Crank

Historically, the Hawks have had problems guarding smaller point guards. Everything worked out and the Hawks shot 51 percent as a TEAM in Game One. However, as Dwight Howard said in a AJC story. This isn't the NCAA tournament or a one-game elimination. The Hawks must win four of seven games.

Jamal Crawford is spending too much time as the "backup" point guard and he doesn't have a track record of being an above-average defender especially against smaller guards or making his teammates better with great passes for assists.

Crawford's streaky shooting may make some forget his other shortcomings, but usually he isn't an efficient scorer and it takes a high number of shots for him to be comfortable, but this could play into the Magic's hands if Crawford CONTINUE to get extended minutes as if he is a STARTER which forces JEFF TEAGUE TO BE ESSENTIALLY BENCHED.

Jameer Nelson is going to be a problem all series long--win or lose.

When Crawford's shot is not falling, he becomes a liability. Someone such as a Derrick Rose attacks the basket relentlessly when his outside shot isn't falling and gets to the free throw line or is thinking about making his teammates better..

Coach Drew has to be careful because things could get OUT OF CONROL with the Magic three-point shooters if Jameer isn't allowed to break the Hawks perimter down..

Dwight Howard is having a monster series, but the Hawks perimeter defense on Jameer Nelson has to be tight- ALL GAME LONG...

Plus, Joe Johnson is not a natural point guard and has some difficulty defending smaller, quick guards.

Hinrich played 28 minutes in Game One..Teagu had a DNP-CD

Im gonna call BS and here is why

Jameer had 7 of Orlandos first 8 points of the quarter on Kirk . Kirk was fantastic but during the 3rd Jameer got much more aggressive looking for his shot even before jamal came in to the game simply because Dwight was really starting to struggle ie.. the tech and 2-3 turnovers during that stretch etc .

Jamal didnt play extended minutes he played the same 31 minutes hes played since the day he arrived .

He had 9 points and one assist in the 4th .......We scored 18 total points in the quarter

Jamal tied for the team lead in assists with 5 assists in 31 minutes . Jameer had one assist the 36 minutes

Stan Van Gundy even mentioned hos our strategy worked because even though Jameer hit some shots it played right into our hands because no one else would get going . But they did realize that whoever is guard jameer would have no help the majority of the time as no one was gonna leave Dwight to seal off the lane and while the corner defender would occasionally help he wasnt gonna leave the shooter either .

Kirk was fantastic but jameer kinda caught on to what was going at the half and got more aggressive as the game went on . But Ill take jameer taking 18 shots and getting one assist every time

Now do I think teague should get some minutes ? yes but do I think Teague will get them on the road ? no I do not .

During the entire 3rd quarter stretch of Jameers scoring barrage he shaved 3 points off our 17 point lead . Some of you are simply trying way too hard to make something out of nothing

Dol . . Mike Bibby a few weeks ago was abusing him. Bibby drove to the hole at will on Kirk.

Kirk overall hasn't meshed with the starting unit since he's come here. Why do you think the Teague bandwagon has grown so much over the past few weeks?

I just need to see this more from Kirk. Not sporadically. I just don't know which is the "real Kirk Hinrich". The guy who played stellar defense on Rose for one game and then Nelson? Or the guy who let Mike Bibby, John Wall, and Darren Collison make him look like a backup PG.

No way I'm going to act like Hinrich has played consistent basketball on the defensive end, because that would be a lie. His Per-48 mintue opponent counterpart numbers at PG while with us, were pretty horrible. So I need to see consistency from Kirk.

Thats the regular season Kirk wasnt brought here for the regular season .

Ive never seen so many fans who put so much emphasis on meaningless regular season games .

I am saying if we don't get past the 2nd round with Hinrich, no matter what happens, we gave up to much. Furthermore the trade may not just be a simple latteral move but a possible desperate step back as far as our future goes. Here is a little refresher for you on our management team, Hinrich is not our GM. He is no more to blame than Marvin is. Marvin did not pick himself and Hinrich did not trade himself. I never said anything like that so you must think its somehow possible. :cant believe:

What future are you talking about ? It seems to me that you are complaining JUST TO BE COMPLAINING . It seems to me that you are simply living your life in a worse case scenario and no ownership or management can afford to think the way you do . At the rawest of truths they just flat out believe in the other players they had on the team more than you do ....how can you hate on that ?

I am saying in no uncertain terms that I am waiting on a real run also. I am also saying in no uncertain terms, my real run this season or next does not end in the 2nd round; if it does we gave up to much for a non all star caliber PG. Whether your assumptions above are correct or not is irrelevant but just for arguments sake I will toss this out there. We lose Jamal next season and a few good players go at 18 or lower, this trade will bite if Hinrich only gets us into the 2nd round this season and next.

