been amazing, but were essentially lower-percentage than other things he could have done.

I don't like to say refs cost games because I think it cheapens it when things get really blatant. I will say that reffing has gotten so bad in the NBA that its often-times hard to watch games. Its just so uneven, obviously basketball has to be reffed subjectively but I think you need to establish a pattern and stick with it. If you are going to let guys play, let them play. If you are going to call it tight, call it tight. It gets really annoying when they let guys mug eachother for 5 minutes, then they call a foul and everyone complains, so then they start calling stupid stuff to "make it even."

If anyone else watched the Suns - Lakers game, they saw Kobe make some amazing shots in a 4 minute stretch. They also probably saw him go 3-13 after that and abstain from passing until the last play of the game. Every time I see a recap, all I see is "the Lakers lost despite a masterful performance from Kobe" and the only highlights I see of the end of the 3rd and 4th are the ones he made and the commentator says something like, "he'll make this contested J all week baby" even though he bricked away a good 9 of them. Anyone who says Kobe is the greatest player in the game doesn't watch him enough. He has the bball IQ of Josh Smith. Sorry for the rant.

I think he made the right decision in Denver as he most likely would have missed that shot and I think he did the only thing he could tonight which was take a shot that he had very little shot of making because it was the only thing you could do with that amount of time left, unsuprisingly, he didn't make the fall away 3 with a hand in his face.

I hate to break it to you but we were down by one when Smith left the game and we lost by 1. Call it whatever you want it but the team wasn't obviously better or worse either way. Saying that we would have won if Smith was in there is conjecture but saying that we would have lost either way is just as blatantly biased. The only hard evidence that we have about Smith's presence on the court (the numbers) is that he is in fact EXTREMELY important to our team's success. Anything else (ie. "the team seems to play better when he's out") is factually incorrect unless playing better means giving up more points and scoring fewer.

I thought Joe made the right play, the sad thing is that the other guys were suprised that he didn't take it. The odds of Joe hitting a tightly contested shot like that are pretty low. The odds of Flip missing the shot that he took were pretty low. Sometimes it comes down to luck.

I like Al coming off the bench a little better. I think a) he doesn't get many touches because he's raw offensively, and this would help him develop there b) he is oftentimes foul prone and he might be better off with Zaza taking those first few minutes c) he plays best as an "energy guy" and energy guys can take advantage off the bench and d) he is able to back up both spots fairly effectively which allows us to be more versatile.

Thats the sort of thing I'm talking about though. If someoen put Mark Bradley and Moore in front of my face, I'd pay not to read it. Problem is, they suck. On the other hand, I do have Insider on ESPN and would gladly pay for it because a lot of stuff (well at least some of Hollinger and Stein's stuff) is pretty interesting and fairly well written.

I would, provided the quality was high. I wouldn't pay money for an AP story or CNN or anything, at least not these days. I'd probably pay for something well-written though. I'd pay for the Times if I had to...

Does seem to be too good to be true. I know that sometimes writers will just push on with a story after they've broken it, whether or not it was substantiated by any involved parties. That has certainly been the case with the Amare to ATL rumor. I still see sports writers talking about that one even though Atlanta management and Suns management deny it (doesn't mean it didn't happen, just that it was never substantiated by those involved). On the other hand, maybe they were wary about adding an older guy with a massive contract and being locked into that for 4 years. I doubt it though, mainly because NJ wouldn't be getting back ANYTHING that they could sell to their already disillusioned fans as a rebuilding peice (remember, the Grizz got picks+Gasol+Crit, and even if most people thought Crit was garbage, at least they could sell him as a young guy for the future).

The only guy I've ever heard complain to the media (which I think is pretty much necessary for a sports prima) is Joe and I think its just because he doesn't know how to communicate with people face to face. Joe is sullen, but not a prima donna. Josh gets too emotional but he isn't a primma donna. Al complains to officials too much but he isn't a prima donna.

Who knows, frankly, I doubt its a distraction in and of itself. I think that if it does do anything, its just a a general funk that comes down from being employed by morons - less the actual situation itself.