enrique

If you read the NBA discussion on elbows to head, there is NO wiggle room. It is a flagrant 2

i agree. See it the same way you do. My wife agreed and she can't stand my Hawks:(

watch the video over again and you will see Della hopping and driving into Horford...reckless. I don't think he intended to hurt Horford, but you can't drive and hop into a player with zero repercussions. Since Horford did get ejected, I wish he would have really loaded up and unleashed his elbow. At least he would have earned it at that point. I just don't see Horford pulling Della. I see Della driving and hopping into him.

he is driving into horford without even looking. He is reckless and dangerous. The officials are destroying the game and its integrity.

The officials are finding the phantom fouls This is bullsh@&

Because Lebrona lost his balance. Another question is how does Lebrona get away with hurling himself into the defender time after time to create a shot.

Living in Houston I've always dreamed of a Hawks-Rockets final. Although it is still a long shot I gotta keep hoping and cheering for the Hawks! I don't want to be satisfied with losing however. I want our teams and fans to be driven to win and cheering unto that end. If in the end we come up short, we can all celebrate the good of the season, but we should also still yearn and grieve for what could have been. An NBA championship. Go Hawks! Come on Hawks fans!

Already down with Thabo...don't have a lot left if DMC is done! Come on Hawks!!! Rise up!

I really hope the refs allow us to shoot free throws this series. My preference is that we hit our open shots...unlike the Wizards series. Go Hawks!!!

Reading through their thread on the ECF at realcavsfans many seem to fear Teague and Shredder because of their speed and ability to create off the dribble. They predict Shumpert will get the Teague assignment. I have no idea how accurate their message board is. Either way I think we have better matchups against the Cavs than the Wizards. I have not been this excited for a series in a long time. Go Hawks!!!!

I love Teague! I think he is vital to the Hawks now and in the near future. To be fair though, the criticisms leveled at him have nothing to do with his abilities...no one denies his quickness, speed, etc. It has been his heart and mindset. Will he bring it every game? Will he bring it every play? Will he play both ways? I have asked these to myself a lot. I know I'm not the only one though. Now I think he is a huge asset to the Hawks and they wouldn't be where they are if they were starting a different point guard (save a few obvious ones who are paid so much that we would be unable to field our current squad anyway). Sorry for rambling, but I agree with your praise of Teague. I would love to see a continued progression (as I have witnessed the last two seasons) in his intensity and focus game-in and game-out. If he slips in this area, then it will be time to move him along. I really don't see that happening though. Cannot wait for the Cavs series!!! Teague will need to bring it! Go Hawks!!!!

