lethalweapon3

Someone, please alert Conan O'Brien. ~lw3

I'd like to see A.L. IV double his minutes by season's end. Was curious, though, how other No. 11's are either faring as a rookie/have fared in their sophomore years. Based strictly on these downward trends, 10 mins per game is just about right: (post-Acie) Jerryd Bayless: 8 mpg, 14/31 games played, 2.2 ppg, 1.1 apg, 1.1 rpg, 1.1 TO/g (buried on the depth chart behind Blake, Serge and Rudy, and maybe McMillan) (pre-Acie) JJ Redick: 8 mpg, 34/82 reg season and 2/10 playoff games, 4.1 ppg, 0.5 apg, 0.7 rpg, 39.5 3PtFG% (we know. not shooting as well but more minutes this year due to limited guard depth) Andris Biedrins: 14 mpg, 68/82 games played, 3.8 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 0.7 bpg (just one season removed from double-double land. soaked up fouls while behind Foyle and the legendary Zarko Cabrkapa. projected by Warrior fans to become a poor man's Jeff Foster) Mickaël Pietrus: 20 mpg, 67/82 games played, 9.5 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 1.2 apg, 1.4 TO/g (on-and-off all season scoring-wise. didn't contribute much else. started 3 times early in the season) Jared Jeffries: 82/82 games played, 38 games started, 5.7 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 37.7 FG%, career-high 61.4 FT% (Wiz' frontcourt choices at the time: Kwame Brown, Brendan Haywood, Jarvis Hayes, Xian Laettner, Etan Thomas. hmmm. yeah, they went to Jared. I would've, too) ~lw3

Coach McHale Gomes, Foye, McCants and filler (Booth?) Flip, Acie, Speedy ~lw3

ALIV was getting even more mpg's before he traded in his Prius for a Hummer. ~lw3

Hawks = Kardiak Kidz Philips = The 3-Point Brick Factory Mark Price = The Tony Little of Shooting ("in just 6 weeks, I can turn you from a player who can't hit threes to a player who THINKS he can hit threes!") Tyrone Hill's presence alone has instantly made Hawks players look much less ugly. Beyond that, I agree that the bigs have made little marked improvement. ~lw3

**applause** ~lw3

Another small but significant fuss about the inability to follow the Hawks on TV. Tonight's game WILL be televised on Fox Sports South, but noone apparently told the cable networks. My Comcast menu shows the oh-so thrilling Vancouver-Thrashers matchup as the game to be shown at 7:30 on SportSouth, and despite the cable channel's website and all other info to the contrary, the 7:30 menu for Fox Sports South has "Amazing Sports Stories" (A repeat of some USC school newspaper reporter who walked on to the football team. Amazing! Must See TV!). This has been a continuous problem all year, and I doubt it's just Comcast. They make you guess what station they're on from one game to the next. (PAX, anyone?) They don't update their cable menus so people can Tivo or even know a game is even coming on. Then they'll wonder aloud why Hawks-game viewership is down. Out of sight + out of hearing = out of mind. ~lw3