Do you think fans of any team seeded higher than us will see their teams moves as a GREAT upgrade if they go out in the 2nd round? Chicago, Miami, Orlando, Boston fans will be disappointed. What is it about Hawks fans that is so different? I think its because we have never tasted a conference championship. Many of us IMO look at getting into the playoffs as a minor championship but the flip side is 16 teams or half the league get there. Then when we get to the 2nd round, we are in our championship. Only 25% of the league gets that far and since it is as far as we have ever gotten we should be really excited so long as we put up a good fight.

Like I said above, its a wait and see on Hinrich and our run into the playoffs. I am a Hawks fan so take this with a grain of salt. If we get past Orlando, I say our chances are 3 to 1 against us getting into the conference finals. That is not as good as the Nique years but there is a glimmer of hope. If we get to the conference finals it will be a Hawks history making trade; but if we don't it will be the same ol same ol with two 1st round picks gone as well.

So basically what you are saying that if we dont make it past the second rd no matter what happens its Hinrichs fault and we shouldnt have made the trade :cant believe:

We can count on the Magic coming out and playing much better defense on Tuesday. The Hawks won't shoot as well as they did in game 1. I think they did a good job of driving the ball after they missed a few shots, they must continue this. They got Howard in foul trouble in the 4th but they must do it early. We all know it's going to take a big hack from Howard to get the whistle in our favor. Something has to be done to done when Hinrich comes out and Jamal is guarding Nelson which doesn't include having Joe chase him, Drew has to at least give Teague a look to see how he does. Teague also has to come in to give JJ some rest. He played 45 minutes and we all know about his questionable conditioning. Can't wait to see what our damn Hawks are made up of.

I would hope he wouldnt do what you are suggesting as its an over dramatization of the facts .

Since when are Reddick,Arenas,Hedo Jrich considered defensive players ? This is not Pietrus or Barnes we are talking about here . They will make adjustments but those players magically becoming a defensive forces over night aint gonna be one of then .

Jameer had 7 of the Magic first 8 points of the 3rd when Kirk was on him he didnt magically start making shots when Kirk sat he just continued his mini run . He made two on jamal and then JJ took over after a timeout but we never shouldve taken jamal off of him because it didnt change anything . Jameer kept his streak going by making a couple of baskets off Magic offensive rebounds. You cant overreact to these type of situations .

Key to the second is to anticipate there adjustments and be ready for them and to also rebound better as we got pounded 40-29 on the boards.

If we are gonna be running bodies at Dwight and Josh and Al are gonna be at the forward spots well that means that when that shot goes up they have to come crashing in and chase down every rebound . I saw both of them trying to leak out way too many times hoping someone else will snag the rebound . When you are talking about the likes of Bass,Hedo,Anderson well then those two have got town those boards .

I do expect Teague to play but I just think that it will be at home. I dont think LD trusts Teague on the road so he leans on his vets. I would hope Teague understands this and uses it as fuel for the home game .

Hinrich goes out and Nelson goes off. Crawford is so worthless at everything other than scoring.

actually when Hinrich went out Jameer already had all but one of the Magics 3rd quarter points .

He went off but what was the score at the end of the quarter ? ahhhh so he scored a few baskets but it didnt have any impact right ?

I chose jamal as the MVP of this series because of two factors

The month of April his host has been back so far shooting 50% from 2 and over 40% from three .

He stands to make himself bunch of money if we win and he plays well.

I do believe that Joe will also bring it also .

What amazes me is how so many hawks fans are always vouching for the other team .

Its not the same Magic team to say we have to match there energy when we dont even know who will show is is simply Hawks fan looking for excuses to bail.

Last year it was they dominated us in the regular season will they fight back in the post season if we meet them

Now this year we dominate the regular season and its will we match what they bring when they really havent brought anything against us ?

I think they will show up in a big way now that they are playing for something

That loss margin among the 8 home game defeats so far is -16.8 (88.5 - 105.3). I don't have time to compare with everyone in the league, but just looking at the sad-sack Cavs, their differential in 17 home game defeats is -11.0 (94.8-105.8).

Time to get my flog on...

There are some NBA organizations who can endure a handful of blowout losses, even at home, or perhaps on the road before a national audience.

The Atlanta Hawks are not one of those teams.

This is the sole returning NBA playoff team that is NOT among the top 20 in home percentage attendance. The team whose relative ranking among NBA clubs for attendance has slid to 25th (down from 18th) after slowly climbing every year since 2006.

This is the team with multiple All-Stars and Almost-Stars that, individually, can not fill any tier of seating in an arena, at least not anymore. Blake's 19-32 Clippers, Nash's 24-25 Suns, and Amar'e's 26-24 Knicks are bigger draws in this town than the 33-19 Hawks.

This is a team who brands its arena as The Highlight Factory, whose leading scorer's "highlights" generally involve teardrops and turnarounds in traffic, whose flashiest player, now seven years removed from a Slam Dunk title, has become enamored with 20-foot jumpshots.

