Eye-witness comments here - vs. Charlotte

[jerrywest]

Please post all eye-witness comments here.

Was Acie penetrating at will? Is Marvin a changed man? How did Horford look? Shelden? Whats the news with Chillz?

[gutz]

I just got home from the game and boy am I excited about this team. Acie Law and Horford are the TRUTH!! Joe is unbelievable and was draining shots at will. Law is absolutely phenomenal. He was driving and dishing being the PG this team so desperately needed. He had a nice stat line of 10pts, 6ast, 6rb. and 3 stls. Speedy didn't even play tonight I think. Marvin had another great game scoring with 21pts. Horford is a monster out there when you see him in person. He had a great game as well with 10pts, 9rb, and 2blks. Chill and Smoove didn't play a whole lot with only 17-18min. but dominated when they were in the game. Shelden also had another solid game too. Zaza was okay but is just terrible on defense. I really like our chances this year if we can stay healthy. Our depth is also another huge advantage we will have over other teams. Law and Horford look to be perfect picks and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see either one win ROY. This might sound like a homer post but this is what I saw.

[jerrywest]

Quote:

---

I just got home from the game and boy am I excited about this team. Acie Law and Horford are the TRUTH!! Joe is unbelievable and was draining shots at will. Law is absolutely phenomenal. He was driving and dishing being the PG this team so desperately needed. He had a nice stat line of 10pts, 6ast, 6rb. and 3 stls. Speedy didn't even play tonight I think. Marvin had another great game scoring with 21pts. Horford is a monster out there when you see him in person. He had a great game as well with 10pts, 9rb, and 2blks. Chill and Smoove didn't play a whole lot with only 17-18min. but dominated when they were in the game. Shelden also had another solid game too. Zaza was okay but is just terrible on defense. I really like our chances this year if we can stay healthy. Our depth is also another huge advantage we will have over other teams. Law and Horford look to be perfect picks and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see either one win ROY. This might sound like a homer post but this is what I saw.

---

Thanks Gutzy. Acie has clinched two games in the last 25 seconds already. He is penetrating at will. Phenomenal leadership for a rookie pre-season player. Who would have thought that. How did it feel in the last few minutes of the 2nd quarter when Horford went nuts?

[OGRat]

I agree with all of that report except one point. Shelden looked terrible at times. He had a one or two good plays, but mostly looked like he did not know how to contribute. I noticed he lost his man on d a few times, and turned the ball over a few times because he was not ready for passes (for easy lay ups).

Horford and Acie looked good for the most part, but Horford did travel like three times in the second half trying to face up in the post.

BTW Marvin played well again tonight. I have not seen his line but he was definitely into the game. I was happy to see him aggressively go after rebounds.

Just what I noticed.

[DJ_Money]

Thoughts...

New floor looks good. They need to replace some of the old banners and stuff in the Hawk Walk area...

We were obviously running more. We're not a jailbreak team like the Suns, but we're pushing it. The only issue tonight was our transition defense. There were a couple times where we pushed the tempo, missed a shot, then Charlotte went back the other way and scored. We did a better job in the 2nd half on that.

Acie is going to be a very good player. Made several nice plays. There was one 2-on-1 break where he made a beautiful pass to Shelden for the layup. I didn't think he was going to be able to get the angle to make the pass, but he did. Had a couple of nice drives and finished in traffic well. (Can somebody who listened to the radio clarify why Speedy didn't play? He was introduced as the starter, but wasn't in. I'm assuming Woody just wanted to rest him on the back-to-back.)

Horford is as solid on the glass as we would hope. He will help with our transition, as he showed he was capable of taking the board and starting the break himself. I might say he's a better ball handler than Smoove. Played solid defense on Okafor in the brief moments they were matched up.

If Marvin can play like this in the regular season, there should not be any complaints. (There will be, because some people won't let themselves be wrong, but there shouldn't be.)

We're shooting an absurd amount of Free Throws in these first few games. I hope this carries over to the regular season. It's not all a product of our transition game. We're drawing a lot of fouls out of our halfcourt offense.

We need fewer turnovers, more pressure on shooters like Morrison and Carroll, and less stupid fouls...but we're off to a good start otherwise.

[BossTweed]

Good posts guys.

The Hawks definitely came out with MUCH more energy in the second half. I was pretty mad at the way they walked the ball up the court on offense in the first half. Everything seemed lazy and sloppy. This is when Charlotte got all their transition points. They were pushing the ball a lot, even after made baskets. One time Acie made a layup and fell down as a result of the drive and he got up pretty quick, but Charlotte was already going back on offense and got themselves an easy basket because we weren't covering up for Acie being out of the play.

