niremetal

Because he sucks.

I think the fact that Nolan managed to get Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, and Gary Oldman to sign on in supporting role shows how much confidence the best actors in Hollywood have in him. And I think the trilogy showed that confidence was more than justified. I seriously rate all three movies of the trilogy in my Top 5 all-time for comic book movies - in the same class as V for Vendetta and the 1978 Superman and better than any of the Spiderman, Hellboy, and X-Men films (to say nothing of Iron Man, which I just didn't enjoy at all). Anyway, I thought it was a near-flawlessly crafted trilogy from beginning to end. True, I was not a fan of the romantic aspects of any of them. But to be honest, I can't think of a single superhero movie where I found a romantic subplot convincing. The only two that came close were the original Superman and the first Tobey Maguire Spiderman. The casting of Bale as Batman was a masterstroke. The tough part in casting a superhero is never casting the hero himself, but rather casting his "human" alter ego. The reason the first Superman was so great was that Christopher Reeve owned the bumbling, mild-mannered Clark Kent. Tobey Maguire owned Peter Parker (I still get chills when I watch the "there are bigger things happening here than me and you" scene). And Christian Bale effing owned Bruce Wayne. Michael Caine as Alfred? Impossible to think of a better choice. Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox? Same deal. Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon? Ok, wouldn't have thought of it, but hard to imagine anyone else in that role now? Heath Ledger as The Joker and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle? No one would have had either actor on the "long list" for casting their respective characters, much less the short list. But both fit perfectly. The writing was great and the overall "feel" of the films never made me think that Nolan was trying to go for too much (see: Green Lantern, Iron Man, X-Men 3, and the vast majority of other superhero films) or too little (see: Ang Lee's Hulk, or to a lesser extent the first two X-Men films). I know it sounds like I'm being over the top, but as an aficionado of DC Comics, I thought that Nolan could scarcely have done better in his treatment of Batman throughout the trilogy.

Saw it in IMAX tonight. Amazing and, I thought, well worth the extra $2 per ticket more than seeing it at a regular theater. If you're already shelling out $11.50 for a movie ticket, moving up to $13.50 apiece isn't that big a thing to me.Anyway, I thought it was a perfect way to end the trilogy. And I'm glad I saw it on a 100-foot screen!

A whole lot of people would have to delete their accounts if you tried to weed out all the Squawkers who doubt that a meaningful change of culture can be implemented as long as Josh remains with the Hawks.

I don't see how a culture change is possible as long as Josh is here. He's the poster child for the team's lack of accountability over the past several years.

Does Danny Ferry control that part of the Hawks? Some GMs don't really have much voice in non-basketball personnel decisions.

I'm getting married next Memorial Day weekend. I can only hope that our marriage is as long, successful, and happy as yours. Congrats!

Seriously? You do realize that the guards shouldn't have to stand there calling for the ball, right? It should be automatic that the bigs make an outlet pass as soon as they grab the rebound. Big men are taught that in sixth grade. Dwight Howard and Tim Duncan don't think twice about it. Neither did Amare (faster than Nash). You're seriously blaming the guards for "slowing down the play" by calling for the ball rather than the bigs for not passing immediately, thereby eliminating the need for the guard to call for the ball? That's insane. And how many times have we seen Josh try to run the break, only to get his pocket picked by a guard or make a turnover with a bad pass in the face of defensive pressure from a guard? He might beat HIS defender down the floor. The problem is that he's often not a good enough decisionmaker on the break to make good plays even when the man guarding him is several inches shorter. The results speak for themselves. A 22% turnover rate in transition is horrific. And that doesn't count the number of times we see him bring it up and make a pass that goes slightly behind or above his target - forcing the recipient to stop in order to catch the pass, effectively ending the fast break even though it wasn't technically a turnover. I seriously don't understand how anyone could think that the mere fact that Josh is "fast" means that it makes sense for him to bring the ball up instead of making an IMMEDIATE outlet pass to a guard.

