SalvorMallow

2 catch and shoot 3s for Trae so far! The team must be reading the squawk.

@JeffS17 this is why DJ shouldn't have the ball in his hands while Trae is on the court.

Look at Cap WIDE Open in the dunkers spot but DJ drives and gets blocked at the rim. 

Bey lost on D SMH

Hey look at that inside out play between JJ and Trae. Thats what we need to see!

11 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

 

Yes, definitely!

 

Yeah, he has done some more stuff off ball, but I am assuming DJ thought he would be functioning as the primary ball handler more than he has been when Trae is on the court.  I think there was either a miscommunication or a misunderstanding of them pairing up.  Oh well, DJ isn't some negative asset so we should get back good value for him and take another path.

If he did, he is deluded. It's the equivalent of me being pissed that Max Verstappen won't let me take the wheel for a couple laps at the Vegas Grand Prix. Trae is so much better than DJ with the ball in his hands that it would be a huge negative impact to the team. DJ should be a 2nd option/outlet creation type of player. He isn't a primary creator IMO.

That being said, the frontcourt is the problem. If we get some ballers in the frontcourt, everything else will work out.

16 minutes ago, GameTime said:

Celtics would take him for Al Horford.

5 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

Sacramento ( 12/29 )

 

Defense

https://www.nba.com/game/sac-vs-atl-0022300431/box-score?type=defense

 

 

Re-watching clips of the game are always interesting to me.  Let me look at Clint first.  I want to see how 9 assists and 8 three pointers were attributed to him.

• 5 assists coming from Sabonis, mainly from pick and roll action. Even Len had an assist from the PnR.
• 8 defended 3 pointers by Capela, which Quin actually talked about in the press conference.  Look at this sequence though:

 

Not sure what happened on the previous Hawks possession, but all 5 Kings are in this screen shot, with Bey and Trae trying to stop Duarte from scoring at the rim.  JJ is closing in as well.  No Capela or DJ pictured.  Not sure why.

 

Clint and Dejounte are late getting back, but Bey and Trae successfully prevents Duarte from scoring.  Duarte passes it to Monk at the rim, but JJ is right there. Monk immediately turns and fires the ball out to Fox.  Capela is starting to enter the picture. 

 

Capela with a good challenge to Fox's 3.  DJ is now entering the picture.  Pay attention to the paint.

 

Do you see it?  What do you think is about to happen?

 

How about now?

 

Sabonis is perennially one of the best rebounding big men in the league.  You have 2 Kings on the right side of the basket. But no one puts a body on him.  This is easy pickings for Sabonis.  And the irony of Trae being the only Hawk trying to box someone out here, is mind boggling to me.  Bey, who should've stayed on the other side and box out Sabonis, is now behind JJ?

 

So despite preventing a layup, and a great contest on a 3 pointer by Capela, we still give up an offensive rebound that leads to a score. DJ with a weak swipe to try to knock the ball out of Sabonis hands, that wiffs.  JJ tries to defend Sabonis as he's going up, but you're not stopping him at point blank range.  LOL . . and look where Bey is now.

 

That is our season so far in a nutshell.

 

Good job by Trae with 4 steals.  He and DJ did give up critical 3 pointers in that 4th quarter though.

Bogi got torched for most the night.  The athletes he was trying to guard were just too much for him.

 

Hustle

https://www.nba.com/game/sac-vs-atl-0022300431/box-score?type=hustle

 

 

DJ overall didn't play a bad defensive game at all.  Lots of deflections for him.  Trae had a few deflections that lead to him getting steals.  Capela contested the most shots.  JJ, for him, had an extremely low contested shot rate.

Overall team contested shot rate was very low:  27 out of 85 shots = 31.8% shots contested

Excellent post dude, thanks for sharing.

14 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Because he does and we have years of track record as evidence. We can find clips of Kawhi looking like crap on defense. We can make MJ look horrible if its just low-lites. 

You been missing games this year bro? You think I have to cherry pick film to show DJ getting burned on the perimeter? He's an absolute sieve who over-gambles and loses focus, especially off-ball. Even on-ball though, his point of attack defense has been atrocious. Both PGs and SGs walk right past him to the rim.

6 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Tight sphincters in the 4th

 

 

Wow actually a nice shot profile too. 

3 hours ago, NBASupes said:

Trae needs to go to Phoenix because the offensive scheme is ass and they can protect him on offense with KD who's superior to Trae and Beal is a better scorer when healthy. 

Trae in Atlanta always gets exposed in the 4th quarter. Always. He's not a #1 option and never will be

Atlanta runs a real offensive scheme with Quin. I'll rather DJ play PG for us as a starter. We just need a legit #1 option scorer and we need a legit big. I don't know how we get that big but bigs are generally easy to get if you are willing to overpay. I wish there was a way we could get Paolo Banchero

I don't get why you keep saying DJ plays great defense on point guards. 

 We watch him defend PGs every night when Trae is stashed on a poor offensive player or on the bench and I don't see him locking anybody up, let alone just staying in front of his man.

The dude looks worse on defense than Trae this year. He has a - 1.1 D RAPTOR and Trae is -. 9.

This is NOT the defensive impact we hoped for. 

