Painful Recurrence of 2nd Foul Syndrome

[Admin]

As Magic said last night, other than that 1 play where he blocked it and then took it coast to coast Smith disappeared last night. He played 11 minutes in the 1st quarter and I think he had 2 points. He had a couple of blocks but we were still losing. I agree that he needs to be out there but it's not like he was having a great game and Woody forgot about him.

[exodus]

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The day Woodson lets Horford, Smith, etc. foul out rather than hide them on the bench will be a good day for me.

I am hoping there aren't many days, good or bad, left in Woody's tenure here. I have given up waiting for him to show he is anything but incompetent.

I didn't even dog him before this season like so many here did. I feel like i gave him the benefit of the doubt but this year he has proven to me that he isn't a competent head coach.

[jhay610]

I think we all know Smooth does not have to score to be effective. And who played well in the 1st anyway? Everyone was feeling their way around their first exposure to big-time ball (except for Bibby and Joe)

He had several blocks and was doing a good job of challenging guys at the rim. I can think of 4 points off the top that he saved, including a pretty impressive block where a guy had a wide open dunk.

He needs to be out there because of how thin the bench is. It's not like Woody pulls a player when they aren't performing anyway (exhibit A, Mike Bibby). Who would you rather see get his minutes? Go Horf at 4 and Zaza at 5?

U just have to let him go and hope he plays big because that is the only shot you have at staying in the game.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

I think those are a bunch of BS. The 2 foul rule only applies to the 1st quarter... not the 1st half... Woody must have got those two words mixed up in his coaching studies. You never see one of the top 3 players on the team staying on the bench with 2 fouls in the whole 2nd quarter.

[AHF]

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How about 4? Jeff Van Gundy, Hubie Brown, Mike Fratello, Jerry Sloan. Most of the coaches I have heard mentioning this say that it's about knowing your individual players and I would say that Woody knows Josh Smith tends to pick up fouls in pairs too often (like he did in the 4th quarter) and knows he can't leave him out there like that.

That is news to me. I have never seen anyone do it, especially with a team as thin as ours.

I have not done any kind of exhaustive research on this but the first regular season Jazz game I clicked on had Deron Williams picking up his second foul in the second quarter and continuing to play until he picked up his third foul so it must not be as strict a rule for Jerry Sloan as it is for Woody.

http://www.sportsline.com/nba/gamecenter/p...0080328_LAC@UTA

In the playoff game, Sloan also kept playing Millsap and Okur so they picked up their fourth fouls in the 3rd quarter. (I don't have the link handy but it is easy to find).

[Packfill]

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As Magic said last night, other than that 1 play where he blocked it and then took it coast to coast Smith disappeared last night. He played 11 minutes in the 1st quarter and I think he had 2 points. He had a couple of blocks but we were still losing. I agree that he needs to be out there but it's not like he was having a great game and Woody forgot about him.

Maybe you didn't notice, but the whole team disappeared last night with the exception of Horford and Childress. Marvin was invisible. Bibby would have been better off being invisible because it was painfull to watch him laying bricks and looking like the slowest least athletic player on the floor (despite playing opposite a 40 year old point guard). JJ never got it going either.

[Admin]

I never said the rest of the team played well. I was referring strictly to Smith being out of the game and how he played. Nobody other than Horford and Childress played well. JJ was decent, Bibby was pitiful, Marvin was good defensively but awful offensively.

[exodus]

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How about 4? Jeff Van Gundy, Hubie Brown, Mike Fratello, Jerry Sloan. Most of the coaches I have heard mentioning this say that it's about knowing your individual players and I would say that Woody knows Josh Smith tends to pick up fouls in pairs too often (like he did in the 4th quarter) and knows he can't leave him out there like that.

That is news to me. I have never seen anyone do it, especially with a team as thin as ours.

I have not done any kind of exhaustive research on this but the first regular season Jazz game I clicked on had Deron Williams picking up his second foul in the second quarter and continuing to play until he picked up his third foul so it must not be as strict a rule for Jerry Sloan as it is for Woody.

http://www.sportsline.com/nba/gamecenter/p...0080328_LAC@UTA

In the playoff game, Sloan also kept playing Millsap and Okur so they picked up their fourth fouls in the 3rd quarter. (I don't have the link handy but it is easy to find).

It would be easy but time consuming to go through the play by play of this years games to see what his policy is, but i won't bother. I am not buying that any other coaches have Woody's 2 foul rule.

[Admin]

Yeah, why should you buy it? Woody is so inventive that he is the 1st coach ever to employ that strategy. Woody the innovator. That's the Woody that we all know.

[exodus]

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Yeah, why should you buy it? Woody is so inventive that he is the 1st coach ever to employ that strategy. Woody the innovator. That's the Woody that we all know.

I have never heard of any coach doing that. And i could easily check on the play by play on Sloan when i get time. Like AHF mentioned he seemed to have no problem leaving his best players in the game with foul trouble.

The other 3 coaches are conveniently not coaching any more, which means there is one active coach that allegedly employs the Woody Rule. That means you have one example, not 4 as you claimed since my question was present tense.

[Admin]

Oh I'm sorry statman that I didnt' realize you wanted stats to prove it. I'm guessing you don't pay attention to the games that Van Gundy calls because he has mentioned it no less than 5 times in the past 2 months.

[exodus]

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Oh I'm sorry statman that I didnt' realize you wanted stats to prove it. I'm guessing you don't pay attention to the games that Van Gundy calls because he has mentioned it no less than 5 times in the past 2 months.

I asked for the name of one coach that employs (present tense) the Woody Rule. You named one (not 4), Jerry Sloan.