In the second half the Hawks were a ton better. Acie was playing point almost the whole time, and he was pushing the ball to the half court and everyone was running with him. Just pushing the ball into the half court offense got us a lot better looks than when we walked the ball up the court and let their defense get completely set.

Those are my main observations that haven't already been covered. I was super impressed with Acie. Although it is looking like Horford might be a garbage/transition/dump off passes in the lane type scorer for a little while until he gets more comfortable in the post.

Here's a picture of the new court I took with my phone.

Sadly, this is about 30 seconds before the game started, and that's how empty it was. The picture is from my free seats in section 315. It did fill up a bit though and the second half the crowd got into it pretty good. I had a fun time. Although I really should find some people to sit with/go to the game with, it isn't as fun by yourself (which is probably why I was posting here while I was at the game).

[Buzzard]

Thanks to all for the game info. Horford and Acie are sounding exactly like the players we have been hoping for. Court looks good. I am going to make a game at Christmas time if we are playing at home....

[AtLaS]

They SO need to make the outside border of the court BLUE and where it says "Atlanta Hawks" behind the basket RED.

[Vesper]

You must have been over by the Bobcat fans. I was sitting to the left of you!

[Johnnybravo4]

I was there as well, I think that we have found our pg. I kept yelling that after every play.

[Lascar78]

I agree with most of the points in here. To add a few thoughts:

-Acie Law is exactly what I thought (knew) he was. He's not a real distributor, but he's a flat out playmaker. If he's in a position where a pass needs to be made, he'll make it. But he won't really create the entire play to set up other players - up like guys like Nash or Kidd do. I think he could learn that kind of skill, but Woody is not the guy to teach him. Neither are Lue or Speedy obviously.

-Horford looked bad his first stint out on the floor, looked good after that. He picked up 3 travels, missed some jumpers. His shot is not so good. He shoots kind of like Bill Cartwright. He is great when he makes a quick move. Obviously, the spin move and the baby hook or a dunk are his preferred moves. When he overthinks it he loses a lot of his edge. He is not the kind of guy who posts up deep and you can dump it to. He likes to get it in the mid-post and shake his man with one quick move and go to the rim.

-Shelden looks exactly the same as last year. He still looks lost and confused. He still catches it and fakes instead of going up, and ends up traveling. If I were Woody I would have flat out banned him from any pump fakes until he gets more comfortable attacking the first time. He will get the bucket more often than not if he just goes strong right away. Of course I would have banned Smith from taking 3s and not let Lue pound the rock for 15 seconds at a time but what do I know.

-Smith is still starting from the perimeter but there were signs of his post game. He showed a dream-like shake just once but it looked enticing. He ended up shooting a turnaround which looked good too. He had another posession that I would say was Hoford like where he was in between the post and the perimeter, started one way, spun and attacked the basket. I really liked what I saw but I still wish we could force him to get closer to the post earlier in the clock. I think that for the most part he wants to start further away and then take his man in the post. It should be interesting to see how he & Horford develop in the post.

-Marvin looked great when he attacked, but kind of went in and out of attack mode.

-Joe looked bad for a while, just like he looked bad at the scrimmage. I was starting to worry just a little. Then he lit the bobcats up for a while and all was well. There was a play where he went behind the back twice, then broke a defender's ankles, then nailed a three (or maybe a long 2). Nasty!

-Solo is still Solo. 2 fouls in 6 minutes and he might have gotten away with one or two. His skill is shotblocking and he seems to foul his man every play. Unless something changes, he won't get any burn.

-I am glad we are playing everyone heavy minutes and trying to win. Preseason doesn't mean much when you're the spurs or the pistons. It means a good bit more when you're the hawks. For one thing, we need chemistry. Speedy was not speedy all of last year, and Law is new. The team needs to learn how to run their offense with either one of the 2 main PG's running the show. A couple weeks of training camp is not enough. Right now is when you can learn to play together without having the losses really hurt.

And the injury fear is baseless. This is not football. They play year round. Unless you are suggesting that the team not really practice either, there is no difference between the hard practices and scrimmages and the preseason games. A freak injury can happen, but you can't worry about it.

Not to mention that if we want to be a running team, we need top conditioning and we're not there yet. There's no better time to get there than against good competition.

