niremetal

Hi, I'm Mike Woodson.

Joe Johnson: 52 minutes

Josh Smith: 46 minutes

Al Horford: 38 minutes

Marvin Williams: 36 minutes

Mike Bibby: 30 minutes

Jamal Crawford: 30 minutes

Zaza Pachulia: 12 minutes

Jeff Teague: 0 minutes

Acie Law: -4 minutes (he still owes me some from last year)

I just noticed that Teague is 5th in the league in steals per 48 minutes. Granted it is a small sample size but it is encouraging.

Followed by Marco Belinelli, Sam Young, and Dominic McGuire. Just sayin.

Per 36/48 minute stats are a very poor indicator of what a player would produce if he actually had to play starters' minutes and against the other team's best players. Also, Chuck Hayes is 3rd in the league, in case you needed proof that you can't tell too much 7 games into the season even for guys who do play major minutes.

I know you realize that, but I figure it's worth emphasizing.

Great post, Northcyde.

Its not so much he needs a three as it is he needs to stop shooting them; so far so good this season and only one long range jumper last night! His biggest needs have always been crashing the boards a little harder and developing a post game. If he played SF then maybe a three point shot would be a priority...

I agree. Also, if he played SF, he would be a non-factor on help D in the lane and wouldn't be able to utilize his league-best shotblocking skills.

Josh is playing the best of any Hawk so far this year. If he can consistently have nights like he did last night, he'll be an All-Star in no time.

+1 and I'm not even fan of Bryant.

Elite players take over the game when it matters the most, commend double team and when it happens - they use it as and advantage making plays for their teammates.

JJ plays best in first quarter. It might be because of fatigue, why is he demanding more minutes then? He has tools to score 25 (maybe more) ppg as he used to, but he to do so he needs to pick up his 3 pt shooting and carry the team late in the game or when other guys struggle. He needs also to learn to pass quickly to open man when doubled.

Don't get me wrong - I want him to be elite because it would make Hawks contender. Stop whining Joe, just improve your game and good things will come.

Joe does most of his damage in the 3rd (6.2ppg, 1.5apg) and 4th (6.2, 1.4) quarters, and the least in the 1st (4.9, 1.7) and 2nd (4.5, 1.3):

http://www.82games.com/0809/QTR4S11.HTM

Funny. The bit about elite players commanding double teams and using it to their advantage is right. But it's an absurd statement to make it sound like they do it by acting as facilitators.

That's the great contradiction about the criticism of JJ - he's apparently a ballhog who is afraid of taking over the game. Go figure.

LOL - and it deserves a LOL...anybody who doesn't understand that you start the game with your five best players are totally ignorant. Now I would understand if Craw was 5'9"....but he's 6'5" and he is twice (if not three times) the player that Marvin is. Phuck this "spark off the bench" BS. Larry Bird came into the league as a relative unknown from a mid-major college...Red sure as hell didn't use him as a "spark off the bench". Nope.

Ok, a few things:

1) Auerbach never coached Bird

2) Auerbach did coach Havlicek. He brought him off the bench.

3) Kevin McHale was a Sixth Man for much of his career

4) So is Manu

I guess Red Auerbach just didn't know what the hell he was doing. Same with Popovich today.

You're preaching at the choir.

There are two stupid statements that Marvin loyalist make:

1. He's the best defender.... Joe is a hellavu lot better than Marvin. In fact, Marvin's defense doesn't really make that much difference.

2. ________________ (the guy who's better than Marvin but is on the bench) is a great spark off the bench... we don't want to take that away? Tha'ts BS too. Let's just start Evans in place of Joe if that's the case. Then we can start with Evans and Marvin in the lineup and then bring Joe and Craw off the bench. You know why we won't do that... Because it's stupid to play better players off the bench. However, that's what the Marvin loyalist prescribe every time it becomes evident that there's a better player than Marvin playing behind him. IN Crawford's case, it's overwhelmingly evident that he's better than Marvin. No doubt. However, there's somebody who will argue that Crawford plays better off the bench or Crawford is the spark that our second team needs. BS. We don't have a second team. We have reserves.

Raise your hand if you don't even read Diesel's posts anymore if you see the word "Marvin" in it. :bye1:

Uh...why do people see this as a critique of his teammates rather than an indictment of the coach and the system in which the team plays? Isn't making sure that players have roles and know what they are the job of the coach?

For years people have criticized the Hawks for lacking a team identity and cohesion, and for leaving players’ roles ambiguous (which is why our PF ends up 20 feet from the basket so much). This is the second time that JJ has drawn attention to that in the past two weeks. It doesn’t take much codebreaking to view it as a critique of Woody – after all, isn’t it the coach’s job to give the team an identity and define players’ roles?

