atlguitar

I was at the game. Here's what I noticed. -During the halftime shootaround, Josh was ... on the bench. He stayed on the bench while everyone else on the team was shooting. LD came over and didn't seem to care. -In garbage time, when the starters were benched, he sat there staring straight ahead with a towel on his head. No one else had a towel and they were all pretty much watching the game. If you will recall, Josh was hit with an offensive charge on a drive in the closing minutes of the second quarter. He made the shot, and we all thought he was going to get And-1. We could have been down by only 7 going to the half. When he came back out and refused to warm up for some reason I didn't take it that he was selfish but that he was trying to get in a zone. Still odd but it seemed like he cared big time about geting us a win. I think this game's outcome hurt him the most. He took it the most personal. His body language when the team left to the lockers at the final buzzer was different from all the other players. Josh didn't have a crap game, he surely wasn't responsible for the blowout, but it looked like he was blaming himself. What do you think about Josh's drive/maturity/heart at this point in time? What about being the only one to skip the shootaround?

One other thing. I've noticed that Horf seems to tire quickly. Maybe he could work on conditioning? I know he's a big guy ... but Dwight makes playing the whole game look easy.

Kid has some zip. I was actually thinking during those minutes that if there was a praise thread to be made about anything that happened tonight it was Pape's balling.

He certainly had a bad series which was unexpected. But he also has been so, so SOFT since that great reg. season game he had against the Bulls where he willed us to victory. It seemed like Amare rocked him in the game soon after that and for the rest of the season he was less than his former self. I haven't looked at the numbers but to me, if you were to flip the regular season around and make the second half the first half, I don't think he would be an all-star. I used to think he was easily the most "pro" player on the team, and the most accountable. So I am bewildered as to why he became so undependable. What makes it worse for us is that in that regular season game against the Bulls, he was such a beast that he "leveled up" and gave us hope that he was going to be throwing down 30 points on the regular and willing us to more victories with whatever it took (he even made a 3 that game). Instead, he became more and more invisible.

I wouldn't want to trade Teague to Orlando as part of a Dwight deal at all - Teague would burn us every game we meet. I saw some realgm magic fans saying that they wanted to play us in the playoffs again next year for revenge, and I imagine if that ended up happening, Teague would be our worst enemy.

We need one of these every game:

It's pretty simple ... the farther we get in the playoffs, the more people get to know our players. The more they incite a reaction in the audience, the more popular they will become - the more the refs will give them calls, and the more the fans will egg them on. Josh and Teague are the only ones with the eye-catching style of play to make us a more popular team to follow (despite Jamal's 4 point plays, Powell's ambulance blocking and ET's mad poetry jams). Teague can be a guy that will be feared by the opposing teams fans - yet they will have no choice but to give him his props because of his attitude that doesn't rub what he does in your face (like Rose, Durant). Josh can be more of a guy that opposing fans will loathe and boo yet find themselves with an open jaw at his skills (like Lebron). If you watched the game tonight you saw how he is now boo'd by Bulls fans. This is a good thing. We want rivalries. We want attention if we are to ever get the Arena full and possibly be able to go over the luxury tax to get a deeper bench. Teague is also much more media shy and makes funny faces in game but is reserved in interviews. This probably extends to locker room behavior as well. Most likely Teague could become the team leader, but Josh be the face of the team (which he arguably already is, since his inconsistancy and love-hate relationship represents our team this year). It's a fact now that Teague has earned new fans and respect across the country. It remains to be seen if he can ever develop enough of a vocal presence to be our 'media representative' but he is capable of leading by action - making teammates try to emulate his confidence and aggressiveness.

I get your point but in return, that means the rest of the team was busy conserving energy. I wanted to see the non ball-handlers actually move around to get those passes and disrupt the defense, but they seemed to not have it in them. Josh Smith wide open for a three for a full shot clock on the other side of the court = joe or jamal is not going to want to pass it to him. Al wasn't keen on moving without the ball either.

Officiating, home crowd support, bball IQ aside, I think the real reason why we were so weak in the fourth quarter was just that we were more tired than they were. We were a step slow on defense and seemed too tired to want to set screens and cut for passes (the real reason why there were so many iso plays down the stretch). It was like Joe would dribble the clock away and everyone else would be like whew, good, now I can get a breather. Looking at our 4 main starters plus Craw, minutes were 42, 40, 40, 38, 26 Bulls starters : 45, 42, 29, 26, 24 So basically we played 4 starters more than 38 mins, and they played only 2 more than 30 ... and if it weren't for the last :77 of garbage time, we would have only used 8 players in the whole game. I don't have the answers but certainly playing Damien and Zaza more is a good option. Bottom line, it looks like we need to somehow give the top 5 players more rest so that their legs are fresher in the 4th.

LD seems to be a great coach for a team of hard working professionals. Therefore, it's the players that need to go before him. I don't know if any coach can coach heart. When the players are all grown-ups signed to million dollar contracts, It's not gonna be like the Mighty Ducks or Remember the Titans for even the best coach in the world.

how about instead instituting a policy, 2 jumpshots in a quarter results in a benching just like 2 fouls in a quarter does.

Our defense was good, good enough to keep us in the game even though our offense blew. Players hustled but the ball always seemed to bounce or roll the wrong way. Usually we only pair good defense with good offense. We kept the Chicago audience biting their nails.

Excited at the thought of steals blocks and fastbreaks tonight .. come on Teague and Josh.

http://www.nba.com/2011/playoffs/2011/eastseries5/04/29/bulls-hawks-series-preview/index.html?ls=iref:nbahpt1 :Talking Ear Off: I will find it quite ironic that this may be the next article posted on all the lockers and if we can win this series, he can eat crow and so can chuck and anybody else in the media treating us like a red -headed stepchild. This dude is gonna get his answer on whether the hawks players take this kind of journalism lightly, that's for sure. Tired of national media acting like small town homers, let's bring back the "Shock the World" slogan. Only we fans are allowed to talk this much crap about us when we just won our first round series in 6 instead of 7 with josh (or horf) not having a single game in beast mode (which they surely should against the Bulls). If Derek goes down we would have matchup advantages or ties across the board, but I hope he doesn't because I want us to play all the teams at full strength to see/show what we're made of. Something is different about the Hawks this year for sure, we have superheroes and their evil twins showing up unpredictably. Is LD or Teague Neo ??? On second thought maybe the writer is a Hawks fan hoping for some reverse psychology magic.

Yeah, definately one of the moves that made me want to make a thread about him. I loved that in slo-mo. With Hilton, I love that you can basically read his mind. He seems to pride himself on getting away with things and being tricky. He seems younger than he is.