+/- On last year's win total

[jhay610]

The Hawks were also the healthiest team in the NBA last year. They'd be very fortunate to have a run like that again.

On the FAs mentioned by the OP and the possible use of the MLE, I would love to see it but the dominoes are really starting to fall and it looks like the Hawks are going to miss out on any signings of consequence. Will hold out hope though.

Regardless of what happens in the regular season, it will not change my view of Woodson's tenure. He had carried the Hawks as far as he could and it was time for him to go after that Orlando series.

[Atlantaholic]

Woodson got career years out of Joe, Crawford, Horford, and Josh last season. The Hawks had a top 5 offense in the league. Whatever he was doing got good results. THe team would too often settle for long 2 point jumpers instead of taking the ball inside to draw contact and in the end it killed them but its pretty ridiculous to discout the production that Woodson got out of the team.

We were the healthiest team in the NBA playing in a fairly weak conference. Tough to count on us being completely healthy the entire season AND also tough to count Jamal duplicating last years quality of play seeing as how it was by far and away his best year of his 10+ year career. Whatever happens, and whatever seed we secure, I'm fairly sure we will play better in the playoffs (89 ppg -8 point differential the last three seasons under Woodson), since virtually no perennial playoff team has played worse than us.

Anyway, I don't think coaches make a huge difference during the season anyway. With the amount of opponents you see in a single week game-planning is pretty streamlined. Everyone knows the playoffs is where coaching matters... Woodsons kindergarten approach to both offense and defensive game-planning has been an unbearable embarrassment that we will thankfully no longer have to put up with.

I'm also sure everyone would be a lot more confident if our head coach had, you know, some head coaching experience. As bad as Woodson was Larry Drew is complete question mark. He could be a disaster, an improvement, or more of the same... who knows?

[Vol4ever]

Where are all the people that thought Woodson was the worst coach in history and the hawks woudl be dramatically better with any other coach?

Spot on X2

[Vol4ever]

44 wins next season.

[AHF]

For those who think Woodson was the reason for the team's success, we can see how quickly another team snatches up this elite coaching talent and then how he succeeds.

[xhawk]

Last year, we won a 7 game series against arguably the weakest playoff team in the last decade. The Bucks started Kurt Thomas, Carlos Delfino and Luc Mbah a Moute along with a backcourt that shot 40.8% FG/29%3pt and 40.4%FG/17%3pt and their primary reserves were mid-season free agent and 35 year old Stackhouse and 2005 NBA Draft Second Round Pick Ersan Ilysova (who had 66 games under his belt coming into this season).

If we run into that team again this season and don't run over them like a Mack Truck, I will be very, very disappointed with Drew.

This is why the Hawks are so difficult to predict. The Bucks team we played in the playoffs was a bad team. Due to injuries, they were less talented than pretty much every team in the league. So much of how the Hawks do is dependent on where their minds and hearts are at.

[tremor]

I don't care about the number of wins as long as Hawks preserve 7th seed or better. I want Drew to prepare the team for off season, experiment, find out to exploit weaknesses of other teams through match ups, give young players some room for errors, less minutes for JJ (and I want to see him as finisher - 21/4/4 season is fine for me), I want to develop Al as 2nd scoring option and see him getting some PT at 4.

[GST]

A lot of "ifs". New coach, new offense, new PG. If it all works out, it will take some time to do so. I am thinking .500, but it could break hard either way.

[frosgrim]

I think we're still a 50 win team +/- 2 games. I see people saying we've regressed in the east. Not sure that is true.

Miami is much better. I'm surprised at why they're getting in terms of vets.

Chicago is probably better. But I think the hawks are better than them

Orlando is Orlando. Very good and better than us

Teams that probably will regress:

Boston- age will catch them more than last year

Cleveland- huge drop- prolly lotto team

Toronto

Rest of the east really hasn't changed. So 5-3 seed is prolly where will end up. Was wanting more, but that is what i see