niremetal

Josh only got stripped because he looked up, saw the clock at 3, and rushed to get a shot off.

Exactly. The Hawks should demand a replay of the final 1:30 from the "lost possession." That was an absolutely, positively CRITICAL possession that was screwed up by the shot clock failing to reset. The refs should have stricken the possession that followed and replayed it from the time the Hawks rebounded the ball and the clock didn’t reset. It's not the Hawks fault that the refs made the decision to allow the rest of the game to play out, in no small part because they were intimidated by the Cavs' home crowd.

Whatever you say buddy. You know someone isn't worth talking to when they have sentences that consist of "You haven't watched many games this year if you think [sOMETHING I DISAGREE WITH]." Because that's almost always a sign that you're talking to someone who only sees what they want to see.

Uh...you do realize that Crawford has one of the worst career shooting percentages in the NBA, right? To me, taking 2 dribbles and then firing a 20-foot jumper with a hand in your face is not a "good shot." Dribbling around a whole lot might be boring to watch and it creates a higher risk of turnovers (and even then, the risk is actually not THAT high - JJ's career turnover rate (both per possession and per 36 minutes) is quite low...and lower than Jamal's), but it actually is more likely to result in a good look when you're going one-on-one. That's why so many guys in the NBA take that approach. I'm not saying JJ's approach is better. One approach is not necessarily "better" than the other. They each have their pluses and minuses. What's stupid is that the Hawks play in a "system" where 1-on-1 is the rule rather than the exception.

Trying to talk to Diesel about the virtues of Marvin is like trying to talk to UGA about the virtues of the Yellow Jackets. Ain't worth the effort.

Nobody lost us the game last night and no one exactly helped us win. That was the problem. And it's a problem we will continue to have against good teams as long as our offensive system contains about as much movement as a glacier. When the going gets tough, the ball stops moving and the people off the ball stop moving. Some people will continue to blame it on their disfavored players only, but the problem is systemic not traceable to any single player or group of players.

Exactly. No one is saying JJ is LeBron. But that's exactly doesn't make any sense to have an offensive "system" that treats him as if he is LeBron. But hey, this is the coach that doesn't worry about offense :help wanted3:

Yup, I did just say that, or rather I said that he didn't spend more on those things than have other Hawks owners. The Hawks have never in the top quarter of the league in payroll, then or now, even when they've been in the top quarter of the league in wins and losses. They've never gotten higher than 8th in attendance no matter how many games the team has won. And to the best of my recollection, they've never been promoted nearly as heavily as the Braves, even when the Hawks were a playoff team and the Braves sucked. To mention those teams together as if they were promoted equally, as you did in your original post, is pretty amusing. I don't care about you personally one way or the other. I didn't even see who had made the initial post. Seriously, I didn't. But feel free to believe that I did if you need it to satiate your ego. I don't have access to their marketing budget, but based on their payrolls and attendance, the Hawks did not spend more when Ted owned them than they do now any way you view it - not in absolute terms, not compared to other NBA teams, and not adjusted for inflation. Just because you miss the "good old days" and loved the billboards and slogans from your days as a wide-eyes kid/teenager/whatever doesn't mean that they were actually some golden era in terms of having an owner willing to spend (and almost certainly lose) money on their pro basketball team. The Hawks still have billboards and slogans. And just like then, they aren't good/big/widespread enough to get actual asses into seats. Beyond that, you're not going to be able to refute what I say, nor will I be able to refute what you say. Neither of us has access to marketing budgets or other information. All we have are anecdotes - yours of the blockbuster signings of Reggie Theus and the wonderfully original slogan for the Omni (hint: Other teams used "the highlight X" in team slogans before Nique and the Hawks, but YOU probably were too young to remember that), and mine of how I would see multiple Braves billboards for every Hawks billboard even when the Hawks were winning 50 games and the Braves losing 100. But feel free to pretend that your anecdotes and memories are good enough to conclusively establish that you're right and I'm wrong. PS: The word "Hawks" only appears twice in Turner's bio that you linked to. But it said this about the Braves: And under "Known for" it says "Owner of the Atlanta Braves," but not a peep about the Hawks. And the third sentence under the Wikipedia Hawks page section discussing the period of Ted's ownership is: Yup. Real marketing golden era for the Hawks, I tell ya.