Yeah, have fun with this thread. I will pay each of you a dollar if Joe gets traded anywhere before the offseason.

Good post, good replies. Crawford should force JJ to elevate his game, and should also take some pressure off of JJ to handle the scoring load. On the defensive end, Crawford will always be subpar, but that's never been the gripe about JJ. Crawford has so far turned out to be the best offseason pickup in the NBA.

Memphis has to be careful with the trades they make because they could lose their fan base.

You make it sound like they have a fan base to lose.

Again this is why Josh is my favorite player he has all the talent in the world and is unselfish. I remember seeing Smoove on the bench in a game where Al Harrington was in the game. Smoove was saying to one of his teammates how selfish Harrington was with the ball I think he said "dude don't pass the ball". I'm glad he shows he is just the opposite and once he polishes all of his skills and mental knowledge of the game watch out!!

This is his 6th year in the league, so I think you'll be waiting a long time if you're waiting for Josh's awareness and decisionmaking to catch up with his physical tools (which is hardly a huge insult considering that his physical tools are elite-level). His strengths and weaknesses today are the same as they were 2 years ago - great help D, mediocre on-ball D (how many times did he let Thompson shoot without even putting a hand up last night? I counted at least 4); flashes of great court vision, but also makes some terrible decisions with the ball; streaky free throw shooter (to be kind); still takes too many long jumpers (not realizing that the only reason he's wide open out there is that opposing teams WANT him to take those shots); makes some great dunks in transition, but also tries to run the point in transition with bad results too much; lots of explosiveness, little fluidity; etc, etc, etc.

Just like waiting for Marvin to be more aggressive, waiting for Josh to be consistent is probably going to be an infinitely long wait. Unless, of course, a new coach could cure or mask their shortcomings.

Right now, Marvin offensively = Change of Possession.

That's weird. Because last time I checked, it was Josh and Horford who combined to turn over the ball nine times in the last game. Horford is my favorite player on the team, so unlike you, I'm not hating. I'm just pointing out, you know, what actually happened. Try it sometime instead of just taking every opportunity to bash Marvin. You're not as bad as one guy on Sekou's blog who posts ONLY to bash Marvin, but your love for bashing him is in the same ballpark.

My friend the Photoshop wiz has come up with a new and improved version of the JT-0 pic. Here 'tis - and notice the modified lettering on the front of the GTO:

One minute, people complain about JJ playing too many minutes. The next minute, people complain about JJ being out of a game too long. They want Woody to trust the bench one minute, then keep JJ in a game until he can't press the circle button no more the next.

This really is not that complicated. I'll just quote Sekou:

It didn’t help that the Hawks’ momentum early was halted by a head-scratching substitution. Joe Johnson was on a tear in the first few minutes of the game, piling up 18 points on 7-for-8 shooting, when Woodson inexplicably pulled him from the game with 2:39 to play in the quarter. For all the times we’ve moaned and groaned around here about JJ playing too many minutes, this was not the time to interrupt his flow. The playing rotation be darned, let the man shoot until he missed five straight. He stays on the floor until he misses, right?

Not this time.

Lakers star defender Ron Artest deserves a lot of credit for holding Johnson to just one field goal the rest of the way (Kobe Bryant certainly had no luck slowing Johnson down), but in hindsight, that quick and unexpected hook from Woodson seems even more perplexing after the fact.

Why is it so hard to understand that the general point is that Woody doesn't know how and when to use his bench, and not simply that he needs to play the bench more minutes? You can't seriously think that the main complaints about Woody's use of the bench were JUST the sheer number of minutes each player played, do you?

Funny. I seem to remember him playing close to shut-down defense each of the past two games. Why doesn't anyone ever compare his "horrible" offensive numbers up against those of Caron Butler (who Marvin outscored by 2-1) and Ron Artest (who scored 7 of his 12 points while Marvin was sitting).

It's amazing. I swear that people around here just fall asleep whenever the Hawks are on defense, and only wake up if someone gets a block or a steal.

Something tells me we're going to see about 20 of these "this is the big test for JJ" posts during the rest of this season.

Promising sign: 12 of JJ's 16 shots tonight were in the paint (check out the Courtside Live chart on NBA.com's Game Info page). He got 7 free throws and should have gotten at least 4-5 more. He also got on the officials for not calling those fouls - which he hasn't done in the past. If he keeps that up, refs will eventually start giving him those whistles.

Not about being a hater or not. But if someone said "Exodus can go to hell" then I'd tell them to lay off of the personal remarks as well.

