What are your biggest takeaways from the Preseason???

[Bonkers]

My biggest takeaways are:

-The Team is going to take time to gel(which is no surprise to anybody)

-The defense needs a LOT of work

-The offense needs a LOT of work

-The Hawks need a new Coach. I saw a very poorly coached team out there without an identity. Now I'm not just making this point because of just this Preseason but from what I've seen since LP has gotten to ATL

-I like what I saw from Cam and Hunter. I expect them to keep improving

-We should never have Huerter as our PG under any circumstances

Edited December 20, 2020 by Bonkers

[NBASupes]

They need a lot of work. We need at least 5 more preseason games. That said, the talent is there. The size is there. The versatility is there. This team is just ass.

[JayBirdHawk]

I saw some great things, good things, bad things, horrible things and some wtf things.  Some thing I liked, some things I didn't, some things I hated. All in all - PRESEASON!

The real season starts on Wednesday!

[Peoriabird]

Different personnel...Same problems

[JayBirdHawk]

The one question left to answer before tipoff:  who starts at SG?

[NBASupes]

3 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

The one question left to answer before tipoff:  who starts at SG?

Idk

[mrhonline]

My takeaway?

Preseason happened. Yay.

[ATLHawks3]

Played against two teams that played last week in the bubble, so of course I knew they would struggle a bit at times. The potential is there, but we need to put a strong emphasis on defense if we're trying to win. Everybody has to step up and hold each other accountable. That means you too LP. 

[SerbianHawk]

My takeaway?

We suck big time

[kg01]

Kg takeaways....

1. Team needs time and it was unrealistic to think otherwise.

2. No bubble set us back, significantly so when compared to bubble teams.

3. Whether we went 0-4 or 4-0 the same ol', lame ol' fire-CLP stuff was gonna spew outta the same dudes.

[High5]

Everyone knew it was going to take time for the team to figure things out, but of course we get doom and gloom all the same. Memphis is a good team that played in the bubble. It's no surprise they had way more rhythm and cohesion. If we're still playing like this a month from now then we have problems. 

That said, I was hoping to see more from Trae and JC. There are legit concerns about how Trae will adjust to not having the ball in his hands the entire game and not being able to just shoot himself into a rhythm. And, as feared, JC's fit with Capela hasn't looked promising. But, again, I'm not going to freak out over 4 preseason games after 9 months off. 

[TheTruth]

We need to give this team (players and coaches) some time to gel with all of the changes we've had. Rotations will be fluid at the outset, but we all know Trae @ PG, Collins @ PF and Capela @ C are the only things we know for certain. Everything else may take time to solidify.

There will be moments of inconsistent offensive and defensive brilliance to start out. 

That said, if LP doesn't coach this team up for them to start showing CONSISTENT competence on both ends of the floor by the end of the season, he is far from untouchable and can kick rocks. This team is far too talented on paper with apparent fits to show otherwise.

 

[sturt]

We need one of those Back-to-the-Future DeLoreans... so we can just skip these first 25 games and not have to hear each other on this or any other Hawks board keep repeating either "We knew it was going to take some time," or "I didn't expect them to look this bad. I'm worried."

In lieu of that, I recommend checking with your health insurance and family doctor to see about setting up a planned induced coma.

[NBASupes]

14 minutes ago, TheTruth said:

We need to give this team (players and coaches) some time to gel with all of the changes we've had. Rotations will be fluid at the outset, but we all know Trae @ PG, Collins @ PF and Capela @ C are the only things we know for certain. Everything else may take time to solidify.

There will be moments of inconsistent offensive and defensive brilliance to start out. 

That said, if LP doesn't coach this team up for them to start showing CONSISTENT competence on both ends of the floor by the end of the season, he is far from untouchable and can kick rocks. This team is far too talented on paper with apparent fits to show otherwise.

 

Forget on paper, we seen this team for four games, they are even more talented than the paper says. They just suck together for the talent we have. 

[High5]

2 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Forget on paper, we seen this team for four games, they are even more talented than the paper says. They just suck together for the talent we have. 

Hunter is the only one who played above what the paper said (before tonight). Cam was about as good as expected. Everyone else was clearly below their talent level.  

[NBASupes]

8 minutes ago, High5 said:

Hunter is the only one who played above what the paper said (before tonight). Cam was about as good as expected. Everyone else was clearly below their talent level.  

I felt Bogi had two good games and other two games were shots he would have made if in rhythm. 

Gallo been what we expected 

The paper said Cam and Hunter are shit. So they are obviously much better than on paper. 

Kevin had a similar preseason to last season. Some good, some bad, not good enough. 

Capela looked good this preseason. 

Trae and JC are the only two who clearly played below their talent level. 

 

Do you really believe the others didn't showcase in the preseason? 

