Official Game Thread: Bucks at Hawks

[lethalweapon3 17,368]

What were you raised by, a Wolf Pack?

 

Nevada’s men’s basketball team had one of its best college basketball seasons in 2018. Guided by former Hawks assistant coach Eric Musselman, the Wolf Pack entered March Madness as a #7 seed, then upset a #2 seed to reach the NCAA Sweet Sixteen for just the second time in the program’s history.

It took a fantastic game by an even bigger Cinderella, #11-seeded Loyola Chicago, at Atlanta’s Philips Arena to keep Nevada from reaching the Elite Eight for the first time ever. Who knows how much further the Pack might have advanced that year if they had one of their star players, Musselman’s first successful high school recruit, available?

Lindsey Drew tore an Achilles on Valentine’s Day of that season, just days after the junior scored his career-high with 17 points. Rather than redshirt in 2018-19, Lindsey attempted a comeback. But just weeks after being cleared for contact, in December he suffered a debilitating hip injury that would require double surgery and many months of extensive rehab.

As was the case with a recent championship-winning quarterback in Alabama, it’s believed that Lindsey’s hip damage occurred as a result of his body compensating for the lower-leg injury. The junior guard would miss many more months, and the status of his future playing career was in jeopardy.

“This just in,” reported the Reno Gazette-Journal just nine days ago, “from the ‘Are You Sitting Down?’ department.” Lindsey Drew was named the Mountain West Conference Player of the Week.

His first game back in action since that unfortunate February 2018 day, the 100^th game of his collegiate career with the Pack, the fifth-year senior scored 30 points, including five three-pointers, plus 8 assists and 6 rebounds as Nevada nearly upended Pac-12 power Utah. According to Nevada SportsNet, only 15 players in this decade have put up those boxscore numbers, and only Drew did so without turning the ball over once.

New Pack coach Steve Alford could not believe this turn in fortune. His team’s expected scoring leader had exited with a foot injury just eight minutes into the season-opener against the Fightin’ Utes. Yet there was Lindsey Drew, stepping up and showing out before a stunned home crowd. “He was special tonight,” Alford noted afterwards. “That was incredible to see.”

If Lindsey didn’t already know a thing or two about perseverance, he could always count on his father for guidance. Larry Drew was a head coach for several NBA clubs, including two teams tipping off shortly at State Farm Arena, the Atlanta Hawks and the Milwaukee Bucks (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports Wisconsin).

I wonder if Coach Drew will be watching from afar, and whether the 61-year-old, recently inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, has retired as a coach, after some odd circumstances in both Atlanta and Milwaukee set into motion the situations these two NBA teams find themselves in today.

On a summer day in 2014, the Milwaukee Public Market was jammed with excited onlookers. Aside from maybe a shopper who came across a great deal on smoked gouda, you couldn’t find a person in the building beaming with an ear-to-ear smile wider than Larry Drew.

A tumultuous few years – left to salvage a floundering playoff-caliber roster he didn’t help build in the aftermath of his boss Mike Woodson’s ouster, banished as a lame duck from Atlanta so the new GM could hire his good friend Mike Budenholzer, clinging to a new head coaching gig with a 15-67 Bucks team whose best hope for the future was an upcoming Lottery pick and a 19-year-old rookie from Greece – were finally coming to an end.

Not to mention Larry’s youngest son, Lindsey, drawing D-1 attention as a high school senior in LA, following the path of the kid’s big brothers, UCLA star Larry Drew II and Cal State Northridge star Landon. Things were finally looking up.

Assured by management he would get to build a club from the ground up, the elder Larry watched from upstairs as the Lottery prize of a season-long tank job made his grand entrance, lined by adoring fans, into the Market. “WELCOME TO MILWAUKEE, JABARI PARKER,” the banner read from the rafter. “Jabari Parker welcomed the idea to be a Milwaukee Buck,” GM John Hammond announced, leading to uproarious applause by the fans below for the #2 overall Draft pick of 2014, whose rival Chicago nativism was not lost on them.

Drew, referencing his time as a Lakers assistant coach when Kobe Bryant was a rookie, noted to media that day the similarity in how Parker “gave him goose bumps” as he watched Parker’s pre-draft workouts. “We have a piece that we’re sure is going to take us to another level. Any time you go through a rebuilding phase, it’s important to get the right pieces.” Indeed.

The plan was to construct a championship contender over the course of five years, with Drew and Parker leading the way. The plan might expedite to three seasons, if the stringy first-round rookie Euro-prospect that Drew recommended to Hammond in the prior year’s draft developed quickly.

A half decade later, the plan seemed to work. Only, Parker would be nowhere around to see it realized. Neither would Drew, who gets to instead watch Budenholzer win Coach of the Year honors while playing the role of Doctor Frankenstein with the league’s reigning MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo (30.3 PPG, 14.0 RPG, 6.2 APG; NBA leader in WS/48, BPM, VORP, PER; would-be 1^st in PIE if Paul George hadn’t played the Hawks on Saturday).

Within six days of that joyous occasion at 2014’s post-Draft celebration, the new Bucks owners made themselves clear -- they felt Larry was not going to be a rebuilding piece. Neither, for that matter, were two second-round picks, which Hammond shipped to Brooklyn to relieve the Nets of their shady relationship with coach Jason Kidd, coincidentally a buddy of one of the owners.