Sorry, but that's absurd. "Hater" is hardly like calling someone an idiot, jackass, fool, etc. It's just a shortened form of "player hater," which is one of the most common slang terms in existence among bball fans. Come on, now. Oh, and if you read further up the thread, he happily assumed the moniker with respect to JJ.

Many more personal posts get made on a daily basis that you don't call out. This isn't even in the top 10 for today of things worth playing civility cop over.

This is for the downtrodden, the little guy, the re-located Hawks fans who don't get to see their team that often. Don't do it for me, do it for them.

NO DAMMIT. I'm a Hawks fan living in Philly. I have League Pass Broadband. League Pass Broadband is blacked out when a game is on NBA TV. So for the relocated fans that don't get to see the Hawks that often, tell them to pony up the $89 and buy League Pass Broadband like I (and all of my expatriate Hawks fan friends) do - that way they can see all 82 games, not just the 1. That's what a hardcore Hawks fan would do.

Don't punish the hardcore fans just to make it easier for the lazy ones :angry22:

His jumpshot is the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life. He makes Josh Childress look like Ray Allen... He needs to improve, but right now I think as a starter he would give us 10 ppg and around 6-7 assts. Off the bench you should probably cut those assists by half and the points down to 7-8, and I believe that would be a realistic expectation for this season. He has potential, but no NBA starting PG can get away with having a shot as bad as his has been (especially if you play for Mike Woodson and his "give the ball to Joe in the corner all game" offense). In college he was a great shooter so you know he can probably get that fixed at some point. His mechanics though, are a little worrying.

It's more than a little worrying. For someone who is just 6'0 without shoes, having a jumper that is released low, slow, and in front of the body is a recipe for disaster. Opposing defenses will learn before too long to just lay off him and make him shoot jumpers. Put someone who is 6'3 or taller on him, and he'll be toast.

It's a fatal flaw to his game. No PG in the NBA can become more than an average player with a jump shot that is so easily blockable/alterable. He either needs to develop a higher release point (like CP3), a MUCH quicker release (like Bibby), or both.

I love Teague aka JT-0, but...

1) He's not anywhere remotely close to the floor general that CP3 and Deron were when they came into the league. Their court vision was and is world class and they have always looked to pass first. Teague was more of a shooting guard in college and had an atrocious Ast/TO ratio for any guard, much less a PG

2) He doesn't have the ginormous hands that Rondo has and his wingspan, while very good, is not Rondo-esque. Combine that with his questionable commitment to defense in college, and I don't see Rondo defensive potential there.

3) I've neither seen nor heard anything to indicate that Teague is ready to fill any leadership void. If anything, his maturity was questioned in college.

Also, the Spurs didn't have a proven starting PG at the time Parker entered the league (Avery had moved on the summer before and the starter was Antonio Daniels). Parker was also an unknown commodity since he was drafted from abroad, where he played for a relatively little-noticed French team, while Teague was much more heavily scouted.

He's got great potential, but come on now - CP3 or Tony? HE was the 6th-8th PG selected in the draft, depending on how you want to categorize players. If he looked anything like those two, you can bet your butt he'd have gone higher.

Woodson may very well not be the coach that can get us into the upper tier of teams in the East but I'd be hard pressed to believe he's not on par (or close to it) when compared with Doc Rivers and Mike Brown. Neither of them are superior coaches, but they have superior players and that's why they are so good.

The Hawks are getting better but we're still young and unfortunately it seems we have quite a few players that don't put forth consistent effort and while that may be coaching I have a feeling that the only way to truly rectify that is by replacing them with players that give more of a consistent effort. All the talent in the world can only get you so far and like JJ said it seems like there are some players on this team who don't want it every night.

Are you kidding me? Doc Rivers won his coach of the year award after taking a D-League level squad (the '99-'00 Magic) that was shredded by injuries to 41 wins and almost to the playoffs. I don't wanna think about how that team would have done with "ISO Mercer."

Enjoyed your post....and/but we've been down this road and back a few times. The light is at the end of the tunnel....meaning a decision on Woody at the end of this year. The pieces are in place to be best team he's coached as the Hawks coach. There's no more rebuilding excuses, no more "the kids need to grow up excuses". There's a reason Sund didn't extend him - or get rid of him - for that matter. He's put in his time with these guys, and they have improved record wise. Enough to keep you around. But, it's obvious to everyone that he needs to progress signifcantly with his X's and O's. Sund needs to see it this year, or he's gone. Plus, we don't want to waste another year. Pretty soon these young guys won't be young anymore. Put up or shut time for Woody in 09-10.

Totally agreed. My fear is that Woody's firing will come too late and we'll end up losing JJ and getting back nothing next summer.

What is it with players being injured all the time now. These guys are basketball players. They play a soft sport, but they always end up hurt.

I hope you're being sarcastic...