Just as much as the road avgs, I found the road PERCENTAGES fascinating. The Hawks are presently fourth behind the Lakers, Boston and Cleveland in filling OTHER team's arenas. I'd theorize that geographics and history are major factors. Southeastern sports fans will come indoors from the sunshine for a sports contest only if there's some significant historic pretext (Duke-UNC) to lean on. Otherwise they WILL stay home. Road %s can be skewed by who teams have played so far, as well as the varied promotional skillz of other teams. But of the five teams with 90+ percent road attendance but less than 90 percent home attendance, FOUR are south of the Mason/Dixon line and east of the Mississippi (Miami, Washington, Atlanta, Memphis, with sad-sack Sacramento as the outlier). During the Hawks coming of age as contenders in the 80s-90s their divisional rivals were based in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Indiana. They don't have those alliances anymore. When the Magic and Heat came online they were grouped with Washington, Philly, NY, and Boston. Save for a short-lived Magic-Heat rivalry in the 90s, the current Dirty South Division teams have had scarce opportunities against one another for prime-time play and attention to dominate local/regional/national media discussion, particularly with a playoff atmosphere. Quite simply, there's no bad blood here. No bad blood, no historic context, no national spotlight, and questionable local media attention leads to few booties in the seats. I haven't paid a lot of attention to the Hawks marketing plans of late, but the ticket packages marketed to me have basically been my weekend package (Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays) and "Big-Star-Games" (LeBron, Kobe, KG & Co.) It seemed like in the past you could get some good discounted mid-week deals for tickets and packages that would entice some extra attendance for, say, Oklahoma City on a Tuesday night, or Milwaukee on a Thursday, often with a good postgame concert or something for added leverage, but I dunno if that's still the case these days. Don't know if it was like this for others growing up in other NBA markets, but in Philly it used to be that to see a 76ers home game you either HAD to go to the game or pay through the nose for the local sports cable channel (PRISM) to get some, but not all, games. Road games were the only games that got local airplay in the age of antennae and rabbit ears, so theoretically fans couldn't just sit at home and watch home games from TV. I recall Hawks games being available on locally-free TBS back in the day, so fans who grew up here had little need to consider physically going to home games as a primary option. I also enjoy listening to radio broadcasts when I couldn't go to games, and here it seems too often that games are locally pre-empted, like the other night, by Georgia Tech hoops or some college football bowl game, on what is supposed to be the Hawks "flagship station" (du jour). Out of sight AND out of hearing, out of mind. Part of good strategic marketing is to sow the seeds for future ticket-holders and fans, and I don't get the impression the Hawks' brass is fully utilizing the region's vast media resources to do this. I don't prescribe fully to the thought that winning or even contending by itself translates into attendance in Atlanta. We often forget that when the Hawks did make the playoffs with regularity (at one point more consecutive appearances than any other team), they still had a skeptical audience. Armed with every conceivable excuse for staying at home... they can't beat the Celtics, they can't beat Jordan, they can't get past the second round, they're boring on offense, they traded our star, the ownership can't be trusted... this was all long BEFORE Spirit Group. While we've questioned whether this year's edition could drum up 45 wins, their playoff predecessors put up 50 with regularity but not only couldn't they sell out the Omni or a third of the Georgia Dome come playoff time, they couldn't even fill out the Thriller Dome at GT for a series-clinching weekend afternoon NBA playoff game. ~lw3

Passing along the Trivial but Interesting Stat-du-Jour... The Hawks are currently 4th among NBA squads in the team ratio of Assists-to-Turnovers. 1. Spurs 1.84 2. Pistons 1.76 3. Raptors 1.73 (thanks to Jose, eh?) 4. "Now You Know" 1.71 5. Blazers 1.71 Rounding out the top 10 are the Lake Show, Cavs, Mavs, and Hornets, and somehow the Wizards. I'd love to take a minute to look into past seasons, but I can't imagine any point since (I'm guessing) the Mookie-in-his-prime years when they were anywhere near the top of this category. More than likely they've been bottom 10, hanging out perennially with teams like this year's group: the Thunder, Grizz, Sixers, Kings, Bobcats and Warriors. Bulls and Magic are in the bottom 10 as are the still-finding-their-way Suns. Spurs 'n Pistons are also 1-and-2 in fewest turnovers (Hawks are 9th, the once-juggernaut Celts are LAST). Hawks are 8th in Dimes per Game, 0.1 assists per game behind the Raps (Celts are 6th). The stat doesn't translate into Parades on Peachtree by itself, but a decent ratio and solid defense can keep this team in Contender City for awhile. ~lw3

I've enjoyed watching Marvin attack the glass when the other Hawks are engaged in three-point shooting practice. Defense has a little ways to go, but much more aggressive play on offense is transcending his game while saving the Hawks from having to endure some humbling losses. For big men, they'll have to see if a moderate-cost SF/PF or PF/C shakes loose from one of the Western conference teams whose seasons are effectively over. That would include Mikki Moore, Ryan Gomes, Craig Smith, Chris Wilcox, Nick Collison or Johan Petro. ~lw3

Well if Josh is gonna continue to jack up long-range shots (he restrained himself to two last night, good sign), his ideal shooting coach is now available. Enter The Rifleman... Just fired yesterday in Sacto along with Coach HangTime, and checking careerbuilder.com for "Shooting Consultant" position openings. Mark Price can focus on getting the guards back on track. ~lw3

Maybe we can help him as fans. Any home game where he's tiptoeing around the 3-point stripe, once he gets the ball, the arena starts screaming, at top-of-lungs decibels: "NO, JOSH, NO!" :no-no: and hold up big signs reading: "DON'T DO IT, SMOOVE!", or something more constructive like, "DRIVE, JOSH, DRIVE!" or maybe the Hawks can do some kinda promotion where for every 3 he MISSES (buzzer beater attempts not included), the arena announces that fans can exchange their ticket for a slaw dog/chili dog/yellow dog courtesy of the Varsity. If you went to their offseason open practice you discovered that Hawks fans and Hot Dogs are quite fond of one another. Eventually he'll feel guilty about fattening us up and pass up those shots, especially if the Varsity passes on the tab to him for hot doggin' it from way out in three-point country. ~lw3