This is a team almost one year removed from playoff blowout performances so epically bad that they eclipsed their prior year's second-round drubbings, and the road playoff drubbings from the year before that.

This is the team that, when forced to discuss them solely because of their relative record, provokes faces on national media members worthy of laxative commercials. "C'mon, do we have to talk about the Hawks? Really?"

This is a team whose dispirited ownership only seems to make headlines when they further entomb themselves in lawsuits and inertia.

This is a team that strings along a flawed head coach on cheap contracts, and lets him go only to promote the assistant sitting next to him for even less money. When he was promoted, and when the so-called 'core' was brought back in its entirety, this was all presented under a Kool-Aid sale suggesting, with new systems and philosophies in place, blowout basketball and mail-it-in efforts would be mere notions of the past.

This is the team that is the only American pro franchise (MLB-NFL-NHL-NBA) around for at least the last 40 years that has not given its fans a conference final in the past four decades.

Altogether, it takes an awful lot of trust to get thousands of people to stop in on a lousy-weather mid-week night to see the Atlanta Hawks. When a low-profile team like Philly (or New Orleans. or Milwaukee) comes in, and their first-quarter scoring equals the Hawks' effort for the entire first half, that's hundreds more people who have made a mental note never to darken Philips Arena's door again. Other teams can shrug this off. Not this one.

Without splashy maneuvers, high-profile players, and risk-taking management, this is a team that needs to build consumer confidence, rather than erode it, one game at a time.

~lw3

I dont think there is much confidence to be built up here . In the end I think this franchise will go the way of the the Sonics and soon the Kings . We lost only 7 home games all of last year and the feeling was still pretty much the same as was the way fans reacted to the team .

Play with pride in the playoffs at Phillips and I would look for a lot of fan support if I was JJ:

Play without pride in the playoffs and the atmosphere is like Crank described:

Two game 4's at Phillips. Who thinks the difference in the crowd was due to the crowd just deciding not to support the contest and who thinks it was the team deciding not to contest the game?

The fact is the crowd should look to energize there team not for the team to energize them all the time . To say we dont like the way the team is playing so we quit gives them an excuse to quit .

We are not the Lakers the playoffs should not be something that this fanbase takes for granted. We should be rabid for playoff basketball no matter what simply because we understand what it is like to go nearly a decade without playoff basketball.

This may not be the team we want but its the one we got and its in the playoff and the fans should support it .

Maybe we should ask ourselves how happy would the Sonics fans be to have a team in the playoffs ? .....even our happy go lucky one :stirthepot:

LD made the bad move my not naming Joe alone as the captain....by adding Josh and Al and also giving them more shots changes the dynamics of the team mentality.

but thats what they fans were hollering for last year and now that they got what they wanted they dont like it .

With as bad as the atmosphere at Phillips has been I wouldnt be looking for much fan support if I was JJ either .

Drew needs to go ahead and start teague over hinrich, just to set tempo. Hinrich is no longer starter quality in the league.

and Teague has never been starter quality so where does that leave us ?

Teague should get minutes but starting him is basically tanking because he doesnt compliment our starters at all.

Key to this series for us is REBOUNDING and to not allow Ryan Anderson and Brandon Bass run amock . Those are there 3 main rebounders we attack them there and we will sweep.

I was listening to some guys talk. They were pundits and they were talking about the Bulls. They were saying that there are teams like the Bulls all the time. Teams that make the regular season as important as the playoffs and in the playoffs, everybody else takes their game up and those teams like the Bulls cannot.

Last year, we were like the bulls. Played hard and went all out in the reg season. The question is were we holding back?

Exactly this fanbase is bipolar . They basically pounded in the teams head since we lost last that the regular season means little and that the only way they will be taken seriously is if they get out of the first rd and so now the playoffs start and all the fans talk about is the regular season record .

Its like people dont understand that even if this team had won 54 games it still would be playing Orlando in the first rd and it still would be seeing the Bulls in the second and the same questions would remain. The only growth that this team can show is by getting out of the second rd .

When I read the comments on AJC and around here I think its quite obvious that some of the fans are way more fragile mentally than this team.

Joe couldve averaged 25 ppg and no one would care if this team doesnt get out of the second rd

Jamal couldve repeated and no one would care because at this point there is only one way forward for the current makeup of this team .

They players know it

The front office knows it

and any fans not in denial know it

Talk about no momentum going into the playoffs! If the Hawks backed into the playoffs any more, they would be standing still.