Ted Turner didn't do that for the Hawks when he owned them before. Why on earth are you so sure he'd do it now? He probably saw the obvious: pro basketball will never be the "big thing" in Atlanta. Smart businessman don't throw their money into investments with a low probability of return.

Yeah. Those grow on trees, you know. I mean, it's not like most of the best players of the past decade were all drafted by their current teams or anything. And heaven knows it's incredibly easy on draft day to recognize which high draft picks will pan out as superstars. And as I said, even with a 55-win squad and the best player that Atlanta has ever seen (indeed, the most exciting player of his time without the initials MJ), our attendance capped at 8th in the NBA - at a time when the league only had 23 teams.

Bolded part QFT. Back in '97, we were 27th in attendance in a year where we won 56 games. Even in the heyday of Nique, the Hawks never drew higher than 8th in the league in attendance. The team's payroll is up for the 5th straight year, right in the ~$5M-below-the-tax-threshold range of most NBA teams. ASG isn't being cheap. They're being smart. Spending $5M more wouldn't lead to $5M more in revenue here in Atlanta. Only idiots throw money at something knowing they'll never earn it back.

:bedtime2:

And someone should tell him that 7.5 is closer to 6 than it is to 10.

http://blogs.ajc.com/hawks/2009/12/19/six-in-a-row/#comment-46303

If Smoove had played better last night, the Hawks probably would have won. If Marvin had played better last night, the Hawks probably would have won. If JJ hadn't missed the layup, the Hawks probably would have won. If Woody knew how to call a play other than ISO-JJ late in the 4th quarter, the Hawks probably would have won (and there wouldn't have been an OT). If Bibby hadn't missed one open three and passed up another, the Hawks probably would have won. As I said on the "As Josh goes..." thread: Basketball is a team sport and the Hawks are a deep team. We don't live and die by ANY single player.

Funny. Because in games where Josh was our leading scorer in last year's playoffs, we were 1-3. Basketball is a team sport, for pete's sake, and the Hawks are a deep team. We don't live and die by ANY single player.

I certainly don't disagree, but I would add that I don't think consistency has ever been as much of a problem for Al as the number of touches he's gotten, which is something that's largely out of his hands. He's shooting a good deal better this year, for sure, but I think that stems largely from the fact that he's getting enough touches every game to get a good rhythm going.

Actually, no I wouldn't be saying "I told you so" if Crawford turned out to be a failure. And I won't say that if he goes through a bad shooting slump. I have no problem admitting that my initial reaction to the Crawford deal was bad/wrong/whatever magic words you think are necessary. I didn't even post over here back in June, so I have no need to save face. But I thought explaining WHY I changed my mind was beneficial not for anything having to do with me, but for the sake of starting a discussion on the things I discussed in my post - that Crawford filled a need that many people didn't even realize we had, and that some of our perceived weaknesses that weren't addressed by the Crawford trade (namely our "undersized" frontcourt) are not as big a problem as many people make them out to be. Not everyone is petty like you, waiting to say "I told you so" at every opportunity. In your world, it's impossible for a person to explain "I'm wrong" and then go on to say "these are the things that made it wrong" without being a hypocrite. You see, Diesel, most people on here start threads to engender discussion, not to try to make themselves look superior. You apparently don't understand how that's possible, but that's not surprising. There's a reason you have more negative ratings than pretty much everyone on this site combined - you are arrogant and condescending. I take comfort in knowing that you're being no more arrogant and condescending towards me than you are towards everyone else.

Sorry, but only people who hear what they want to hear can say with a straight face that Smoove has caught any more flack than Bibby (he can't play D!), JJ (ballhog!), Horford (too small!), and Marvin (duck-butted bust!) have over the past year. Diehard fans really do have a persecution complex.

Insert D-Wade and I start buying Blazers gear. No lie.