The idea that there is a strong correlation between speed and effectiveness in transition among PGs always struck me as a poorly-thought-out assumption. In the past 20 years, I think the 5 best transition PGs have been (in no particular order) Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Kevin Johnson, John Stockton, and Gary Payton. Of those, only KJ was ever one of the league's fastest PGs. Mike Bibby was the spearhead of what was arguably one of the three best fast break teams (the early 2000s Kings) of all time. He was always among the slower PGs in the league. Same is true of Andre Miller, who was still kicking ass and taking names on the break when I watched him last year.Shawn Marion could run circles around Steve Nash. Should Marion have led the Suns' break? The best center of all time at running the fast break was Vlade Divac, who was slow in terms of foot speed even by the standards of his position.The funny thing is that even in his last year with the Hawks, Mike Bibby was great running the break. The bigs just wouldn't give it to him often enough.What matters in terms of running the break isn't whether you can run 19mph instead of 16mph. It's your court vision and decisionmaking. The practical impact of being faster is that you give the opposing defense a few tenths of a second less to get their act together. That helps a bit, but it's way, way less important than being able to make smart decisions with the ball.So I really get tired of hearing about how our bigs HAD to run the break because they were as fast (or faster) than our guards. Who gives a damn how fast they are? If that's the rubric, then Dwight Howard should be running the break as often as most of the guards he's played with. After all, his sprint time was tied for 8th-best in his draft class - better than Devin Harris.So yeah. Just stop talking about how Josh and Al have been justified in running the break because they were faster than our guards.

Moderator appearance in 5...4...3...2...

Update: As far as I can tell, this never got released to theaters because it doesn't show up in any of the box office watching sites. It ended up going straight to DVD. So the original prediction that this would be a "blockbuster" (which was the subtitle on the thread before Dolfan revamped the site) didn't exactly come to fruition.

Trying to come up with excuses to minimize the importance six All-Star appearances (five by coaches, despite your best efforts to make it sound like it was only by the Grace of Stern that he made it) is pretty much a textbook example of hating. Oh, and please, I'm begging you. Find me an article talking about how teams gameplan for Al's defense. Or Josh's for that matter. Neither of those guys rule the paint in a way that requires teams to alter their offensive gameplans to contend with their "patrolling the paint" defense. The only guys in the NBA who fit that description in the past decade have been Dwight, Duncan, and Big Ben. What matters most in the NBA is on-ball defense, and neither Josh nor Al is an elite on-ball defender. In fact, I would argue that JJ was and is a better on-ball defender for his position than Al and Josh are for theirs - regardless of whether you put Josh at the 3 or the 4 or Al at the 4 or the 5.

It's not "just" the All-Star selections, although 6 > 2, and I frankly don't see Al finishing his career with more than 3 or maybe 4. It's also the fact that Sekou wrote several blog posts over on AJC talking about how JJ was the guy on the Hawks that opposing coaches gameplanned against, not Josh or Al. And that in the Chicago series, the Bulls strategy was simple: Get the ball out of JJ's hands. They did and we got our asses kicked. I'd love to know when an opposing coach has ever gone Jordan Rules on Al. It hasn't happened, because it isn't necessary with him. He simply doesn't have the offensive repertoire to take over a game the way that JJ can if you give him an inch of breathing room. Only people who are blind or disingenuous can deny that for the past 7 years, JJ has gotten more defensive attention than anyone else on the Hawks. He was almost constantly double-teamed, and was frequently swarmed whenever he got anywhere inside the three-point line. You can't say that about Josh and Al, who have been given an absurd number of open midrange looks during their time with the Hawks, and who often aren't double-teamed even when they get the ball in the post. If JJ got close to the basket, he was swarmed by 3 or even 4 defenders. And oh yeah - six All-Star appearances, including one as a starter. Yeah, I think coaches might have just a weeeee bit more respect for JJ's game than Al's. Just like The Dark Knight got just a weeeeee bit better reviews than Gigli.

Ask NBA coaches which players on the Hawks they gameplan against. For the last seven years, the only answer to that question has been JJ. I love Al, but no coach has ever sweated about how to deal with him. (For Josh, I'm sure coaches talk about him. It goes something like this: "If he's open on the perimeter, DON'T GUARD HIM.")And the idea that Al's "leadership" has been meaningful strikes me as absurd. The team hasn't had ANY leadership for the past 15 years. If Al was such a great leader, he would have gotten Josh to play within himself at least every once in awhile and gotten the team to actually run the motion offense LD tried to implement when he became head coach. And the "players only meetings" wouldn't have been the useless jokes that they were. And he wouldn't have talked so much to the media about how he thought he was a natural PF who was playing out of position.I used to think Al had the potential to be a great team leader. But he hasn't become one and I don't think he will be. He'll remain what he is today: A solid, borderline All-Star player with neither the offensive weapons nor the relentlessness on the boards and defense to be more than that. It's not much of a legacy. He's a guy you cheer for when he's playing, but not a guy you remember afterward.

Putting Stevenson in the game basically means you're going 4 on 5 offensively. He's neither as reliable with the corner 3 or as defensively stifling as Bruce Bowen. Put a hand in his face and he becomes an instant liability. Oh, and he's too short to bother most SFs anyway. We've got undersized wings who can score but can't defend and undersized wings (well one) who can defend but can't score. We used to have a wing corps led by tall, solid two-way players at both SG and SF, including a 6-time All-Star. Now, it's not an exaggeration to say that we have arguably the worst SG/SF corps in the NBA. Unless Stevenson wins comeback player of the year or Jenkins turns out to be a rookie stud, we're screwed.