Series-clinching layups reflect Hawks' season-long identity http://espn.go.com/blog/nba/post/_/id/3229 Series-clinching layups reflect Hawks' season-long identity Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- The NBA is a superstar league. Every night is a performance starring alpha dogs who want the ball in their hands for the big shot, who loudly demand it in the biggest moments. The volume of that demand is the measure of manhood in the NBA, particularly in springtime when hitting a big shot can enshrine a player as a legend for eternity. This system works for just about everyone involved. The superstar gets the ball in the big spot. If he hits the contested game winner, he’s an assassin. If he doesn't, at least he had the fortitude to lay it out there. For the coach, it’s a win-win. If the shot falls, he made the right call. If it doesn’t, well, all you can do is put the ball in the hands of your go-to guy. Who can fault that? When we last left the Atlanta Hawks, following their 82-81 over Washington in Game 5 on Wednesday, they were riding this brand of hero ball. Down a point, they unleashed their quickest playmaker, 21-year-old backup point guard Dennis Schröder, to take an elite defender off the dribble with less than eight seconds left. Schröder's potential game winner never reached the rim because it was swatted away by John Wall, who, like everyone else in Philips Arena, knew precisely what was to occur. Fortune spun the Hawks' way, as Al Horford cleaned up the spill and dropped it through for a win. And while it was a valiant play that personified Horford's competitive will, the larger sequence in no way reflected how the Hawks fashion themselves as a basketball team. The Hawks didn't escape in Game 5 because they stayed true to their identity as a ball-sharing cooperative that won 60 regular-season games by valuing process and execution over individual exploits. They won because they got a lucky bounce, as coach Mike Budenholzer called Horford's rebound. In Game 6 on Friday night in Washington, the Hawks encountered another razor-thin margin down the stretch. In what's become a familiar postseason pattern for the Hawks, the starting unit built a comfortable lead that vanished over time. With a minute left in regulation, the game was tied 89-89 with the balance in the hands of that starting five -- Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap along with Horford. The Hawks have gotten timely contributions from key reserves. Not to pick on Schröder, whose electric game and irrepressible swagger will undoubtedly do big things for Atlanta. Kent Bazemore's energy, Pero Antić's instincts and Mike Muscala's finesse have all had moments in the sun. But this starting unit best represents what the Hawks do so well -- the collective desire to read every possession for its best potential outcome, the willingness to pass up a decent shot for a better one, the commitment to play through the full cycle of options. This is what endeared the Hawks to basketball purists and aesthetes who fell in love with following the ball speed around the floor during Atlanta’s 19-game winning streak this winter. When it mattered most in the final minute on Friday, in the most important possessions in the history of a franchise that hasn't advanced to a conference final since 1970, the Hawks played like themselves. In the 27 seconds that reversed 45 years of Atlanta Hawks history, the Hawks somehow found consecutive layups at the rim for the one guy in the lineup who didn't get an All-Star bid, and they did it in the most pressurized half-court situation against the league's No. 5 defense. “It was just a pick-and-roll for Al Horford and I, but the whole time, I knew DeMarre Carroll slashes to the basket all the time,” Teague said. “I decided to drive at John Wall and see if he would commit to me, because he was helping all night, and once I saw DeMarre make the cut, I just went to hit him with a timely pass.” It wasn't the most artful set in the Hawks’ playbook. Korver and Millsap stood stationary in opposing corners. Horford set two high screens at the top of the floor, the second of which he slipped, then popped. Once Teague and Horford initiated the action, Carroll made his basket cut from the left slot. But if we go back to Teague's short narration above, what’s exceptional about it is how much of the blow-by-blow resides in the interpretation of the event. He knew Carroll slashes, just as he decided to go at Wall to see if he’d commit. A lot of ball handlers in Teague’s spot here would adopt tunnel vision and fly at the basket like an insect at a floodlight. Teague draws a flowchart, reads it, then reacts. It seems logical, but this isn't how things are generally done in the NBA. “The philosophy is a little different,” Millsap said. “And it doesn't matter what philosophy you have, if you have guys on the same page and guys who believe in it, you can run whatever you want to run.” The Hawks have flashed glimpses of this philosophy for stretches of their two playoff series but haven’t really sustained it. Washington defended them well over six games and attached a bear trap to Korver, which gummed up the Atlanta offense. Even as the Hawks took a 3-2 lead after Wednesday’s miracle, there had been a foreboding that even if they managed to shake the Wizards, they would stumble into the conference finals as only a faint resemblance of the team that stretched the league thin all season with ball movement and syncopated rhythm. That's why it was so satisfying to see the Hawks pull ahead late in a closeout game with the perfect expression of who they are. “We aren't made up of the superstars,” Korver said. “We all have to play well. We all have to be our piece to the puzzle and really focus on being the best piece we can. And when we do that, we get stuff like DeMarre slashing to the basket and getting layups at the end of games. Obviously, in pressure moments like that, you’re trying to find an easier shot. Those end up being big, big buckets.” The Hawks are the least capable one-on-one team left in the postseason, and it’s not really close. Cleveland can throw LeBron James and Kyrie Irving at any matchup, as can the Clippers with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. Golden State and Houston feature Steph Curry and James Harden, respectively -- one and two in the MVP vote. The Hawks have five expert craftsmen who are engaged in a different kind of basketball project. Shots will rarely be created out of thin air. They’ll come through mutual trust and sharp reads and zippy passes to teammates who, like Teague and Carroll, intuitively know how, where and when the other guy likes to get the ball. The more often the Hawks remember this is who they are, the better situated they will be to counter the alpha dogs who stand between them and a title. “We have to win being ourselves,” Millsap said. “We’re not going to win being someone else or being a different team. We’re not going to change overnight. We've got to stick to who we are, stick to our basics, stick to our principles.”

but I heard he called "fade-away, bank series" right before the ball was passed to him[emoji6]

i posted a tweet for Paula Pierce https://twitter.com/ereed89/status/599403612045873152

For all of us I posted a tweet https://twitter.com/ereed89/status/599403612045873152 enjoy! Go Hawks!!!!!

That's what I'm talking about!!!! ECF or bust!!! Go Hawks

It is really great to be on the good side of a game like this!!! Too many Hawks teams have received this kind of loss. This team finally gave it out. Go Hawks!

I am needing a sedative right now;) way too much dramatics, but at least Pierce didn't ruin my night

Horford bails us out!

leave it to the wise sage to once again speak truth and reason into a topic in need of reconsideration.

the reality is that 99% of us did not think we even had a chance at the 1 seed. There were even folks saying we would miss the playoffs entirely. While I hate being down2-1 (I'm sure Golden State fans do too), we are not done. We still can play and win this series. One game at a time. Let's not roll over and give up on this team. Go Hawks!!!

