Trout7

Just know that Bud will find plenty of playing time for Bazemore to ruin the playoffs.

I'll keep mine very simple. Do whatever it takes to get rid of Bazemore, and work hard to keep Milsap, Howard, and Hardaway. We need a couple pure shooters.

Hawks only chance to get past 1st round is to avoid Washington. Need to lose remaining games to miss Wizards because Bradley Beal is the greatest player on earth when he faces Hawks. I won't watch playoffs if we face Wizards, too much anger when i have to watch Gortat.

Rehire Danny Ferry.

I would say nothing is worse than losing to the little punk Isaiah Thomas.

All this just because we were afraid we would hurt Luol Deng's feelings . SMDH.  I think i shall just call him Lou Aldeng cause that's how it sounds on the radio. Ferry was the foundation.

You can't stop those Gasol's, you can only hope to contain them. SMDH.

3 hours ago, Hotlanta1981 said:

A few problems. This team is rarely competitive . They routinely get blown out, and mof the time they don't challenge shooters.

Bazemore is not a starter at SG or Sf. He has very marginal talent. Best bigges asset being an average outside shooter. HE bring almost nothing to the table

Except that 70 million to the table.

5 hours ago, kurupt said:

I really wanted make some posts on various topics over the last few weeks/months, but rarely could narrow it down to just that one topic. So here goes my overall take on the current season J

Prologue: After the 60-win 2014/15 season (including a trip to the ECF), the Hawks finished last year with 48 wins and a 2^nd round sweep by the hands of the NBA champions Cleveland Cavaliers (who shot 51% from 3-pointrange over the whole series). According to most metrics, the Hawks still where the 2^nd or 3^rd best team in the East and a Top-6 team for the whole league.

(Interesting to see how the individual Hawks performed in that series: http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2016-nba-eastern-conference-semifinals-hawks-vs-cavaliers.html)

The hawks offseason plan was to trade Teague for a draft pick (ending up with the 12^th pick, a very good haul in my opinion) and to add Dwight Howard to play alongside Al Horford and Paul Millsap. They also counted on the continued development of Bazemore (new contract) and THJr to further improve the team.

Without going into too much detail, that was a very sound and reasonable battle plan. Unfortunately Horford chose to leave and the Hawks ended up just replacing Horford with Howard and Teague with Schröder (plus Taurean Prince as the draft pick).

At best, I would’ve expected this team to do as well as the one before with ~48 wins, purely based on the adjustments needed. They are on track to 44-45 wins, which is a record that I would have expected at the start of the season. To me, the “sky is falling” attitude commonly seen on this board is rooted more in the unrealistic expectations of some people than in reality. This also goes for the assessment of some players.

 

I will split my detailed commentary on the players in several parts (starting) PG, Wings, Bigs and the Bench.

Point Guard: Schröder has basically translated his per-36 bench production to his starting job – against better opposition and more game-plan focus on him. He is also doing it more efficiently across the board (TS% / eFG%, TOV%) and almost all advanced stats are also up. He is pretty close to giving the Hawks what Teague gave them over the last 2 years in his first year as a starter and on a slightly worse team. Despite all valid concerns, Schröder is doing as well as you could possibly have hoped for in my opinion – and (hopefully) has even more room to grow.

Wings: The main starters this season were Korver/Bazemore/Sefolosha. On major problem was (and is) that none of these guys is a true SF, all are at best tweeners leaning more towards being SGs. This is especially problematic on defense

Korver was not good enough anymore to be a starter. His niche was his amazing offensive efficiency and compared to all previous Hawks season, his offensive metrics fell off a cliff this year. The Hawks were distinctively better without him (or at least without him starting), which has never happened before. Whether that was on him declining or him missing Horford offensively and defensively doesn’t matter in the end. To get a first round pick for him was a great deal.