Drew had done just fine in Atlanta, where his Hawks never advanced far but also wasn’t getting embarrassingly swept in the postseasons any longer. Larry also did just fine while task-mastering the tank phase in Milwaukee and, for that matter, Cleveland, where he stepped in once more as interim after T-Lue’s Cavs stumbled to 0-6 to start last season. There was just always that Friend of the Boss, someone who the bosses always felt could do much better. Either that, or an old college coach somewhere.

Arriving from Duke, Parker became the 2014-15 season’s first Rookie of the Month. But he suffered a major ACL injury that short-circuited his development until the following season in Milwaukee, as Kidd became enamored with the idea of Point Giannis. Jabari’s struggles to develop as a defender or a shooter with range (things that maybe Drew, and not the dismissive Kidd, would have helped improve from the outset) caused fans’ and management’s lofty hopes to wane fast.

In January 2017, Jabari was showing signs of a full recovery, nearly logging a triple-double against Coach Bud’s Hawks, perhaps his best all-around game since establishing career-highs of 28 points and 13 boards versus Atlanta the season before. But a month later, a second ACL tear in the same knee was found, and he would sit out nearly a full calendar year, by which time Kidd was gone, and a filled-out Giannis’ rise as the team’s superstar forward meant Parker was simply biding his time in America’s Dairyland until free agency.

Parker’s next trip into free agency is looking much more promising, thanks to the work he is putting in with Atlanta. His floor time against his old team will be monitored due to a sore shoulder, which is understandable. After logging in 32.5 MPG in his first six games in relief of the suspended John Collins, averaging 22.2 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 1.5 SPG and 1.0 BPG, Jabari looked like he needed a spell during the two-game washout weekend at Staples Center (11.0 PPG, 35.7 FG% in last two games). A few days off for all Hawks to lick their wounds will certainly help.

Defensively, this game against Milwaukee (9.0 Net Rating, 2^nd in NBA) approaches similarly for short-staffed Atlanta (4-9), in their return to The Farm, as it did in Sunday’s 122-101 loss in LeBrongeles (9.1 Net rating, 1^st in NBA; thanks, Hawks). One gravity-drawing gravity defier, this time in Antetokounmpo (15.9 2FGAs and 12.3 FTAs per game), and a rotisserie of perimeter shooters with less bite than bark.

The top-seven Bucks in playing time all sink at least one three per game. However, Khris Middleton will remain sidelined with a thigh contusion, and the next three minute-loggers in Coach Bud’s starting lineup shoot below 32 percent from three-point distance, even center Brook Lopez (26.0 3FG% in past ten games).

Second-year guard Donte DiVincenzo has stepped up in Middleton’s absence, shooting 42.4 3FG% on the season while leading all NBA players (min. 15 MPG) in D-Rating. But to this point, Bud has been reluctant to field more than one of his more accurate shooters (DiVincenzo, George Hill, Kyle Korver and/or Sterling Brown) on the floor at the same time with Giannis, limiting Milwaukee’s effectiveness in spreading the floor for their star.

For the Hawks, keeping Antetokounmpo from building a head of steam toward the paint, be it in halfcourt or on the break, remains a defensive objective, as it is for guard Eric Bledsoe. If swingmen rooks De’Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish are sound in coercing the Bucks’ active lead scorers to move laterally and settle for passes and contested mid-range shots, the Hawks’ bigs will be able to stay home and secure the defensive rebounds (NBA-worst 69.8 D-Reb%), something that’s not typically a tall order against Bud-coached teams like Milwaukee (NBA-low 22.1 O-Reb%) anyway.

Now that Larry Drew has more free time on his hands, I wonder how much attention he will give to tonight’s Hawks-Bucks game on League Pass, perhaps watching a couple players who could have been his stars facing off, in the place that was his NBA home for many years. More likely, I’m betting he’s saving up his energies for this weekend's Nevada-Fordham game.

 

Let’s Go Peachtree. Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[NBASupes 9,794]

Larry costed us Giannis. F him forever but I wish his kids and family the best. Good guy but he f***ed us on the Basketball operations side. I blame Ferry

[JayBirdHawk 8,687]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JayBirdHawk 8,687]

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[Dnice 1,672]

I hope they are feeling peachy around 10:30...

For the locals, tech vs uga as an alternate on sec+

[Lurker 2,062]

What's the story of the court design? I liked the city uniforms that I saw but this design just looks totally off.

Edited November 21 by Lurker

[Dnice 1,672]

Another poor start, nothing different. 

[terrell 1,574]

Lazy pass from Cam.

[TheNorthCydeRises 8,441]

Cam coming out strong offensively.

[Vol4ever 1,738]

Nice jam Jabari

[TheNorthCydeRises 8,441]

Bud looking like a college professor, with that gray in his beard.

Both rookies on tonight!

[terrell 1,574]

Rooks showing up..

[Bonkers 809]

Rookies looking confident!!!

[PSSSHHHRRR87 5,513]

Bud’s red in the face... already drunk.

[NBASupes 9,794]

The rookies!

[bleachkit 1,832]

Cam hit a side step three. Well I'll be damned.

[NBASupes 9,794]

Just now, bleachkit said:

Cam hit a side step three. Well I'll be damned.

H

E

V

 

[terrell 1,574]

Bembry time. smh

[Bonkers 809]

This lineup...

 

Another LP special smh

[TheNorthCydeRises 8,441]

20 minutes ago, Lurker said:

What's the story of the court design? I liked the city uniforms that I saw but this design just looks totally off.

I agree.  The jerseys are nice.  The court is awful.