All this talk from Coach Drew about needing momentum going into the playoffs fell on deaf ears and all the starters packed their bags

for Orlando last week. No other playoff team shows as much disregard for their home fans and could care less how they look in front

of them. It's digraceful and unless they do a COMPLETE 360, I refuse to pay one penny for a playoff game this year. The players only

try hard when it really matters and they think they will be able to flip the ON switch on Saturday and it will magically come back. Sorry,

but that's not how it works and when Joe Johnson goes 4-20 at Phillips in game 3, he should expect even louder BOOOOS than he

heard last year. He is paid even more this time and he needs to deliver BIG TIME. He's the HIGHEST PAID PLAYER IN THE ENTIRE

FRIGGIN NBA FOR GOD"S SAKES!!!! Play like it!

lets go hawks (yawn)

and how did we head into the playoffs last year ?

Riding high after winning 50+ games 7-3 in our last 10 and on a 4 game winning streak and what happened ? oh thats right we came out and got our butts handed to us by the Bucks and they took us to 6 games .

The stuff you are talking means nothing because as of today if the are like you which is still thinking about last week well theyve already lost .

This team will simply much better as underdogs.

Just noticed that we are in the same side of the bracket as Chicago, and if we somehow beat Orlando, thats probably who we will play.

Dont you just love it when a plan comes together ? :yahoo:

I dot think we are playing possum . Those games didnt mean anything and this bi-polar fanbase doesnt make things any better . This team has known since training camp that at this point there regular season record means nothing the only way to show the league or bi-polars anything is to get out of the second rd . This team improved on the road this year ,face our nemesis who weve beat 3 of 4 times and have shown that it can beat any of the top 4 teams in the East . This team had its issue in the regular season but thats just it THATS WAS THE REGULAR SEASON . A new season is starting now where nothing that you did back then matters and you can erase memories of the regular season with a nice post season run. The Bulls are beatable The Heat are beatable The Celtics are beatable The Magic are beatable I feel this team will play much better as the underdog than it would as the favorite . Lets throw that ball out there and get it on .

Is this some type of late April fools joke ?

Hawks in 4 you heard it here first ................. :stirthepot:

That is because they let Craw run the point when he's out there with Teague....Jeff is NOT a spot up shooter so y in the hell do we have him playing off the ball? Give him the rock and let him create

All he does is create shots for himself lol so why would anyone think that he would be better with the starters . The majority our offense is the pg giving up the ball AND SPOTTING UP and we have people who admit Teague cant do that so again why would he be in with the starters ? He struggles in the halfcourt because of these things and the fact that he doesnt really have any offensive moves just his blazing speed and athleticism .

Teague is not a pg but a Bobby Jackson type guard off the bench . Im not slamming him he deserves to play more but he doesnt really fit our offense and he doesnt have the skills that forces a change .

Lmao! Wow! This Hinrich guy is terrible! Bibby has blown past Hinrich consistently. He just blew past him for a reverse layup! This is too funny right now... Bibby runs like he's being controlled by a puppet master. Look at the kneeessss!

Bibby didnt blow by anyone those are teh exact same moves he tried while here and he always got by his man but was never quick enough to get past the opponents bigs help defense and that is something that we just dont have .

Teague aint a pg hes a more of a Bobby Jackson type off the bench.

Well, for one. Are we not supposed to be better than the Wizards? Are we not supposed to be much better than the Wizards? Were the Wizards also on the second night of a back to back? Did we seem to show that we have chemistry out there despite being down one starter? Did we perform up to standard? Did we get our asses handed to us by one of the weakest teams in the league while not finding a way to grind it out to at least make it look like we were competetive? Yeah, I have a problem with that? Do you my friend?

When we are healthy and playing for the win we are better than the wizards as evidence by us winning the 3 previous games with them this year when we were going for the win.

Right now I could care less about these games all I care about is next week . If we wouldve beat the Wizards by a 100 and then lose next week Ill be pissed because at this point this team is no longer judged by the regular season but by the regular season .

We got our young guys some minutes and got out with no injuries which at this point is all that matters .

All this game tells us is that our young guys that everyone wants to see play are not very good and next weekend when the wizards are watching us i will have no problem with the fact that they beat us in fact maybe you and 3 others around here will even still care about these meaningless games.

Next weekend Im gonna chart how many times I see the wizards loss mentioned .

I see it, it's quite clear as well. He can play at an elite level. He just can't create his own shot. We seen what an elite PnR PG can do for a PnR PF in Boozer, West, and K. Malone and like Malone, Horford is an elite PnR PF. He scored 20 and 10 in 28 mins and can't even create his own offense. That's amazing. Just imagine if he had CP3, Deron, or Nash.

Josh never had the mental makeup to be a superstar and he's too flawed to become a superstar. He's stuck in the 20-45 range as a player. Smith is the most talented player, I think we all can agree on that. I've said in the past that no PF in the NBA can do all that Josh Smith does today as well as he does it but no PF in the top 10 does as many things wrong as Smith does.

No way an elite pg doesnt give a player a motor and Al has no motor