3 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Raw on or off won't say anything either. Dre don't have stocks. We don't exactly have a good starting 5 so he doesn't show up in those on or offs but when he's not playing, you can see everything is a lot harder on the team. All these lineups you think are good suck and you like, damn, how is that. Well, starting is a lot harder than being a backup and when you take an extremely versatile player in the one position where you need that, you basically end up with a shit ton of holes. 

Dre is gloryless. You can't read a stat sheet to know his impact but if you understand the game at a high level, you will realize why I am always defending him.

Why doesn't he have any value around the league then? NO should be chomping at the bit to swap him for Alvarado and a first (and so am I).

This 1st quarter has been a front row seat to Huerter's awful defense.

8 minutes ago, kg01 said:

Shiiiii ... that's basically most of us, no? 

Yeah true! Wheres my grocery store cheesecake to commemorate the accomplishment? 

16 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

AJ Griffin gets his joy back as he returns to Hawks practice (ajc.com)

Anyone got more of this story.  Most is behind the paywall. 

The lead makes it sound like he was away because he wasn't playing but I don't know if that's right

 

Quote

After a whirlwind of a rookie season, AJ Griffin of the Hawks is looking to find himself and where he fits among this new group. So he took a couple of weeks away from basketball, as well as the team, and he has returned with fresh frame of mind.

Griffin has been inactive for the past eight games after the team ruled him out of its matchup against the Raptors on Dec. 13 for personal reasons. Then, they ruled him out and kept designating him as inactive for the next couple of weeks before his return Thursday, which raised questions of why the 20-year-old had missed so much time.

 

This season alone has brought up so many questions regarding Griffin, who has averaged 10 minutes per game after he became a key part of the team’s rotation his rookie season. He has averaged only 2.5 points on 32% shooting on 3-point shots in 12 appearances, so far.

It has left many fans wondering why the second-year wing has not had more playing in the team’s typical nine-man rotation, even with injuries piling up.

But Griffin has had a lot going on even sharing some of his struggles publicly in an article for The Christian Post.

He declined to go into detail about what led to his absence, but after taking some time to reflect, he’s gotten himself back into a better space.

 

“Yeah, I would say I’m glad to be back,” Griffin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The team has been great to be able to support me through that time stepping away for a little, just for personal reasons. I definitely want to keep it brief and not put it all out there, But I have a great staff, great teammates here, checking in on me just to make sure everything’s good. And just really walking in today, just, it’s always good to see your loved ones too, your family and stuff like that, to be able to reconnect and so I just had a great time today and moving on from there.”

 

During his time away, he leaned on his family and friends, while also staying in contact with his teammates. He received plenty of words of wisdom from veterans such as Dejounte Murray and Wesley Matthews, who have shared their experiences from their years in the NBA.

“I mean, the biggest thing is a lot of people don’t understand when we throw a jersey on they think we’re somebody else than when we don’t have this jersey on and we’re humans,” Matthews said. “We’re people at the end of the day, first and foremost, and most important, a lot of us are fathers, obviously sons and all that kind of stuff.

“So, it was ‘just take care of what you need to take care of. Basketball is basketball.’ It’s a blessing. It’s fun. It’s amazing, but it’s a game at the end of the day. Yeah, it provides and all that, but hell, your mental is what keeps you going and what’s most important. So (if), you got to take time away, you got to take time away because that’s what’s most important.”

Griffin also continued to lean heavily on his faith to help relieve his stress and get his joy back.

“One thing that spoke to me was, one story (in the Bible) of Peter, he was on a boat and he took his eyes off Jesus,” Griffin said. “And then that’s when you start seeing the storms of life and instead of keeping your eyes on him to where like, that’s where your joy comes from despite any circumstances or anything you may be going through, in life. And so, I think that’s where I had to reconnect, just refocus and yeah, it feels great to be back.”

 

His teammates and coaches could feel his excitement upon his return to practice Thursday. For Griffin, it felt like a little more.

“I think it’s kind of like opening a present for Christmas Day,” he said. “Just that joy of coming back you, doing what you love and knowing the people just love being around you.”

4 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Just to note, Cavs have gone 5-1 since Garland and Mobley have both been out, but the Hawks struggle missing one guy. .

The depth of functional NBA ROTATION PLAYERS is non-existent.

THIS! We have ZERO depth beyond our 7th man. 

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Did we play the big lineup last night? CC /OO or CC/OO/JJ???

No, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why.

The door Mat(t)s had a combined 6-1-1 with bad D in 19 minutes.  

3 minutes ago, kg01 said:

You are if you can't follow it up.  Especially when you go out the way PHX did. 

Yeah the last game in that series was one of the biggest choke jobs of all time. You can't convince me that Booker brings what we need here unless we're pairing him up as a Robin to Trae. Dj, Book, and scraps might not even be a playin team. 

1 minute ago, terrell said:

Man.... Zion and Trae together isnt helping our Defense....

Yeah but could you imagine that PnR? It would be totally unstoppable. Just surround them with knock down 3pt shooters and we are headed to the finals. (or Zion would get hurt and we'd be in the lottery after everything we'd have to give up to get him)

3 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

I'd trade murray, Cap, and filler for AD