Finally, momentum is important for weaker teams. Good preseasons start good runs all the time, like the hawks did last year until the injuries. The team needs to learn how to win close games, and get used to the feeling of winning the close ones rather than losing them. Again if we were the Spurs I wouldn't care, but we're not. Every bit of help we can get towards developing chemistry and learning how to win is worth it.

I would give a guy like Solomon a little more minutes, but I have no problem with the starters playing 30 minutes. Training camp is very short. This is their time to gel prior to the season.

All in all I'm excited about watching this team grow and compete this year.

[killa3312]

Horford is definitely more of a big who faces you up, which a lot of people probably don't know. He's not a classic post up, dump it in and let him go-to-work post player. He CAN do that, but he likes to set you up with his jumper, and then work inward from there.

That said, he does have a good jumper, it just hasn't been falling as frequently in the preseaon. It's early, but I'm confident he'll hit that shot more and more regularly as the season progresses.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Quote:

---

-Marvin looked great when he attacked, but kind of went in and out of attack mode.

---

Could you elaborate a little bit more on what you saw out of Marvin? What specifically was he doing, for him to have such a great game last night?

[exodus]

Quote:

---

Just pushing the ball into the half court offense got us a lot better looks than when we walked the ball up the court and let their defense get completely set.

---

I haven't harped on this much but i think it is a major issue. If you push the ball every time you have the chance to get easy looks early in the clock. You also have more time on the clock to run your half court offense if you can't get a good early look. There really is no downside to pushing the ball up quickly every time even if you aren't on a fast break.

[DrReality]

I loved Horford's little jump hook in college. Has he used that any?

Also love the fact that Law is pushing Speedy. Could make a different man out of him. Truth is that Speedy may not be able to play more minutes a game than Law the entire season. I'd love it if he did, but . . . . .

Anyone know when we get to see them on TV for the first time??????

[JJJJ]

Were we running the entire game? Or was it just parts of the game?

Also, is Law really as good as the hype I continue to read about? By what you saw, should Law be starting?

Does Horford look like he should be starting over Z?(I certainly hope so, b/c Z is not good.)

[Lascar78]

Quote:

---

Were we running the entire game? Or was it just parts of the game?

---

If I hadn't read anything about us becoming a running team, I don't think I would have noticed a significant difference. We looked a little better on the break and pushed it a little more on defensive rebounds, but there was no huge difference. Obviously Law brings it up a little faster than Lue, but we were not pushing it all the time.

Quote:

---

Also, is Law really as good as the hype I continue to read about? By what you saw, should Law be starting?

---

Depends on what hype you're talking about. He's a breath of fresh air for a team that has had no PG prospect at all for years. That being said, he's not exactly Steve Nash coming in. I think he deserves big minutes and will earn the start at some point. I think for now it's better to let the veteran keep it on principle and have the rookies work hard to earn it. I will say this, in close game situations, I will feel 100% better knowing that we can have the ball in Law's hands and hope he can make a play including trying to set JJ up. He'll make a play. Hopefully we won't have to settle for JJ having the ball in his hands on an isolation for the last 10 seconds of the game.

Quote:

---

Does Horford look like he should be starting over Z?(I certainly hope so, b/c Z is not good.)

---

Probably. But again I'd let him earn it over time. Horford is clearly not a C, but he's still a better C than Zaza if you factor in defense.

[AtLaS]

Quote:

---

Horford is clearly not a C, but he's still a better C than Zaza if you factor in defense.

---

After one preseason game (that you've seen) in which the opposing centers did NOTHING and Horford didn't really shoot much, he is CLEARLY not a C? You may believe he's not a center, but that doesn't mean he's "clearly" not a center. I don't buy that at all, especially considering how well he rebounded and blocked 2 shots.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Still no in-depth analysis on what Marvin did.

Hmmmmm . . .

[Lascar78]

Quote:

---

After one preseason game (that you've seen) in which the opposing centers did NOTHING and Horford didn't really shoot much, he is CLEARLY not a C? You may believe he's not a center, but that doesn't mean he's "clearly" not a center. I don't buy that at all, especially considering how well he rebounded and blocked 2 shots.

---

I have seen Horford play for 4 years. I'm not basing this off of one preseason game.

Horford is a prototypical PF. You could put his picture next to Karl Malone's in the dictionary's listing of PF. He will do fine at center but his natural position is clearly the 4. Anyone who doesn't think this is the case is deluding themselves.