My personal views on the upcoming Hawks season.

[thecampster]

Let's not kid ourselves fellas. No one here is just shooting for the playoffs or respectability. Everyone here want's a championship. Everyone here want's to see good fundamental basketball from these Hawks. So putting the Hawks in my "Championship-o-meter" I thought I'd try and guage their end probability.

Great teams of the past had a couple of things.

The dominant 1 or 2 guard. On this team that's JT at the 1. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Is any one point guard in the league capable of going one on one with JT and embarassing him?" I say no...not embarass. There are 3 or 4 better players at the point in the league (notice I didn't say point guards, but "players" at the point). But in every matchup he get's involved in, JT will have the ability to hold his own.

Great Teams of the Past Had a dominant post game. Hakeem, Shaq, Russell, even the Spurs, Pistons (thru Rodman rebounding and Lambeer stretching the floor) had that dominant post game. The Bulls got by here by having Pippen/Jordan/Grant-Rodman all crashing the boards. We have Ratliff down low to block shots and our interior "D" has looked better than average in the preseason but in order for us to win this dominant post game as a team we are going to have to rebound. In the preseason, Robinson seemed to get that. He led the team in rebounding from the SF position. This kind of effort is required from all 5 starters...especially when we start playing the bigger west coast clubs. Winning those games means everything for playoff positioning.

All great teams of the past had a 3rd option...a go to guy off the double team. The bulls had Armstrong/Kerr/Paxton for 3. The Pistons had the microwave. Even the Lakers need that 3rd option on the floor....and this is also why the Jazz have never won. On this team, JT needs to be that guy. Shareef needs to be the 1st option, Robinson the 2nd and JT needs to be the guy to pick up the slack. Focusing his offensive attention first on the point and being the 3rd option offensively. I honestly believe he'll score more as option 3 on this team than option 1 being the main guy to pass to out of a double team. Basketball 101 says, "Double in the post and force the shooters hand." For this to all work, JT has to be the one to swallow the leadership pill and be a distributor first.

Lastly, all great teams have "a coach that gets it". The bulls won it all when Collins left and Jackson took over. Why, Jackson let his players star. In his interviews, he consistently spoke about what his individual players did well and protected their not so wells. The NBA is a players league. The teams are made of individual men. There may be no "I" in team but there is in winner and champion. Kruger needs to stop pandering to the bench players and start pushing his stars. If JT is a star, than he needs to challenge him privately and praise him publicly. He needs to stop sissying on Dion and get his [censored] name out of the paper unless he's going to talk the kid up. Dion has real potential and will never be anything if taken to task in print by Lon. If this is to work, Lon has to stop sticking up for "the team" and start sticking up for the players. That means getting ejected once or twice for Reef and getting in the face of any 6-10 stiff trying to get his own shot to pad his numbers. Make the euro's and stiffs set a few hard picks and earn their keep before doling out minutes and Lon can take this team to the land of the finals.

This team has the pieces and the ability fellas in my eyes. It has the shooters, the distributors, the defense and the post game to compete with any team in the NBA...yes, any team. I say if Lon is ejected at least once before game 20 and JT goes for more assists than points in at least one game before game 20...then this squad get's it..if not, we'll bump and go in the first round.