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Excited about being an underdog.

Diesel

By Diesel
in Homecourt

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Diesel Grand Master

Diesel

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Before I start in, I have to say that in a perfect world, we get one more vet post player.

However, I'm excited to be an underdog. In fact, I hope that people rate us as the 5th or 6th or 7th best in the East. However, I think that there's some good moves and some things that people have forgotten about our team last year.

First of all. We had lots of injuries last season.

Smoove missed 13 games and probably was injured for more than that.

Horf missed 15 games and the crucial playoffs series he was hurt.

Marvin missed 21 games.

The thing is that those are all frontcourt players. When you are as thin as we were, to lose a key frontcourt player means a lot.

Second, we picked up Crawford.

I get that some of you don't respect Crawford. However, Crawford is going to prove to be the sweetest deal we have made. Dude has been a 20/5 player over the last 2 years. He can shoot. He leads the league in 4 point plays over the last 5 years. He also have 3 50 point games to his credit. People think that that means that he's a ball hog. NO. He's not a ball hog. He's a scorer. He's a scorer the magnitude that we haven't seen in a while. When you talk about guys who can score 50. Joe has never done it. There are some guys who can do it 1 time. However, Crawford has done it thrice and he did it three different ways. He has a variety of moves that he uses to score with... but most of all is that he has never been on a winning team with guys who can score. We have a serious player in Craw.

Third, we drafted Teague.

What can be said of Teague. Teague is fast. Teague is smart. Teague is aggressive. I think Teague will take over for Bibby if not by March then definitely starting next season. He has a quality about him that you don't see in a lot of players. He has a star's mentality. People talked about Lawson and Lawson may turn out to be special too, but I can't see Lawson being better than Teague on this level. Once Teague starts playing, I think we will have a long awaited answer for PG.

It's true that we will have to face many big guys in this conference. However, I think when you mix speed, scoring, and defense... we have something that a lot of teams can't stop.

I think it's important that we get somebody who can defend bigs. Ben Wallace is an obvious choice, but his ability lied in his athleticism. There's still time to sort it all out.

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Diesel Grand Master

Diesel

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"He can shoot"

That's not what the numbers say. He is a career 40% shooter. Craw is basically a poor man's AI.

Interestingly, he and JJ came out in the same draft.

Joe has played in and started in more games than Craw.

However, in NBA all time three pointers made list:

Craw = #50.

Joe = #67.

Al Harrington = #140.

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MaceCase Grand Master

MaceCase

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Interestingly, he and JJ came out in the same draft.

Joe has played in and started in more games than Craw.

However, in NBA all time three pointers made list:

Craw = #50.

Joe = #67.

Al Harrington = #140.

Interesting but where does he rank in all time three pointers attempted list?

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xhawk Newbie

xhawk

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"He can shoot"

That's not what the numbers say. He is a career 40% shooter. Craw is basically a poor man's AI.

Lets look at the whole picture for his shooting:

Last year he ranked 14th in Free throw percentage (.872) and 10th in Minutes per Game (38.1). The free throw percentage is usually a good indicator of a good shooter. And I say that his shooting percentage suffers because of all the minutes he plays. His minutes will go down and I suspect that his shooting percentage will go up because of it. Next, averaging between 4 and 5 assists per game, he has always been the best distributor on his teams (except for a partial year with Duhon in NY). For the Hawks, he will be the third best distributor on the team. In other words, he won't have to create his own shot all the time and he will have people who can get him the ball in the right places and situations.

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Plainview1981 Mentor

Plainview1981

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Lets look at the whole picture for his shooting:

Last year he ranked 14th in Free throw percentage (.872) and 10th in Minutes per Game (38.1). The free throw percentage is usually a good indicator of a good shooter. And I say that his shooting percentage suffers because of all the minutes he plays. His minutes will go down and I suspect that his shooting percentage will go up because of it. Next, averaging between 4 and 5 assists per game, he has always been the best distributor on his teams (except for a partial year with Duhon in NY). For the Hawks, he will be the third best distributor on the team. In other words, he won't have to create his own shot all the time and he will have people who can get him the ball in the right places and situations.

Free throw percentage is nice, but I prefer to see guys shoot a higher percentage when there is an actual defense they're being guarded. If he was good shooter, he would have such poor career shoot percentages. The guy has never shot better than 41% over the course of a full season. Were talking about 8 seasons here. In a "system" that encourages players to take a lot of low percentage jumpers, I don't see his percentage going up all that much.

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Gray Mule Grand Master

Gray Mule

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Agreed. Shooting % depends a lot on two or three things.

Who's guarding him.

Where he's shooting from.

How critical the shot is to the outcome of the game.

Free throw shooting %. Everyone here knows how I feel about this.

If a guy is being paid big $$$ to play this game, he should be able to hit

a reasonable % of his free throws. If he can't, he had better be extra good

at something else.

I agree that we're expected to fall lower this season than we were last year.

Whether we do or not depends on the health of the players we already have

and who we sign to fill out the empty spots on the roster.

Hawks are good. Not great. Not yet, any way. But, we're gaining on

that. On any given night, against any team in the NBA, provided we're

healthy, I gotta like our chances - - - Right now - - With the players we

already have. And, as players are added, our chances should improve.

:newspaper:

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