enrique

Della looked like a running back pushing the pile at the goal line. Watch him load up with his legs to squat thrust. Whether he was intentionally trying to hurt Horford, I can't know. But he has a pattern of throwing his weight into players' lower extremities. And in this play, he loaded up to thrust into horford at least twice. If you watch that and call it "falling", you're a hopeless homer who can't stand criticism of his own team.

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

So first off I'd like to say this has a been a good hard fought series and you guys have been playing really well even missing basically 3/5 of your starting lineup.

My question is why did are you guys so angry about Delly?

I don't think Horford should of been ejected at all, (flagrant 1 at best)

But watching the replay over and over, Horford dragged delly backwards and down into his body, i mean, was Delly suppose to fall forwards? I actually agree the Bulls series that what Delly did on Gibson should of resulted in a suspension but in this case, Horford essentially pulled Delly towards and knee and got mad when he fell on it. So I don't really understand why the big outrage.

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.

F these refs and the league...thats BS...u can clearly see that bastard regroup to launch into his leg

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.

Yknow......

I'm just gonna sit back and wait for this to play out. LOL. I'm honestly more stressed about the WCF

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!

I agree 100%...he was a BIG part of getting us to the ECFs....hopefully it wasn't as bad as it looked.

As far as this series goes...without him I am very concerned.

Already down with Thabo...don't have a lot left if DMC is done!

Come on Hawks!!! Rise up!

Make your shots from the charity stripe Hawks

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!!!

Unless they allow the Cavs to borrow Bradley Beal, I don't see anyone on their roster other than Shumpert (has a bad groin) who will be able to contain him. In other words, those looks will not come from 28+ feet as they did in this past series and he will begin heating up again.

I feel good about this series. REALLY good about this series...

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!!!!

The TRUTH is that he banked it in. No skill whatsoever. Don't even play like that was any skill. Jordan didn't bank in game winners.

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

When Paula hit that shot I crumpled ... I shouted not again ... What a relief

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

There is no player EVER that I hate more then Paul Pierce...The guy is a killer and has always hurt us...

It is now time to send that punk out to pasture...Nothing could make me happier!

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!

I've always thought that the way they figure fines for professional players

in any sport is wrong.

Players with huge annual salaries and the lowest peon player get hit the same

amount. If they would change this to a % of the players annual salary, then

that would seem more fair.

Example: Star player makes $12 million per year and Peon makes $1.2 million.

$5,000.00 fine for the star would be $500.00 for the Peon. Therefore each would

be paying the same fine per their income.

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

I dont think many of us expect a championship or would be upset if we lost in the finals. Thatd still be a major step for us. I think the majority of us have at least a minimum expectation that we make the ECF and if we dont we would be very dissappointed despite the accomplishments we had this season

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. 

Man, you're quick. I came to post and here it is.

This really bites! Don't know how ignoring police is ever going to result in good things.