kurupt

a) you can see how the team does when Dennis is not on the floor anyway. You don't have to keep him there for the whole game. Doesn't make any sense at all. b) see a). You can test different line-ups without handing out DNPs. c) see a) and b). You can easily do that. And I would agree with the poster who said "this isn't the little leagues". If Mack helps you win, you play him. If not, you don't. d) see a) and b) and c). e) Then they could simply say so. But I think this is highly doubtful. He will learn a lot more if he plays than sitting on the bench. We are not talking 1st year rookie here, we are talking about the 6th man of a playoff team in his 3rd season. This whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. They have to have a reason so why arent' they talking about it? Dennis is still a young player. He needs to learn and the more he plays the better. He also wants to see a bigger role as time goes on (on this team or another). His contract is up in the near future. He (and the whole bench) also was a major reason for the good run the Hawks had. I think it is a huge mistake sitting him, if he didn't do anything wrong (which is now kinda confirmed). If you want to/have to find minutes for Mack (for whatever reason), you could just have other players (including Schröder) play 3-4 minutes less and easily have 12-15 minutes for Mack without completely sitting your best young talent. The more you think about it, the less sense this whole thing makes...

I don't buy the "showcasing Mack" theory. There are more than enough minutes at PG/SG to go around between Korver, Teague and Schröder to let Mack play ~15 Minutes (plus/minus some depending on how the game goes) per game to "showcase" him. You don't need to bench your young and still developing backup point guard who played very well up to that point completely and actually jeopardize wins for it. We are not talking "Blockbuster" trade material here, were are talking about a 2nd/3rd string point guard. If that were the case, it would be a horrible move and I would be pissed as hell as Dennis Schröder. At this point I hope for it to be about a trade of Schröder. Because benching a 6th man "indefinetly" for (undisclosed) disciplinary reasons would take a whole lot to have happened. Which obviously would be bad news for all sides.

Stopped reading there...

He isn't playing as well this season as he could, for sure. He worked on his shot, shootting a decent percentage on 3's with much higher volume and he scored a lot at the start of the season. He also has fewer turnovers and defends very(!) well. Unfortunately he has not been able to combine his progress in the areas of shooting and committing less turovers with still managing the game well enough. I see him add more tools to his toolbox, but he still needs time to figure out, what and when to use appropriately. Which, in my opinion, is to be expected from a 22-year old PG. I think it says a lot, if the, though talented, 22-year old backup-PG is being blamed for a teams poor performance that still has 3 All-Stars on it... I also think that the team will get significantly better when the schedule stops being so busy. They have had zero time to make adjustments in pratice because of the tight schedule. Once they get to playing only every 3-4 days, we will see some changes and improvements.

Acutally I think this is a non-issue. Teague and Schröder create their shots themselves, the other players have many more open shots after passes from other players. Compared to the other guards in the league, they are middle-of-the pack in terms of FG% and TS%. Sure, they can be better, but saying "let the ygus with better FG% shoot more" is too simple, because it ignores the reasons why these players shoot higher percentages.

Oh well, the sky is falling :D 1. They didn't "lay an egg". If you (and others) think any team can just win every game every time, you should check your expectations. Teams have bad games, opponents have great nights and sometimes it happens at the same time. The Hawks didn't play terribble defense, the Wolves just hit everything. The thing that was "bad" about the first half was the offensive execution and too many turnovers. They played well enough to go into the half at 72:60'ish, making the (inevitable) run easier to pull off. 2. The T-Wolves are loaded with talent (Rubio, X, Wiggins, Bjelica, Towns could play together for 5-6 years easily - yikes!). They are just inconsistent and (usually) don't shoot well. If players like Wiggins or LaVine shoot 60% on (difficult) jumpers, there is only so much you can do. The thing is, it won't happen often or over stretches for them. So it was absolutely expected for them to have a drougth in this game and when it came, the Hawks got back into it. 3. Wiggins shot 33% (!!!) from the field so far this season. To make it seem like the difference was "a superstar in the making" for the Wolves and "no one" for the Hawks is oversimplifying it. He shot terrible so far this season, he was bound to have a big game eventually in order to get back to his ~40% from the field for the season. It happened against the Hawks, shit happens :) How many teams would have even kept playing and fighting in a regular season game to come back after trailing by 34 (and should have won)? To be "concerned" after this game is hyperbolic in my opinion.

My personal highlight was Dennis getting buried under a Sota player while taking a jump shoit without a whistle. Like...seriously? Running over someone shooting the ball isn't a foul?

Good job quiting early...to the people turning the game off. You obviously have never seen a team get hot. The Hawks kept playing through all of it, even LaVine hitting every pull-up jumper he took in the first half. It was highly likely that wouldn't continue for Minnesoat and it didn't. And then the Hawks made their run. Great comeback, just fell short because Wiggins had a great game (the refs gave the Hawks zero respect) and the adrenaline kind off fizzled off after tieing the game. I didn 't get why Korver was on the field to finish the game. Would have liekd Schröder or Sefolosha more, they needed their defensive pressure to keep Minnesota from scoring at the end. Also the many TOs by Teague and Bazemore kinda killed the team at the end... btw: Wiggins shot 33% from the field before this game...