Actually, I think it's Eddy Curry and Larry Hughes for JJ, Josh, Horford, and 3 unprotected first round draft picks.

Rumor from where? Sorry, but I can't imagine Sund negotiating with Woodson during the season. Too much risk of casting a pall over the rest of the season if they can't come to terms on salary and/or length.

I had changed my mind about it being a bad deal even before the season started, but I know the Great Diesel doesn't bother with minutiae like reading the whole post.

First, I'll give you my thoughts in short form: At first, I was way negative on the Crawford deal. The way I saw it, why would we need a chucker with a ~.400 career shooting percentage who hadn't played on a winning team since high school? Why would we want to pay $20M over two years for a guy who had spent his career shooting terrible percentages for terrible teams while playing less-than-no defense? Wouldn't the expiring deals of Speedy and Acie have been better spent on improving our frontcourt depth? The more I thought about it, though, the more I liked the deal. There were four big reasons for this: 1) We didn't give up much, even in terms of "opportunity cost." Unless we packaged Josh or Al, there weren't many big men who fit into the salary range of the combined contracts of Speedy and Acie. Those that were in that range were either 1) grossly overpaid (see: Kenny Thomas) or 2) not likely to be pried away in exchange for expiring contracts (see: Joel Przybilla). No one that we could get with those contracts, I realized, would have been an upgrade over Al at center. Which leads to my second point... 2) Our "undersized" frontcourt is not the problem people make it out to be. The NBA is no longer a league where the shadow of Shaq is cast over the entire league. The dominant center in the league today is 6'11, not 7'3. He beats you as much with his athleticism and quickness as he does with his size and strength. In fact, the teams with truly "big" centers like Portland, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Indiana gave Dwight little-to-no more trouble than teams with smaller-but-smarter centers like Boston, Charlotte, Golden State, and the Chandler-less Hornets (he only got 12 and 8 in a blowout loss with Hilton Armstrong opposing him at the pivot). In any case, there's absolutely no evidence that size is the answer to stopping Dwight. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would rather have Horford on Howard than someone 2 inches taller but not quite as strong, not as athletic, and/or not as smart. Dwight burns Brook Lopez as easily as he burns Horford. There CERTAINLY was no one we could get in exchange for Speedy and Acie that would do any better. On the other hand, Crawford allowed us to use those contracts to fill another need... 3) Last year, one of our biggest weaknesses was our overreliance on JJ - both in terms of minutes played and in terms of possessions in which he is asked to make a play (usually against 2 defenders, and sometimes even 3). The ISO-heavy offense that Woody ran put a ton of pressure on JJ while he was on the floor, and Woody didn't trust the people on our bench enough to give Joe more than 8-9 minutes of rest per game. Crawford killed two birds with one stone - he gives us a second proven scorer to draw defensive attention away from JJ, and gives Woody someone that he can trust to play as many minutes at SG per night as is necessary. Crawford was almost the perfect acquisition at backup SG given the way our offense is run. 4) The years where Crawford's shooting percentage was in chucker territory were all years in which he was the primary offensive option of another team (or, in any case, where he was being asked to make a lot of difficult to shots in order for his team to score, not unlike the man he now is backing up). Here, we were asking him to be basically SuperFlip - a little taller and a little better across the board than our Sixth Man last year. The more I thought about it over the summer, the more I thought that his shooting percentages likely would not stay in the depths that they were at throughout his years in NYC (and his brief run in Frisco). There was every reason to think that as long as he wasn't being asked to be "the man" on offense, he would be a much more efficient player than he had been in the past. Anyone who was bored enough to read my posts over at Sekou's blog probably saw this evolution in thinking, not just from me but from several people. In any case, my thinking on Crawford and the wisdom of that trade has gotten more and more positive throughout the offseason and now through the first quarter of the season. But, of course, Statler and Waldorf summed up my feelings better in 15 seconds than I could in 6 paragraphs.

Oh RedDawg. Have you learned nothing? To Diesel, anyone who suggests that Marvin is anything other than the worst player in the history of the NBA is "making excuses" for him.