Official Game Thread: Spurs at Hawks

[lethalweapon3]

** leaves the Junkyard once… **

 

Spurs East, Baby!

Remember, as an Atlanta Hawks fan, when that used to mean something? Way, way back, around five years ago?

We didn’t have a Tim Duncan. But, for what it was worth, we did have an Al Horford to throw out there! Not a Tony Parker on the roster, really. But Jeff Teague was no small potatoes au gratin, either! No Gregg Popovich, no. But we got The Man Sitting Next To The Man in the head coach chair, summoned here by his boss-pal, a guy that played for the both of them back in the day. So, there’s that.

You could lump a Thabo, a Baze, and a Dennis together, and make a Manu Lite. We’ll take your Marco Belinelli and raise you one Kyle Korver, thank you very much. Tiago, Moose, Pero, Bonner… it’s a wash.

We didn’t have a Kawhi Leonard. But for a lockdown defender that dogs out opposing wing stars while rounding out the rest of his game, you could have done a LOT worse than DeMarre Carroll.

No matter what players and staff you bring in to replicate, duplicate, and approximate the successes the San Antonio Spurs have enjoyed for decades under Popovich’s watchful eyes, there is one thing NBA competitors like the Hawks have yet to reproduce and sustain. Something that, from ownership down to the G-Leaguers, reasonably resembles The Spurs Way.

The Spurs (4-2) enter State Farm Arena with a Spurs East alumnus, Carroll, now suiting up for them in his return to playing in the rough-and-tumble NBA West. Coming off a winning homestand and just a pair of losses to LA clubs, they’ll face an Atlanta Hawks team (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL) that suddenly has a lot more to worry about than whether Popovich will unshackle Carroll from his light workload this far this season.

The eleven-year NBA veteran arrived as part of a deal the Spurs would come to regret, not due at all to Carroll. The Spurs had to part with Davis Bertans, this past summer, to make room for free agent Marcus Morris, and swung a three-team deal with the Junkyard Dawg’s last team, the Nets, and the Wizards to make that happen. Only then do they find out that they’ve been Spur-ned by Morris, who reneged on his agreement to sign a better deal with New York.

This is the sort of “misfortune” San Antonio occasionally suffers through. Poor things.

No worries, really, because Carroll was eager to enter the season as the team’s new glue guy. But some funny things happened along the way. Trey Lyles, dead in the water after stops in Utah and Denver, wowed the Spurs staff in camp and in preseason, and now he gets a starting spot. With LaMarcus Aldridge happy to play the 5-spot, and DeMar DeRozan plugged in at small forward, Carroll has found himself the victim of a squeeze play.

Even bench minutes at forward have been sopped up by Spurs incumbents, perennial Pop fave Belinelli, and free agent returnee Rudy Gay. The fifth highest-salaried Spur, Carroll was DNP’d, without injury, by Popovich for the team’s first four games, and was granted just 22 minutes of action in the past two games.

With other franchises, you’d have a player like Carroll openly moping about playing time, leaving subtle jabs on his social media pages until he gets his way. Not so here, where everyone buys into The Spurs Way, which is essentially Coach Pop’s Way, not everybody pulling in different directions doing their own thing. Popovich is a master collaborator, making everyone associated with him feel involved and heard. So when he makes decisions, on who to play and who to DNP-OLD, there is no questioning him. Unless you’re, like, Kawhi or somebody.

“He’s healthy,” Pop explained of DMC before the Spurs fell to the Lakers, 103-96, on Sunday. He added that resting guard Dejounte Murray was the reason Carroll even saw minutes in the first place, and that Carroll was “aggressive, did a good job,” in short stints against the remnants of the Warriors, but needs more time to learn San Antonio system. The tried-and-true Spurs Way.

“That’s what I try to show these young guys,” DeMarre told the Express-News recently about what can’t even be called a demotion at this point. “A lot of things you can’t control, and (playing time) is one. All I can control is getting into the gym, working on my game. And when my number is called, perform at the level I know I can perform at.”

There are some whine-and-cheese Spurs fans out there, perhaps those who miss those days when Finals appearances and 60-win seasons were a given, who implore Pop and the Spurs to start blowing this thing up already. After two consecutive first-round exits, they point to Aldridge as not being, I guess, Duncan enough, he and DeRozan leading an elder pack of Spurs Lite into another hope for a postseason foray.

LMA, who now has Duncan on the bench as an assistant, is doing just fine (16.5 PPG, 7.0 RPG, 2.0 BPG). So is DeRozan (20.3 PPG, 4.2 APG), as doing “just fine” is all anyone in Spurs Country should be clamoring for.

Popovich isn’t pressing his defensive hound of a point guard, Murray, into excessive minutes as he returns from his season-sidelining ACL injury from 2018-19. He’s “just fine” leaning on Bryn Forbes and Derrick White, young guards who benefited greatly by glowing up in Murray’s absence last year.

As one would come to expect, the Spurs are a top-five rebounding team (77.4 D-Reb%, 3^rd in NBA) in the early going. It’s the crashing of the offensive boards by San Antonio (27.9 O-Reb%, t-8^th in NBA) that presents immediate challenges for Coach Lloyd Pierce’s Hawks (69.5 D-Reb%). Amid the smolders of Spurs East, coach Pierce was brought in to help GM/PBO Travis Schlenk shift gears, and create a Dubs East of sorts.