PGs and SGs having bad night after bad night against the Hawks. Seems to become a trend.

Stream is back online!

FYI: the "source" is BILD, a yellow press paper. They are known for exaggerating and misrepresenting facts and interviews to get more attention :) Dennis has said the same thing he has said all along, that he wants to be a starter in the NBA. He expects things to move forward (i.e. more playing time this season) and if that doesn't happen, he would have to look for other opportunities. He has averaged 14 points, 7.7. assists and 3.4 rebounds in his 10 starts (29 minutes/game) as well as 14 points and 6 assists through 15 games in March (24 minutes per game). He also shot 41% from 3 from January through April (108 tries). He also had a good Eurobasket, where he clearly led a team that had Dirk Nowitzki on it. If that isn't starter material for a 22 year old, I don't know. I expect him to be better than last season and he does as well, I am sure. It is only natural that he wants his role to increase. It is up to the coaching staff to fix the "1st world problem" of having two very good Point Guards :)

I know stats aren't everything, but LJs rookie season was far better than any season Millsap has ever had. For his position, he was a good shooter and an elite athlete, rebounder and scorer. He was an up and coming Top10-12 player before his back issues (=before his prime). After his big injury, I think they are comparable. But I get that your friend got a little upset about comparing them overall.

Food for thought: maybe now some people will get what a guy like Antić brings to this team when he plays.

Yep. Or the Hawks could have hit 3-4 more wide open threes and a couple of the easy layups and won the game and be up 3-0. I would be concerned if they couldn't get good shots. If you just do't hit them, it will come later.

The Hawks won't shoot 6/30 on wide open 3's again, mark my words. This game couldn´t have been worse in terms of officiating, shots rolling out from easy layups and open jump shots, yet the game still was pretty close throughout.

Yeah, but they didn´t get in trouble in a club or even in front of a club. The cops arrsted them at least 120 feet away from where Copeland was stabbed. How many times does this need to get repeated?

1. They weren´t even in the club that Copeland was in. They were arrested 120 feet away. 2. No one knows if they were even clubbing or just eating out or something. 3. Read a little bit about the schedules of NBA players (there is a good Jalen & Jacoby podcast on this topic). If there is no shootaround before the game, going to bed at 4-5 am is no problem. The players often sleep until 3-4 pm for evening games. If you believe any NBA player just lives in hi hotel room on every road trip, you're just naive. And this is not ab out being professional or not, all the players do it.

That's like saying "If he didn´t leave his bed that day, he would't have been hurt, so I blame his decision making."...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm It is a widely known fact, at least here in Geramy amongst my peers =)

Add the no-call at the end of the Thunder game to the list. That was f***ing unbelievable. He got mauled by two players in the air and the refs saw nothing.

Smart things are smart, because they are smart and not because they are done by successful people. Kobe has won rings and still behaves like a complete moron when it comes to teammates and plays pointless hero-ball at the end of games, for example. Just because he has rings doesn´t mean anything he does is smart or right. Just as not having rings means doing smart things is not worth doing them...

"Willingly throwing away games" is BS. They won resting players before. So there's that. More importantly, they already have homecourt advantage until the NBA FInals secured (not theoretically, but practically). Sure, it would be nice to potentially have home court vs. GS there, too. But a) it is not guarantueed you would get it even if you tried and b) GS still has to come out of the West for this to matter at all. And I do think that many people underestimate what an 82 game season does to players, physically - even if they play only ~30 minutes per game - and mentally. Especially with the style that Hawks are playing: high energy on O and D, a lot of movement etc. To call Bud "a moron" is just flat out stupid, sorry. This is a coach who is guiding this franchise to its best record ever, so I do think he knows what he is doing and that he especially deserves the benefit of the doubt. We can revisit this, when the Hawks lose game 7 of the finals at GS. Then maybe this was a mistake. Until then, you are just talking crap.

Phili commentators at their best: "I don´t get why they go under against Teague who can shoot the 3 and don´t go under vs. the guy who can´t shoot the 3, Schröder." Look at the stats guys, they are pretty similar...though I would go under vs. both, because they are just more dangerous as penetrators and creators.

As good as EB has been in limited minutes in some games, he is absolutely crippling the team offensively in this game.

If you shoot bad, opponents will get more defensive rebounds and you will lose more games, simple. Has been said before. Even if you would rebound consistently in every game in terms of REB%, the more you miss, the bigger the disparity will become, because most rebounds go to the defending team. So there will always be a correlation between losing the rebounding battle and losing the game - but the cause is usually bad shooting which leads to more reboudns for the opponent. Single outlier games don´t change these facts.