Official Game Thread: Hawks at Raptors

[Diesel]

3 minutes ago, thecampster said:

The game was lost in the second quarter when Nate had no quick answer to Toronto's offensive rebounding.

Not true.

We recovered in the early fourth.. shut down the Rapts for like 8 minutes and yes, the team rebounding thing was working.   We had a shot at this one late.  Then we went cold. 

 

[thecampster]

18 minutes ago, Diesel said:

Not true.

We recovered in the early fourth.. shut down the Rapts for like 8 minutes and yes, the team rebounding thing was working.   We had a shot at this one late.  Then we went cold. 

 

Don't have a 15 point swing in the second and the 4th wouldn't have been the same!!!

[JayBirdHawk]

27 minutes ago, thecampster said:

The game was lost in the second quarter when Nate had no quick answer to Toronto's offensive rebounding.

Nate has no coaching instinct to make quick in game adjustments. #ThatsTheRotation and he's sticking with it. There was no reason in this game to play an all bench lineup in the 2nd half after being so miserable in the 1st half, he just didn't do a good job of staggering minutes.

[JayBirdHawk]

11 hours ago, hawkman said:

Hawks should beat the Wiz. 

They'd better. I've got tickets for tonight's last home game of the season.

[JayBirdHawk]

Why did Nate call the double time out with 3 minutes left after we came all the way back to tie the score? We had all the momentum and he broke it.  It also gave the raps a chance to regroup.

[JayBirdHawk]

1 hour ago, Diesel said:

Not true.

We recovered in the early fourth.. shut down the Rapts for like 8 minutes and yes, the team rebounding thing was working.   We had a shot at this one late.  Then we went cold. 

 

Toronto had 20 offensive rebounds against Atlanta. That was the difference. The Raptors had a seven-point lead in the second quarter even though they were 0-of-11 on 3-point attempts at that point and Fred VanVleet, their All-Star point guard, couldn’t buy a bucket. The reason for the lead was the Raptors kept grabbing offensive boards and getting extra possessions.

[AHF]

Lot of discussion about OO after a game in which he struggled and we really needed him to step up.  But I thought I'd point out how uncharacteristic he has been as a scorer over his last 10 games.

5.5 ppg, 55.9% FG%, 65.4% FT%, 6.8 rpg, 0.9 apg, 0.9 spg, 1.4 bpg

Compare that to his monthly splits over the last year (i.e., April and May of 2021 through March 2022) and you can see:

PPG is worse than his average in every one of those 6 months (and significantly worse than most)

FG% is way worse than in any other month (he is over 70% in most of them and no lower than 63%)

 

The rest of his numbers (rebounding, assists, steals, blocks, etc.) are actually pretty good.  But they are very inconsistent (example: he has his best rebounding game and second worse rebounding game of the season in this 10 game set).  

 

For the eye test, he doesn't seem like he has had his usual bounce lately.  I don't take his struggles yesterday as indicative of his long-term potential (it was his worst game of the year and only a single data point) but he does need to keep developing his skills to make the leap.  I've been a bit frustrated that he hasn't been able to get more minutes with our bigs out.  It seems weird to me that he can get more minutes with JC and Gallo in the rotation than some of these nights where those guys have been missing.

[JayBirdHawk]

Nate ....read the room (court).

Really?

“You got to put size on them because they will take advantage in that matchup....

Then why didn't you, smdh.

 

Quote

The Raptors’ size gave the Hawks trouble all night, and the Hawks didn’t adjust to it. Part of the lack of an adjustment was that John Collins remains out with his finger and foot injuries, and Danilo Gallinari was ruled out before tipoff because of inflammation in his left knee.

With the team’s top two power forwards out, coach Nate McMillan was left with starting Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot at the four and De’Andre Hunter getting heavy minutes at the position, too. Luwawu-Cabarrot and Hunter combined for just four defensive rebounds. That’s just not going to get it done from your forwards. Onyeka Okongwu finished with only two rebounds in his 15 minutes.