Atlanta (2-3) has done things “the right way,” mostly, even despite a three-game swoon and the momentary loss of Trae Young (returning tonight, under a 30-minute cap) to an ankle injury along the way. Pierce’s Hawks have been outscoring their opposition on points off turnovers (+1.4 per-48), on the fastbreak (+2.0; the Spurs’ 19.8 PPG leads the NBA), and in the paint (+9.2).

The biggest defensive bugaboo has involved Atlanta ceding second- and extra-chance scoring opportunities (-2.6 points per-48). Rebounding on the defensive end has been woeful, particularly by the Hawks centers, as Trae Young has been, to date, the team’s second-leading defensive rebounder (4.5 D-Rebs per game) despite being the only member below six-foot-five on the roster. Going down that list behind Trae, you will find Cam Reddish and the De’Andre’s, and Jabari Parker, before you can get to starting five-man Alex Len (2.8 per game).

And now, the uphill battle for the Hawks, against the Spurs and just about everybody else, gets impossibly steep. All because we’ve got John The Pharmacist out here writing his own prescriptions.

I can’t begin to pronounce what it is that John Collins is accused of digesting, or rubbing into his bloodstream, or whatever. All I know is it sure looked like it was working. Despite a dip in some stats while trying to cover for his centers’ and his own men, Collins averaged two blocks and a steal per game while logging a juiced up 17.0 PPG (47.4 3FG%) and 8.8 RPG (6.8 defensive).

It used to be the fellas likely to get popped for PED violations were the elders of the league, trying to find whatever angle they can to keep up with the young bucks. Now it’s the young bucks on small-bucks rookie-scale deals, pressed to be superstars from the outset (Cam.) lest they be judged busts, that have guys like Deandre Ayton and Collins doing the GHRP DERP and getting busted anyway.

Collins and the Hawks will make only the finest chicken salad they can, out of the 25 games he’s slated to miss due to suspension. But it is stuff like this that makes every fan alligator-armed when it comes to embracing the Hawks as a team that has its act together, as one that, to a man, does things “the right way”.

I mean, we have Emory Healthcare – the folks who smacked down Ebola – in our corner. We’ve got Dr. Oz and his little Sharecare thingy, and the P2 fellas helping us out. We’ve got a freaking mystic named Chelsea Lane sitting right there behind the bench. You could have your head lopped off, and Chelsea will be right there to sew you back together, quick, fast in a jiffy. There is literally no need to lose your mind. But you gonna try something your cousin Cletus found out works for him doing deadlifts at Palm Beach Planet Fitness? Okay.

The Hawks will need Len and Bruno Fernando being more active and effective on the defensive boards, and they are likely to wear out Young and Parker until they do. They’re also going to need the Age 26-and-up Club (of Len, Evan Turner, Allen Crabbe, Chandler Parsons, yeah I said Chandler Parsons, and Uncle Vince) to get healthy and play way more meaningful roles than they have to date, until Collins becomes eligible to return right before Christmastime.

It’s really the Spurs, and the NFL Patriots to an extent, that have everybody hooked on The Culture Thing: “The first thing we want to do is establish a culture, blah-blah-blah!”  As for Atlanta’s attempt at building a Culture Club, it comes and goes, it comes, and it goes. We maxed out our run at creating Spurs East, although repeatedly fumbling our chances away had a lot to do with it.

Now that we’ve got a glimpse of what perils await pursuing Dubs East at full throttle, it’s time to create a unique Culture around here, one that makes somebody else want to grow up to become Hawks North, or Hawks West.

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

Game Time is upon us! Welcome back Trae!

[Spud2nique]

Great game thread as usual lw3.

 

9 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

“That’s what I try to show these young guys,” DeMarre told the Express-News recently about what can’t even be called a demotion at this point. “A lot of things you can’t control, and (playing time) is one. All I can control is getting into the gym, working on my game. And when my number is called, perform at the level I know I can perform at.”

I love this guy.

[Spud2nique]

10 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

But you gonna try something your cousin Cletus found out works for him doing deadlifts at Palm Beach Planet Fitness? Okay.

How bout ur cousin Spud ? DM for deadlift tips  

[Spud2nique]

Got my Cam jersey on!  

LETS GO HAWKS!!!!  

[Spud2nique]

Oops I was on the other thread

[JayBirdHawk]

Hunter with sound defense.

[Spud2nique]

Hunter is aiming his shots. Just let it fly don’t think.

[Spud2nique]

Jamie made me hungry  

[Buzzard]

We may surprise some people tonight and steal a win.

[hazer]

For those of us who thought Peo was just Diesel's burner: notice they both disappeared simultaneously?

[hawkman]

Trae is the best passer in the league period.

[JayBirdHawk]

Trae killin 'em wit da passing.

[Spud2nique]

5 minutes ago, hazer said:

For those of us who thought Peo was just Diesel's burner: notice they both disappeared simultaneously?

Yes I actually said that a few years back but they shoved me..well they keep it quiet let’s say  

[Atlantaholic]

2 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

Yes I actually said that a few years back but they shoved me..well they keep it quiet let’s say  

lol... In Peo's profile you can see he has been lurking. Not sure about D-man.

[marco102]

Watching the game n delay.  Nique looking uncomfortable as hell because of the JC incident.

[Spud2nique]

Just now, Atlantaholic said:

lol... In Peo's profile you can see he has been lurking. Not sure about D-man.

Did Diesel show concern for Peo’s absence last week?  

[Spud2nique]

GET IN THERE THO! Damn Bembry almost to close out a weird 1st.

[Dnice]

If they make about 2 jump shots they have a chance .lol... dunks and lay ins racking up.

[JayBirdHawk]

Good 1st quarter!