hawks beat magic

[cyman3]

-most important stat...

Tracy McGrady- 29 min, 2-12 shooting, 8 points.

i know its just preseason... but [censored], who guarded him? Diaw? did an AWESOME JOB.

-2nd biggest stat

We shot 52.2%, Orlando shot 37.0%... are we playing defense now?

-3rd biggest stat

We have 20 turnovers, Magic has 18... similar... thats all that matters.

-Hawks player of the game

SHAREEF ABDUR-RAHIM

20 points, 8-11 shooting, 7 rebounds, 2 blocks in little less than 3 quarters....

OTHERS

Ratliff and Mohammed are rebounding well with 7 and 8 rebounds in 19 and 25 minutes.

Diaw had 8 rebounds + 3 steals but 5 turnovers

Jason "nobody thinks im a point" Terry had only 1 turnover and 9 assist...

[Traceman]

we might be okay. On a night when JT has 9 assists and 1 TO and Jackson has ZERO TOs, we STILL find a way to turn it over 20 times! I guess the other guys felt like they had to pick up the slack! Seriously though, if JT and Jax can continue to keep their TOs down, I think that would be great. JV is not great but he's not going to turn it over 5 times on most nights. I doubt that Diaw will either.

[cyman3]

i still dont understand how the other team manages to take more shot attempts than us?

why is that possible? it seems like EVERY GAME, the other team gets more shot attempts...

doesnt matter if we have lower TOs, more rebounds... the other team gets more shot attempts...

will someone please explain?

[pathway23]

I think we actually had the same number of shot attempts tonight. And overall, we have shot the ball slightly more times than our opponents through the preseason. 3 more times to be exact. It happens because we allow our opponents to get more offensive rebounds than we get, we turn the ball over more than our opponents. The latter has been the main problem, our offensive rebounding has actually been pretty good with Nazr especially....Reef has gotten a few too.

[Boondocks]

yup, Offensive rebounding, to's and steals. Fouls could be an indication as well although less, you know opponent's basket and the foul.

[Inside_Man]

"i still dont understand how the other team manages to take more shot attempts than us? "

I saw the game on directv - thanks to whomever said it was going to be on. We're taking better shots, hence less misses and fewer attempts. We'd have more shot attempts if our FG% was lower. Not sure we want that.

What I saw last night was a team that moves the ball up the floor quickly. They got a lot of easy baskets with heads-up passing down the floor. Lenny Ball is finally dead. Getting Lenny out of Atlanta wasn't enough, he had to get out of the league all together.

It looks like we can be a fast team with rebounding skills, that's a good combination. We're also playing some team defense, with good man-to-man on the perimeter and a collapse when the other team tried to go inside. Of course that will be harder with teams that pass well or have a huge guy inside - the Magic had neither.

The three potential upside surprises on this team are Nazr, Dion and Terry Stotts.

[swolehawk2]

Dion was guarding T-Mac initially. Seems like we have gotten away from coming up the floor throwing the ball to SAR and standing and watching.

Diaw keeps getting called for palming..but he is really athletic and knows the game. He can take it to the rack also.

JT seems so calm now...

I still don't think we are where we need to be defensively.

When JT and SAR sit at the same time...it will be interesting to see who can get buckets consistently.

[beav]

same here.... I wasn't able to catch the whole thing, but a bit more than half...

I liked what I saw of Hansen... solid defense, a lot of hustle and I saw him sink at least one nice jumper...

It seemed weird to see CC running around out there... I just keep waiting to see him limping off the court straight to the IR again...

[jeddelong]

Does anybody know if palming is allowed in the international game? He did it constantly when he was with the team for summer league in Boston.

[jjjohns3]

he had 2 or 3 of them,but that's just him getting used to the NBA officials. He's learning what they will won't let him do.

~Peace

[cyman3]

palming the ball? ala Jordan style?

thats illegal in NBA?

[Weez]

Refs are also known for calling things certain things on Rooks much tighter during the preseason, just to get a feel for how they'll react and handle the situation...if those were most of Diaw's to's, I can deal with it for now.

I've said before that one thing I like about Theo playing C with the rest of the squad is his mobility and ability to run the floor, something I'm not certain (just dont know) if Nazr can do as well. Theoretically, we could be a pretty athletic, up and down team with vets...if we can run those breaks...