Toronto’s length showed how poor of a rebounding team the Hawks are outside of Clint Capela, arguably the best individual rebounder in the NBA, and Collins. They have to address the lack of rebounding from the forward position this offseason. Hunter is an extremely poor rebounder despite being 6-foot-8. Part of his not grabbing more rebounds lies in mostly guarding on the perimeter, but Raptors rookie Scottie Barnes finished with 14 boards even though he spent a lot of time on the perimeter, too. Hunter has a 6.1 percent rebounding rate this season; Trae Young’s is 5.9 percent. Hunter is 6-foot-8 and 225 pounds; Young is 6-foot-1, 160 pounds. It makes no sense that Hunter rebounds as poorly as he does.

And it’s not just Hunter. Bogdan Bogdanovic has a 7.2 percent rebounding rate. Kevin Huerter has a 6.3 percent rebounding rate. Okongwu’s rate, 15.5 percent, is very low for a center. The Raptors took advantage of the Hawks’ poor wing/forward rebounders.

“You got to put size on them because they will take advantage in that matchup and then you have big wings as they did (Tuesday),” McMillan said. “They had a size advantage. We’re coming off the bench with Lou (Williams) and Delon (Wright) and Bogi. We came off with Jalen (Johnson) in that first half. They really had a size advantage.”

Instead of trying to match Toronto’s size with a double-big lineup of Capela and Okongwu or having Johnson — arguably the second-best available rebounder right now — play more minutes, the Hawks stayed smaller. It burned them.

“I thought we would go with TLC in that second half and try to get Dre back in the lineup,” McMillan said when asked if he considered using bigger lineups.

 

[JayBirdHawk]

5 minutes ago, AHF said:

I've been a bit frustrated that he hasn't been able to get more minutes with our bigs out.  It seems weird to me that he can get more minutes with JC and Gallo in the rotation than some of these nights where those guys have been missing.

Nate's an idiot.

6 minutes ago, AHF said:

But I thought I'd point out how uncharacteristic he has been as a scorer over his last 10 games.

5.5 ppg, 55.9% FG%, 65.4% FT%, 6.8 rpg, 0.9 apg, 0.9 spg, 1.4 bpg

All true. In those 10 games he's played 20+ minutes 3 times. Smh

[Gray Mule]

Hawks:  Want to learn how to rebound the offensive miss and put it back in?  Just study last night's film.  Hawks have four under the basket.  Toronto has one.  He grabs the rebound, scores with the "and one" bonus!

Hunter still getting rookie foul calls.  And, he was scoring great inside and stinking it up from distance.

Gallo, we missed you last night.  Things might have been different with you on the floor.  If all this wasn't enough, the Skyhawks lost their game last night.

[kg01]

Sure could've used a physical (I think), athletic dude to atleast try and match their only advantage over us.

Lookin at Jalen Johnson like .....

I mean, really?  Their best offense was VanVleet's constant brix then offensive reboards.

And we out here with 4 guards lookin around wonderin' why we can't box out.

#That'stheRotationKG

[Diesel]

41 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Toronto had 20 offensive rebounds against Atlanta. That was the difference. The Raptors had a seven-point lead in the second quarter even though they were 0-of-11 on 3-point attempts at that point and Fred VanVleet, their All-Star point guard, couldn’t buy a bucket. The reason for the lead was the Raptors kept grabbing offensive boards and getting extra possessions.

My point was with 2:53 second left in the game, we took a 103-102 lead.   You remember Trae missed the first free throw... could have taken us to 104-102.    After that. we did not score again until their were 30 seconds left.   I'm not saying that the OR didn't hurt us.   They did.  What I was saying is that we had a legitimate chance to win this game in the 4th in spite of all the OR we gave up in the 2nd Qtr.    Both things can be true.