Blatche plays soft on both ends and really doesn't play defense at all. He's a distraction and a cancer in the locker room and elsewhere off the court.So, no.

When I saw this topic in the forum, I thought "this has to be a snark post, right?"

I've never liked his game. I saw plenty of him when I lived in Philly, and I was never impressed. He has no real weapons offensively and was useless defensively. His benefit is that he is good at scoring from everywhere. But he's also not great at scoring from anywhere. Like I said, I think we'll get about the same from him as we got from Flip - volume scoring and an occasional sparkplug, but defensively useless. Can't get very excited about that from a 6'2 shooting guard.

Well, I explicitly said "with the exception of Lou Williams." You're right, Jenkins probably will be around next season...probably. But to be honest, I would be surprised if we didn't release or trade at least 5 of the guys you mentioned (including at least 2 of Morrow, Korver, Harris, or Stephenson) before THIS season even starts. Jenkins seems like a good shooter. Those are hard to come by. We also have Korver and Morrow, who basically offer the same thing. Problem is, three point shooting alone from your wings does not get you far in the NBA.

Bingo. Sorry Sothron, but no. With the exception of Lou Williams, who is basically a young Flip Murray, all these guys were brought in for their expiring contracts and not for their playing ability. We started to rebuild this summer. I'm excited to see how we reload next summer after their contracts expire along with Josh's and we can start on the road back to 50 wins. But unless they surprise me between now and then, I can't get excited about watching guys on a squad that I think would be somewhat lucky to win 36 games.

My thought: What if we had Ferry hear 3 years ago and gave him the task of being a buyer rather than a seller in the All-Star market? If he could unload JJ's contract, he probably could have gotten us in the mix for Deron Williams. And a team with Deron, JJ, and Horford is a contender.Was it too late this summer? I don't know. Personally, I would have seen what fish we could have gotten to bite on Josh instead of JJ. Maybe we could have signed Nash and pried away a guy like Al Jefferson. But the "percentage play" at this stage in the franchise game is to unload and position us to rebuild. Can't really fault Ferry for doing exactly that.

As always, not fair to blame the media for giving people what they want. Most people are fascinated by violence and the grotesque. The only places where stories like this wouldn't be front-page nonstop news is in countries without a free press. Anyway, I've never understood the outrage people show toward media "sensationalism." If you don't like it, don't watch it, and convince your friends to do the same. Tell them to stick to news sources that make a concerted effort to avoid sensationalism - e.g., reading The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, listening to NPR or BBC World, and watching C-SPAN. The problem is, you won't get too many people to do that. Believe me, I've tried.

Yup. Also, even ignoring how much perimeter D we lost, I don't see how we will score. As much as people liked to whine about our offense being too perimeter-heavy with JJ here, there is exactly one playoff team in the NBA (Utah) that has an inside-out offense. I don't know that there has been another team like that since the early-2000s Spurs. We have no reliable on-ball wing defenders and no one who has proven they can hit tough shots in the NBA (much less tough shots against the opposing team's best defender). In the NBA, that's a recipe for the lottery. I seriously hope I am wrong. I hope Jenkins scores 15ppg in his rookie year, Lou Williams becomes more efficient, and Anthony Morrow suddenly becomes a solid defender. But in order for this team to get even to .500, we'll have to rely on a perimeter squad consisting entirely of one-dimensional 6'1 to 6'5 wings. Guys who can drive or shoot, but not do both. No one who has ever had to face the pressure of being guarded by the opposing team's best defender night-in and night-out. No one who is a reliable two-way player. So someone(s) will have to step it up BIG time in order for this team to make the playoffs. And frankly, with Josh probably feeling that his "I can do whatever I want" attitude was vindicated by the trade of JJ, I don't see how the "stepping up" happens. I'm hoping LD can pull off something akin to what Doc Rivers did with the post-Penny Magic: Utilize every player perfectly, get everyone on board with his schemes (how likely is that?), and assemble a playoff team from a roster with no All-Stars. I'm just not at all hopeful that will happen.

For what it's worth, I've been pretty happy with AT&T U-Verse and have heard great things about Verizon FiOS. Multimodal competition (i.e. allow cable and telephone companies to maintain regional monopolies, thereby forcing competition to come only from alternative sources such as satellite and 4G) is a poor way to ensure a competitive market, so the prices are going to suck no matter where you go. But in the current "race" it seems like the companies that started as phone providers have done the best job of upgrading their infrastructure and providing reliable service.

Why would summer league change anyone's opinion on anything?