4/14 against Houston. Boozer picks up 2nd foul with 3:53 left in the 1st quarter and comes out. He comes back in at the start of the 2nd quarter and plays almost the entire quarter.

http://www.nba.com/games/20080414/HOUUTA/playbyplay.html

4/12 against the Nuggets. Deron picks up his second foul with 4:35 left in the 1st quarter and comes out. he comes back in with 9:57 left in the 2nd quarter and played until the 1 minute mark where he picked up his 3rd.

http://www.nba.com/games/20080412/DENUTA/playbyplay.html

3/20 against the Lakers. Boozer picks up his second with 1 minute left in the 3rd quarter. He comes back in with 6:24 left in the half and plays the rest of the half.

http://www.nba.com/games/20080320/LALUTA/playbyplay.html

Looks to me like Sloan isn't familiar with the Woody Rule. Therefore you still haven't named a coach who uses the Woody rule.

[Admin]

Okay well wait right here while I spend my free time pouring over stats to prove something to you that I already know to be true.

Don't go anywhere, I'm sure I'll be right back with stats to back this up.

[exodus]

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Okay well wait right here while I spend my free time pouring over stats to prove something to you that I already know to be true.

Don't go anywhere, I'm sure I'll be right back with stats to back this up.

Do you know what a stat is? The only stat i used is the number of fouls which is hardly open to interpretation.

Your argument got clowned, simple as that.

It is pretty funny that you claim that you know something to be true after it has been proven otherwise. it is also funny about how you can't seem to distinguish between past and present tense.

Next thing you will be telling me the sky is green and the sun sets in the east.

[yardbird]

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Okay well wait right here while I spend my free time pouring over stats to prove something to you that I already know to be true.

Don't go anywhere, I'm sure I'll be right back with stats to back this up.

Do you know what a stat is? The only stat i used is the number of fouls which is hardly open to interpretation.

Your argument got clowned, simple as that.

It is pretty funny that you claim that you know something to be true after it has been proven otherwise. it is also funny about how you can't seem to distinguish between past and present tense.

Next thing you will be telling me the sky is green and the sun sets in the east.

My opinion, it was conceivably a good strategy. Smooth tends to play pretty reckless, even at his best. That can lead to a lot of fouls quickly, two or three in a short period of time. We've seen it happen with him before, and so has Woody. Since the team kept the score close in the 2nd without Smooth (someone earlier quoted we went from 6 down to 9 down over the entire time he was out), if we had, as a team, been able to generate a 3rd quarter run, Smooth could play pretty aggressively without worrying about picking up a 4th foul in the 3rd (assuming he could not play the 2nd without an additional foul, a sound assumption I think).

If we were competitive enough to steal a game in Boston, it would be a close game, perhaps an OT game, and we would have needed JS defense late in the game. Saving those fouls for late would have been brilliant, if we had been in the game late, and we didn't fall out of the game in the 2nd with Smooth out, we fell out in the 3rd, with Smooth in with a workable foul count.

I know those who hate Woody will attack this post, and that's fine. But attack the logic, rather than the knee-jerk response that b/c Woody did it, it has to be wrong, please.

[exodus]

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My opinion, it was conceivably a good strategy. Smooth tends to play pretty reckless, even at his best.

This line of thinking assumes and actual thought process behind Woody's decisions. The history shows no thought process exists.

Horford has been the primary victim of Woody's 2 foul rule this season. he has fouled out of one game all year, and he played 46 minutes in that game.

I remember seeing Horford picking up his 5th foul with 5 minutes left in the game so Woody immediately pulls him. Why? What is he saving Horford for?

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If we were competitive enough to steal a game in Boston, it would be a close game, perhaps an OT game, and we would have needed JS defense late in the game. Saving those fouls for late would have been brilliant,

if we had been in the game late

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The only way the Hawks have a chance to be in the game late is to have the best players on the floor for most of the game. It doesn't matter if Smith is in foul trouble late in the game if we are down 20.

[AHF]

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The only way the Hawks have a chance to be in the game late is to have the best players on the floor for most of the game. It doesn't matter if Smith is in foul trouble late in the game if we are down 20.

This is my biggest issue here. There is no way the Hawks are competitive in this series without getting 35 minutes from Josh Smith.

23 minutes and change is not going to cut it. Holding him out trying to keep him pristene and free from any foul difficulties is like holding half of the necessary yeast out of bread dough and saying, "this will be brilliant if the bread will just rise without the yeast."

We aren't winning without major minutes from JJ, Horford and Josh Smith, IMO. I'd rather see them foul out and have a chance to play the necessary minutes than be "saved" from foul trouble and not even play half the game.

[exodus]

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We aren't winning without major minutes from JJ, Horford and Josh Smith, IMO. I'd rather see them foul out and have a chance to play the necessary minutes than be "saved" from foul trouble and not even play half the game.

Exactly, but that kind of logic seems lost on Woody.

In tonights game Boozer picked up his 3rd foul with 3:30 left in the first half. Looks like Sloan isn't aware of the woody rule.

[AtLaS]

I agree completely. Plus Smith was playing pretty well when he got pulled.

On a side note, I really hope him and West shave those mohawks though, they just look dumb.

[jhay610]

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This line of thinking assumes and actual thought process behind Woody's decisions. The history shows no thought process exists.

Exactly. This has been Woody's practice since day one regardless of score and situation. Woody did not sit over there and come up with this decision by hashing out the pros and cons on the fly over there on the sidelines. No, he decided one day last summer as he was sitting on the porch and devising brilliant new strategies that would display his coaching genius that this was the way to go, and he has prematurely pulled our big-ticket players at every opportunity all year.

To suggest that the Hawks can remain even remotely competitive w/o their best players on the floor for as much of the game as possible is just wishful thinking. We are just not good/deep enough for that to happen, especially not against a great team like Boston.