Bazemore was the designated starter but had a brutal(!!!) start to the season. He shot like 35% from 2 and 20% from 3 over the first three months, his PER is at 9.4 right now. Part of this is him pressing too much and the starting role may be just too big for him. But I also see him misused. He just is no SF. He can’t defend that position and offensively his length/athleticism isn’t that great anymore when going against guys like Paul George, Durant or LBJ, so his offensive game gets reduced to pure shooting which he is at best average at. He has been better the last few months and I can see him being a serviceable starter at the 2-spot or a good player off the bench on that position if he continues this way.

Sefolosha, when healthy, has done what is to be expected of him. I also see him more as a 2-guard than a SF, but defensively he can guard both position very well. Offensively he is limited. The problem is that much like Bazemore, he is a serviceable at best as a starter and also not a very good shooter. Having one wing position with a “slightly below average starter” may be okay for a team aspiring to win 50 games, having two of them is hard.

Bigs: Howard is a dominant rebounder and decent rim protector but lacks the “utility value” that Horford had: setting screens, being smart and agile on defense etc. But he is what he is as a player and he has done exactly what the Hawks needed him to do by improving their poor rebounding.

Millsap does what Millsap does. He is great and by far the most important player on this team, both as a player and as a leader. The only gripe I have with him this season is that he has had a lot of pretty bad shooting games (sub 35% shooting), which is hard to overcome for this team since their firepower rests on so few shoulders (Schröder, Millsap, THJr basically, the rest is far too inconsistent).

Bench: First off the good news: THJr has fully arrived. He is a legit starting caliber 2-guard in this league now. After a so-so start, he has been excellent over the last 3 months. The only reason he is still coming off the bench (and I agree with that) is that the rest of it is so bad and Bazemore so far has been too inconsistent to take his role as the primary scorer and ballhandler off the bench. Putting THJr in the starting lineup for Bazemore would immediately fix most of the wing problems, but leave the bench a hot mess.

The rookies seem to not be ready enough and I trust the coaching staff with this decision. They have a good track record with developing Schröder, Bazemore and THJr as backourt players.

The main reasons why the bench is so bad is that Delaney is worse than I could’ve ever imagined. He can’t shoot from anywhere, not even his (formerly) famed mid-range game works on the NBA level. It was clear that he was a liability defensively, but since he isn’t athletic enough to be a driving guard, his lack of shooting makes him literally worthless. This is also why THJr has to handle the ball so much for the bench units.

Mike Muscala has been decent, but the Hawks also miss the firepower that Mike Scott provided. Much like THJr now, he won the Hawks a few games on his own when he caught fire and the Hawks have no one like that besides THJr anymore. Last year they had Schröder and Scott going ham off the bench.

Overall assessment: most of the Hawks players actually perform according to expectations or even outperform them. The most glaring issue is that the 2 most “disappointing” performances came/come from the same position in Korver and Bazemore at the wing. This leaves the Hawks with one good player for 2 starting spots and that player has to come off the bench because backup PG can’t actually play in the NBA. What could be a very, very good starting 5 with Schröder/THJr/Sefolosha/Millsap/Howard is instead a very flawed Schröder/Bazemore/Sefolosha/Millsap/Howard lineup.

I still like this teams chances in the playoffs though. There you can shrink your rotations and increase the minutes for your best players which naturally will lead to more “THJr with the starters” minutes. I also like the attitude this team is able to display, they are a lot more competitive and “edgy” than the Teague/Horford-led teams and if it comes to playing good/better opponents that is something you need to have a chance.

It may not translate to as many regular season wins this season, but I see more playoff potential in this group than is last years. The ceiling with Howard dominating the boards is much higher than the “we are going to out-finess you” Hawks of last year.

Also, going forward, I can see Bazemore stabilizing if they play him exclusively at the 2. He could then take on THJrs role that may be more fitting anyway. THJr seems to be a good starting 2-guard now and I believe that Prince/Bembry + the draft are able to address the remaining wing problems that Hawks have for next season.