[NBASupes]

[NBASupes]

Post from Reddit: 

Quote

This paint-packing defense seems so odd coming from LP. Like, if I understand it correctly, the whole reason his defensive system in Philly was so good was that it relied on having a big man protect the rim, which then freed up everyone else to be more aggressive on the perimeter, forcing opposing ball-handlers to drive and take difficult shots over the long rim protector. "Make them finish over length," was the motto. I assumed that's the whole reason we brought in Capela -- so that we could actually start running LP's Philly defense. But instead it looks like we're doing the opposite, running something more like what Coach Bud does, where everyone collapses into the paint to stop the drive and force a kick-out -- which leads to a ton of open threes.

And I realize our coaching staff isn't dumb, so I'm sure they must have their reasons for doing it. I'm kind of hoping it was just a preseason experiment, like when we tested out a zone defense against Orlando. But I'm open to the possibility that it could actually be the best system for us in the end, once our guys get more comfortable with it and become quicker at figuring out where they need to be. That being said, though, if it is what we're sticking with, it looks like they're still going to have a long way to go before they reach that level of effectiveness with it.

 

[High5]

4 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

I felt Bogi had two good games and other two games were shots he would have made if in rhythm. 

Gallo been what we expected 

The paper said Cam and Hunter are shit. So they are obviously much better than on paper. 

Kevin had a similar preseason to last season. Some good, some bad, not good enough. 

Capela looked good this preseason. 

Trae and JC are the only two who clearly played below their talent level. 

 

Do you really believe the others didn't showcase in the preseason? 

I probably should put Gallo and Capela in the "as expected" category. I let last game affect my opinion of Gallo's performance too much, but that still puts us below overall. I'm talking about our "paper," not outside expectations. We knew Cam and (to a lesser extent) Hunter wouldn't be "shit." Bogi looked lost whenever he was looking for his own offense outside of that 2nd game. Huerter still hasn't shown much improvement from his rookie season. And we agree on Trae and JC. 

I'm just saying, it doesn't make sense to me to say we showed to have even more talent than expected. But I'm also not down on our talent level. I know they can play better. 

[NBASupes]

 

Quote

 

Jared Dudley's Comments on Trae Young (2/24/2020) via Zach Lowe's Podcast

This is somewhat old and may have been posted already, but I thought it was interesting to hear the perspective of a thoughtful/honest NBA player. Jared is a rational player and his observations are what I've been trying to explain to non-believers for a while now.

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[Lowe]: So let's bounce around the league with Jared Dudley because one of the things that people like about you is that you're willing to actually say what you think…

…a weirdly like hot-button topic in the NBA this year has been ‘how good is Trae young really’ and some of the criticisms you hear is ‘he only passes when he knows he's gonna get an assist’, the hockey assist thing is not in his game and I think part of that reason he gets that is that's like a byproduct of the Steph Curry comparison. Because Steph was so selfless and smart about ‘I'm gonna use my shooting to get other people open and I'm gonna give up the ball and go set screens and all my teammates are gonna pop’ and like Trae hasn't really done that. But like, not a lot of people have ever done that like what Steph does so I don't know if it's fair to look at Steph and say ‘well why doesn't Trae play that way?’

[Dudley]: It’s not fair. For one, it's his second year so let's get that perspective. His assists numbers are obviously great but his turnovers is one of the worst in the league. And the reason why is because every time we go into games in Atlanta we want to take him away. Let anyone except for him beat us. Let’s double him on pick-and-rolls, have high hands, get deflections, and at that time when we were playing him there's no John Collins so they had no four who you thought to be able to make plays so a lot of times he's throwing to the four then coming back on it so I would say half his turnovers are fatigue and other half is we're basically saying ‘anyone except for you because we don't believe that your supporting cast…’

[Lowe]: “go ahead champ, go ahead Cam Reddish”

[Dudley]: …for sure, go ahead Cam Reddish…and not just Cam, you have the Hunter kid who's young, they now added Dedmon, it was Alex Len. It's not the players that you need to be able to beat us on a consistent basis…only way you could do that is if Trae Young is having 35-plus, hitting seven or eight threes and doing that (which he's capable of).

I think that Atlanta’s going to get better. The reason why they're worse this year is they got a little more talented but they lost the veterans. They said ‘hey […] you know we got the three first-round draft picks we're going to make our trades’ and because of that you're better in the long term but you're worse than the short term. Once they put right personnel a la Draymond Green, give Trae Draymond on that team on the pick-and-roll Draymond would make guys like Cam Reddish and Hunter better because now he's a decision-maker when they trap [Trae] so I think it's a little unfair. I'm a big Trae young fan I do see Steph Curry in him but they're going to have to start putting better players around him which they will and there's a couple years to put the right pieces around him.

Source: https://youtu.be/6XnMXxtrOVs?t=1791

 

Watching this team play, I am with @Diesel. What this team needs is Draymond Green or a modern new Draymond Green. Maybe Okongwu could be that player. I think Bam Adebayo is that player but that's what we need. 

We need a playmaking big man. Someone that lessen the load from Trae but gets touches. Wings don't get touches like that in our system. Bigs and Trae get most of the touches.