Smoove took more than 3 attempts on 3 regular-season occasions in '07-08. Thus far, through seven contests in this injury-interrupted season he's chucked more than 3 attempts on 4 occasions. He also took >3 shots in Games 3-5 of the seven-game Boston series, making 3-of-6 in Game 3... and then missing all ten shots in Games 4 and 5. In both the regular season and the playoffs the Hawx went 2-1. They're 3-1 this season so far, with last night's game against the Rox being the '1'. It may be that he mentally correlates his wide-open-three-point-shooting skillz with winning basketball, whether or not he's hitting them. In games like last night, it feels great when he buries his first three-point bomb at that particular moment ("No, no, NO... YES!")... but the dread comes shortly thereafter when you realize he believes he's Mark friggin' Price. Bricks Ahoy! Heavy doses of dunk attempts 'n three-point shots can be emblematic of forwards who are helplessly lost on offensive plays and uncomfortable with post moves. Coaching can help resolve the problem, but until Josh gets the help he needs and builds the confidence with ballhandling for coaches to run plays through him down low, he's doomed to interpreting his role on offense as an isolated one-man Highlight Factory (or, at times, Lowlight Factory). I want Josh to become confident that he can readily get his threes the Old-Fashioned Way. I don't believe the coaching staff, as currently configured, is equipped to help in this area. He could use some additional tutelage from Hakeem or (once he gets fired) Kevin McHale to help him build his inside game. My fears that without competent intervention he'll morph into a shot-blocking Antoine Walker ("Employee #5?") is still out there. ~lw3

New York. NOT Omarosa! ~lw3

I'd much rather be paying Lister Blister to play the role of "big brother," if that's what this team needed, as an assistant coach, not an underproductive big on a veterans' salary. ~lw3

Duck is finally doing what he's supposed to be doing w/ Smoove out. He'll need to sustain a 15/7 clip once Josh returns. No more stretches on offense where he isn't actively looking for the ball or fighting for boards. ~lw3

Marvin delivered last night on what I've been pleading for since Smoove went down. Rebounding... check. Assertiveness... check. Timely Passing... check. Clutch Shooting... that's been a check all year. Consistency... well, we shall see! ~lw3

Firewood... ...y. also "Is Speedy Healthy?" and anything with "Zaza" and "beast" in the same sentence. ~lw3

Oh, he's every bit a winner. Ryan Anderson was a winner too, dropping 17/5 on Saturday. But Ryan Anderson was not the #2 player picked in the NBA draft three years ago. I'm not a huge +/- fan but you-know-who looked every bit the part of a minus-22 player with his inactivity on the defensive end on Saturday. I can stomach that level of play from Randolph Morris every so often. Not from this guy at this stage of his career. He's a winner, all right. He's just got to demonstrate that to his opponents, with better consistency and assertiveness, and particularly against inferior opponents with understandably lower expectations. With Zaza and Smoove out he's not getting to the glass enough to help out Horford, Solo et al., and on too many occasions he's like a pedestrian at the glass watching his opponents snare the rebound in front of him. To gain the eventual free-agent payday winners like him will demand going into his fourth season, Hawks fans and coaches need to see more consistent effort, production, and desire to step up his game... in many more areas than just three-point field goal attempts. I can wait a little longer for Randolph Morris. ~lw3

Maybe not RandMo, but there IS a former No. 2 overall draft pick who SHOULD be going for 20 pts / 7+ boards every night, especially while Josh Smith is out of action, especially against teams like the Nets. I won't say who. ~lw3

Odds Marvin goes 100 minutes before taking his first free throw? He got his career high of 33 against these same TAFKATS in Seattle last season. Of course, that's his home metro, so the motivation's probably not the same. ~lw3

ha! I was being humorous about celebs 'n strip clubs in The A... but I will happily defer to your 'expertise' on this matter! ~lw3

In some towns celebs never have to worry about paying for dinner. HHF should NEVER have to worry about paying for a lap dance in this town. Ever! ~lw3

1. Nostradamus 2. Scoop Jackson 3. Confucius ~lw3

Hope Rome called him "Chrissy" and Woody flipped a table or sumthin' ~lw3