RedDawg#8

Apparently tippy toe walking is a sign of autism, which would be dope if JJ turns out abnormally proficient at basketball as his high-level trait.

You beat me to it! I think this also speaks to the behind the scenes agreement Soth was referring to that he didn't want to reveal yet. Wondering if that is why OO signed his deal now too......

Travis was right. Travis knew he was right, and he had no desire to stick around and watch this team dissolve in to exactly what we are seeing on the court right now. He had a plan, but 2 or 3 people within this organization had their own plan. And the only people who suffered are the fans who have watched us piss away 2 seasons and key assets for nothing. Just to end up back at square but now worse than we were when this whole this started. Quinn was the silver lining from the drama last season and he is proving more and more that even he isn’t a savior. Resser has some splaining to do my friend.

I usually try to steer clear of drama, but… are you telling me that we are about to move DJ, when just this last year, we re-structured our entire front office on the fly due to Schlenks disapproval of us pursuing DJ in the first place? So anyone who was pro Schlenk dipped, Nate’s days were numbered, and we decided to publicly fully commit to this new direction under LF. And after a year. After letting all this dysfunction happen on his watch last season, Tony is finally regretting letting the young guys push out Schlenk, and we are moving DJ which is basically what started the clock on all this drama in the first place? And the cherry on top, the Spurs will have won the gamble by letting DJ leave for those assets because we are looking more and more lottery bound by the season.

Nothing you just said is wrong in logic, but it is ignoring ALL of the smoke that has been coming out. DJ wants to be traded, that is starting to leak with even the Shams of the world so it is true and we fans aren’t the only ones who know it. That removes the leverage that we have in controlling his value contract. Soth says a deal is as good as done that could go down the very moment he becomes trade eligible. Mikey leaked a destination, you can do math for yourself what assets are in that entire city. This is not about what we SHOULD do, this is dealing with the ongoing information of what we WILL do. Everything is pointing to the increasing possibility that we will get less than ideal value back in return for dealing Murray. And that is where the comparisons come from regarding Kev and JC trades. We can explain them away in hindsight but nobody was pleased at the time with basically giving those two away. We are headed there again based on how much you believe the inside intel. We are not winning any trades and you can add DJ to the list by the sounds of it. If you can’t get talent in return, the only thing left is picks and capspace. What have we shown we can do between those options?

Murray to the Knicks makes even less sense when you consider that his whole motivation for leaving us is to go back to playing his “natural” position. That would be complete hypocrisy. I pray it’s Brooklyn.

On God I am praying that it’s Brooklyn, but all the smoke has been coming from the Knicks so I doubt it.

Sellers means we are more interested in getting off of our own players and their contracts than we are in “winning” a trade. Think the early Schlenk trades to get back assets along with filler contracts. I do not think we are getting any young player(s) that will be needle movers in any deal. Look no further than the trades we have made in recent memory with Kev and JC. Those are the best examples of what is about to come if we truly are sellers right now. I’m not intending to be negative but you have to look at track record with this current front office. They have not proven the savvy or the gumption to execute winning trades with other teams. Doesn’t mean they haven’t tried, but the clear message in switching from buyers to sellers indicates they have thrown in the towel on improving via trade. It’s about clearing the books now.

The rest of us understood Kg, no worries. It was a good example.

Got the bag

Indiana keeps showing that great offense can be defense. You keep getting teams down double digits early in games and they start getting away from their own gameplan trying to keep up.

Bufkin’s emergence in College Park has to be a factor in our willingness to move on from DJM. He is on pace to either be Trae’s backup or like you said, start at SG sooner than later.

Pippen is an alcoholic who has lost half his mind. Can we use another comp for JJ? Smoove’s natural shot blocking prowess makes him a tough comp for me as well. I think JJ is a better ball handler as well. Very equal otherwise.

Per Rowland, trading Murray is of mutual interest between the Hawks and his camp.

We aren’t forcing Murray to do shit. Murray and Trae forced the organization to get him and we paid the Spurs handsomely to do so. Murray thought he could play next to Trae. Let us not re-write history. Trae clearly is a small guard. Did those two not do mental math when scheming to team up? Does Murray want to come off the bench and be a backup PG full time? He was an All Star in San Antonio. He asked to come here. He did this to himself.

Trae has literally come back with an improved aspect of his game every year of his career, it was only a matter of time until defense was added to the list. Some, like myself, have been saying for years that most young players will naturally progress on that side of the ball with improved bball IQ. Trae is constantly figuring out new ways to impact the game.

I believe I heard a version of this as well at some point.

It’s easy to ignore Trae if he’s not on TV, but when you open up the ballot to vote, he is perched firmly at the top of all guards due to his stats. You can’t ignore that. Edwards to me is a great example. He is easily a starter for the West but is buried on the ballot because of counting stats and his place in the voting reflects that. People are lazy, Trae is the most productive guard on the ballot. If you knew nothing else about basketball you would just roll with that.

No schedule favors coming our way. Building momentum is going to be hard. We needed this win to stay afloat. We are solidly in the 9-12 seed tier in the East. Going to take some major improvements to get back to .500, and still need even more good fortune to climb out of the Play-In range. #4-8 in the East (Mia, Ind, Orl, Cle, NYK) are all 4 to 6 games above .500. There is a huge gap between them and the teams we are next to at the moment. My only hope is that, by God’s grace, we can be at or slightly above .500 by the All Star break. We have 22 games before then, 14 home, 8 away. 14 of those games are against winning teams. 3 more games are against the Lakers and Warriors who are both only 1 game under .500 and will get the benefit of the superstar treatment. So at least 17 games where we would be the underdogs. We have the benefit of a 5 game and 6 game home stands during that time, except we suck at home this year. We have our work cut out for us just to get back to being average. Go Hawks.

Did we even run a zone once tonight? I mean dang, they have one player killing you by getting in the lane. He should be met by two big bodies every single time.

That was terrible coaching strategy. Our players are idiots. True. But how you don’t even attempt to put a speed bump in front of SGA is beyond me.

We actually let this game get to a final shot……. Guess what Quinn. NOW you let SGA drive in for a layup. Do not let anyone defend a 2 point shot

Why are we letting SGA get a head of steam to drive in the paint? Why are we not forcing anyone else in a blue jersey to dribble the damn basketball? Thats on coaching dude, I’m sorry. They have one offensive engine that can carry them back and we are letting him play without any resistance.

Chet tall for no reason. Yall be overhyping these unathletic tree limb looking dudes. Getting taken to the hole by a 6-4 guard.

Exactly. Force the issue, pressure the ball, zone the outlet. Lapses? We are letting them hang a 40 burger in the 3rd