So are you saying that the Hawks are basically sacrificing the team, in order for Bud to give his 70 million dollar cheerleader his starting minutes? That is exactly what i am saying.

2 evenly matched teams.

Nice reminder and confirmation that we suck worse than anyone in NBA history at defending the 3 pointers.

Prayers for healing and peace to come over her.

I am finally coming out of hiding from the Falcons depression. I have to watch "Kial" tonight.

No thoughts, still no interest in sports since Shanahan shitshow.

I don't know if i will get the interest to be on here or not the rest of the season, 45 seasons as Falcons fan culminating in that Shanahan shitshow has sucked away my sports energy for now. Good luck Hawks.

4 hours ago, Dwighthoward4life said:

If pau milsap can get 14 shots a game shooting 44 percent as a PF and 32 percent from 3 then Dwight Howard can get a couple more shots a game.

I wonder why Paul freezes up in crunch time. No matter how many points he scores you will never see him connect on a buzzer beater or any kind of shot in pressure spots near the end. I guess he is just missing that "clutch" gene. Even in a game where he scores 30 or 40 he totally becomes all scared and nervous on crunch time shots, which probably seperates him from elite players.

You are right according to how that game looked, but the Wizards have a streak every year where they look like the top of the East, but it always ends the same way with them sucking. It is possible they could be different this year though.

1 hour ago, kg01 said:

The problem is, technically, they are fouls they're calling.  However, it's such a b*tch move for Har en to continuously try to get those calls.

None of these new refs has the ballz to look at him and say, "Nuh-uh, we ain't callin' that bullsh*t today.  Move on."

I'm of the opinion that the new-fangled ref grading system and the last 2-minute reports are causing them to basically be robots.  'See foul, call foul'.  If they don't, they get low-graded outta the league.

It seems, in prior years, the good refs had the leeway to call the game as it should be called.  These calls wouldn't be made in prior years mainly because it wasn't punitive for the refs to swallow the whistle on them.

Nowadays, some bean-counter sits in a room and looks at the film and thinks, "Wup, Har en should've been given 3 shots on that play 'cause technically he was fouled when he leaned in and whipped his arms up under Bembry's armpit.  Ref gets an F."

That's not progress.

I just can't concede that technically, those are all fouls. He literally gets rewarded fouls for lunging and flopping when there is no contact. He is the NBA's all-time greatest little bitch. I would like to have seen him play against people like Bill Laimbeer. I don't see why more players don't just start getting their money's worth and put him on his ass if they are going to get called for their little feathery romantic brushes up against him. LOL.

I know this is old news, but i am still bewildered to how the Hawks could have ever have even considered paying Bazemore what they did. You could find Division 2 college player or JUCO players that would help your team more than he can.  Someone sure pulled some strings somewhere. Tim Hardaway won't be offered half of what Bazemore was. SMDH.

The Hawks have a very basic flaw being they are a poor shooting team. They have to shoot well for their game plan to work, and sometimes some players just don't have basic shooting skills.

The NBA refs are pathetic the way they worship James Harden.  Any kind of crap he throws up he gets a foul called. You would think there would be a ref somewhere that wouldn't bow down and kiss his ass. SMDH.  Take that NBA refs you couldn't steal this game from the Hawks.

The Falcons probably go limp hanging around this team.

The obligatory suckass game following an inspired effort.

 HI'm a big fan of Paul, but I honestly don't think it would hurt us too much to lose him because he really  has butterfingers a lot of times, and settled for too many long range shots, and can't stay under control under the basket. He also freezes up on shots in crunch time. He is very good through the middle of games though. He is probably my favorite Hawk though. I want to be clear  that I hope he finishes his career as a Hawk.

I'm a big fan of Paul, but I honestly don't think it would hurt us too much to lose him because he really  has butterfingers a lot of times, and settled for too many long range shots, and can't stay under control under the basket. He also freezes up on shots in crunch time. He is very good through the middle of games though. He is probably my favorite Hawk though.