I missed the game driving from west texas back to H-town;( Saw we were up at a restaurant, but then just saw we lost. Noticed an article saying our starting 5 really barely played together this game. Was that because of early fouls? I saw Horford finished with 5. After reading a few recent posts it also sounds like we couldn't shoot down the stretch. Another observation was that we handled the glass okay from the stat line. Was that the case? Any insights from someone who saw the game will be greatly appreciated. I really want us to get it rolling!!! Go Hawks!

Cataclysmic...hoping that it isn't that bad however.

By the way, this article is from http://www.maxim.com/entertainment/sports/article/catching-hawks-mid-flight Sorry I left that out. The image that it is based on is found here... http://imgur.com/wsw1F97 I am not the best at this stuff, but thought I'd share. Go Hawks!!!! Free Ferry!

Catching The Hawks Mid-Flight 646 pictures. 57 hours of work. 123 layers. And 1 new Hawks fan. The story behind our photo spread. April 8, 2015 By MAX RIVLIN-NADLER http://imgur.com/wsw1F97 Photographer Pelle Cass is famous for his depictions of public spaces, crowding the frame with as many people as possible in an effort to show the full spectrum of activity that happens from a single vantage. When it comes to a basketball court, the permutations of movement really are endless. "Every move [a player] made was almost picturesque," Cass told us. Especially for a team like the Atlanta Hawks, whose relentless play and frenetic pace have led them from obscurity to the top of the league. And so to capture the Hawks for our Hustle issue, Maxim sent Cass to Atlanta to shoot the Hawks in their natural element. The numbers involved in putting the photograph together (on a tight deadline no less) were truly staggering: Pictures taken for the published image: 646
Time elapsed: about 75 minutes (the whole second half)
Total pictures taken on shoot: 2361
Layers in final photo: 123
Players on Hawks Roster: 14
Depicted in photo: 11
Raptors depicted: 0
Time spent Photoshopping image: 57 hours over 3 days
Points scored by Toronto Raptors: 105
By Hawks, sadly: 80
Minimum new Hawks fans: 1 We spoke to Cass after the issue wrapped about basketball, his technique, and how the Hawks won a Celtics fan over. Approaching the shoot, what were you looking for when it came to the Hawks?
Well when I do these things, I look for a lot of action, of course. Because of the way I work, it’s peculiar. What I look for is people all over the court. So it’s easy enough to find people at the top of the key or in their favorite shooting spots but it’s hard to find somebody walking or stumbling along the baseline on the floor or anything unusual. So those are the things that I look for and I take hundreds of pictures. So there are a lot of the ordinary things too. But it’s the out-of-the-way things that I look for especially. One of my favorite pieces of action is where you have Kyle Korver falling out of bounds near the far baseline. 
That picture of Korver sets the angles of the court, really. He’s the focal point. It’s kind of marginal action but it’s also hard to miss him. That’s the kind of picture I look for. There are sports photographers who can capture the most dramatic dunk or the emotion on a player’s face and that’s not what I do. Had you ever done a sporting event before?
I’ve done kids playing in a park and things like that, so it’s extremely similar to a vantage point that was like this but no, nothing like this. Once you take all the photos, what’s the first step in compiling what you do?
The first step is I look at one or two images form each set-up to see if the lighting is good – the lighting in this case was all the same – to see if the angle is good, any technical concerns, like the focus. So I look at one picture and then I click through as fast as I can through every image to see if there’s some interesting things happening. And I kind of start with the most interesting poses or pictures; like the Korver one I knew beforehand that I wanted that one in there. So I pick a few key ones like that. I don’t want to focus on Korver too much, but he’s way up in the air at the top of the key with the jump shot. There are a few like that, that as I go through, they stick out to me. I like the ones that are more like action shots, so I was drawn to more of those as I was going through. And then it becomes more like a jigsaw puzzle, where I’m starting it with certain images and then I’m looking for shapes that interlock or cross or create a rhythm that I already have with the other images. If I did it from scratch again, it would probably come out a different way with a different feeling, I think. What was something that took you by surprise when you were shooting the game, or something you kind of hadn’t realized about basketball?
I wasn’t watching the score too closely because I was occupied photographing but when I went through the pictures I noticed that nobody dunked, very few people actually got into the lane, there were a lot of jump shots and they lost the game by 30 points. Almost everything’s a surprise: there’s a guy in the crowd raising his hand looking off to where there’s apparently no action off the screen. I mentioned the monitors earlier; I didn’t notice until afterwards that a little tiny version of the game was happening right in front of my lens, also. There are kids…Kids are handy because they always fill low spots in my picture. There was some kid parading around the court at one point and I didn’t notice him at all until I was going through the pictures. When I’m photographing, my eyes tends to look at the center of the picture. I’m used to that. But all kinds of things are happening on the edges and that’s what I’m interested in. It’s interesting how the actual score of the game really affected what shots you were able to get and the range of shots, because obviously once a team falls behind they’re trying a lot more jump shots and three-pointers and trying to get back into the game and taking as little time off the clock as possible to do that. Possibly if it’s a lot more competitive game, you have a lot more dunking or foul shots.
Yeah, I think that’s true. I’m a basketball fan but I’m not a notable analyst. But I think that’s right. Each of the basketballs that are up in the air, do they belong to a player or are some of them just free floating?
Very few of them belong to the players depicted. I think that one of Korver’s right at the top of the key, that might be his shot coming off. I’m not sure, I’d have to check back at the original picture if you want. I’m just kind of interested as people dissect the piece and look at it.
A lot of them were taken during warm-up so they aren’t live balls at all. And a lot of them are bouncing, obviously. But usually they’re disassociated from the player. Looking at the action on the floor, you have some people diving and jumping, were you struck by the difference in movements from doing a street scene where people are not really acrobatic as opposed to basketball players who are taking up all of this space?
When I shoot things, I’m looking for people who are running or doing expressive things, and what I did notice about these guys is that they have incredibly expressive bodies. Their gestures say a lot more than many ordinary peoples’. Every move they made was almost picturesque. With their long limbs and fingers that show from across the arena, it makes you appreciate how incredible looking they are. And in terms of when you're shooting outside and shooting with this brightly lit arena, what are the advantages of shooting in such a controlled environment?
Well, I like chaos and I like change, so afterwards it’s okay if the sun goes behind the clouds or something gets messed up. With that said, I appreciated the lighting staying the same. I never had to adjust any individual brightness setting. It was always the same and it made it easier. So once you go through all of the pictures and you’ve picked out all of the things that are striking to you, what is your process – I mean, not so much in detail that you give away the patent-
Well, I think that anyone who knows Photoshop a little bit would be able to figure it out. Do you start with an empty court?
I look for the emptiest possible court and the ideal thing would be an empty arena. I wasn’t able to do that because it was filled all day with middle school games and other people and events. So the arena wasn’t filled but there were people of course which was another surprise to me. And then my method is to leave people in. I never change the position. That’s really important to me because I don’t want this to be just a pure fantasy. All this stuff really happened exactly in the places we see. It just happened in an hour, not in an instant like a regular photograph we would see. How do you find the right balance to give the sense of chaos that you feel fits with the piece?
That’s hard to explain. That’s more of the feeling side of the artistic process instead of the technical side. I like composition and movement and I like this kind of pattern. But it’s done by feel. You know, I have a background in art history and some painting, it’s just a feel for composition. There’s a school of painting, all-over painting, Jackson Pollock painting where you try to emphasize every part of the canvas equally. I’ve always sort of done that. There should be something interesting, some sort of action going on everywhere. Did you develop any favorites among the players? Like, “Oh man, this guy keeps doing interesting stuff…”
I got to like the Hawks even though it was a bad performance. I wasn’t charmed by their incredible performance because they didn’t play very well but I got a little sense of what they were like when I sat on the floor. They seemed like okay guys, not like superstars. I got to like Schröder, partly because he’s small and I’m small. I’m much smaller compared to an NBA player but I tend to like small guys. I guess it’s also one of those things because he’s easy to recognize, but I also like the way he plays. The Hawks run a spread offense, so compared to teams that run isolated offenses, I’d figure you’d have much less selection where the pacing and spacing is much less pronounced.
Another thing I did notice that I wasn’t really aware of was how repetitious their positioning is. I know they have positions but because I wanted to find players in different areas of the court… Like Teague comes down in a certain pattern almost every time. I was shocked by how repetitious it is. This is something I learned when I do these pictures; it looks like chaos, people walking all over a street scene and there’s no order. But people form these patterns that you have to be pretty observant to see or take a lot of pictures. I think it’s interesting, especially with the rise of analytics in basketball and the various sensors that they’ve now put on the court that gives spacing and pacing and all kinds of stuff. The visual analysis that you translate into pieces of art has now become something that is discussed at the highest levels of basketball management.
It’s kind of a statistical way of looking at things. I kind of thought if I did this properly, I could summarize the two hours of game film, in one picture. And I don’t think the coach would be too interested in this picture for basketball technique but I could imagine a picture like this that provides information in such a way that video provides. As a basketball fan and as a spectator how do you see the Eastern Conference playing out this year?
Well, I’m not an expert enough to really give an opinion on it. One thing that did happen is I’m definitely a Hawks fan. I’m a Celtics fan by region, I live in Boston. So now I’m really happy to have a good team to follow that I didn’t know as much about.