We gave up a lot of boards.. but down the stretch we could have won this... We just stop scoring. 

In that time.. Bogi missed two shots when he was hunting for shots...

and then there was this:

https://www.nba.com/stats/events/?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=600&GameID=0022101182&Season=2021-22&flag=1&title=MISS Hunter 4' Driving Finger Roll Layup&sct=plot

 

I count 2 fouls on that play...  1 on the drive... Siakim jumped into Hunter.  Then on the rebound.  That's a loose ball foul. 

 We had opportunity down the stretch.. we were up.  Harping on the OR as if it put the game out of reach is a false narrative.  It was a strong contributor to why we didn't blow this team out... and why they won but we still had a very good chance to win this one. 

 

[marco102]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Nate has no coaching instinct to make quick in game adjustments. #ThatsTheRotation and he's sticking with it. There was no reason in this game to play an all bench lineup in the 2nd half after being so miserable in the 1st half, he just didn't do a good job of staggering minutes.

He should have brought Capela back in early in the first half.  I would have played Capela 40 minutes this game.  Let him play a light minutes game today. 

We really missed Collins and Gallo yesterday.  You can play Collins and OO together and Collins is a plus rebounder.

[Atlantaholic]

Yea, not Nate's best game. Too much TLC on Siakam, which is ridiculous. Play Jalen at PF and Hunter at SF, we win. 

[marco102]

Just now, Atlantaholic said:

Yea, not Nate's best game. Too much TLC on Siakam, which is ridiculous. Play Jalen at PF and Hunter at SF, we win. 

The Raptors started attacking JJ and he was getting out hustled on rebounds too. 

It would have been nice if he wasn't in concussion protocol to get more of a rhythm before this game. 

 

[Atlantaholic]

1 minute ago, marco102 said:

The Raptors started attacking JJ and he was getting out hustled on rebounds too. 

It would have been nice if he wasn't in concussion protocol to get more of a rhythm before this game. 

 

Yea, but you have your best perimeter defender (who can't rebound to save his life) play PF and you have TLC in a massive mismatch against their best player. We were getting killed on the glass with the JJ and OO lineup and Nate counters with Hunter at PF and TLC at SF, and it got worse.

[marco102]

5 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Yea, but you have your best perimeter defender (who can't rebound to save his life) play PF and you have TLC in a massive mismatch against their best player. We were getting killed on the glass with the JJ and OO lineup and Nate counters with Hunter at PF and TLC at SF, and it got worse.

The answer wasn't more JJ.  It should have been more Capela. 

[Diesel]

11 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Yea, not Nate's best game. Too much TLC on Siakam, which is ridiculous. Play Jalen at PF and Hunter at SF, we win. 

Well, Siakim is a handful and that's a lost liter.  What's troubling is all the bailouts that the refs were giving him.   Moreover, we needed more rebounding in the game to counter their size.  They are not titans.. but they have the Billy Knight Special of four 6'9" or better guys on the court at the same time.  Bogi was just over powered.  Kev.. overpowered.  Hunter... overpowered. 

This was the time to play JJ and Dieng.  Forget the offensive continuity.. .when they are killing us on the boards, we need somebody to stop that. 

 

[Diesel]

10 minutes ago, marco102 said:

The Raptors started attacking JJ and he was getting out hustled on rebounds too. 

It would have been nice if he wasn't in concussion protocol to get more of a rhythm before this game. 

 

The answer to this is Zone. 

The good ole patented 2-3 Zone.  The way that Van Fleet was bricking shots required us to protect the rebound... Put in JJ, CC, and OO... Let them run the low... Put Trae and Kev up high.   Switch out with Delon, Bogi, etc...  It's different but when we play Toronto, this has to be a package to keep them honest.

What will happen is that Toronto is going to Draw Philly and Philly is going to beat them in 5 games.   CLEAR...   Siakim wont get those nontouch fouls.  Philly won't give up those ORs. 

 

 

[NBASupes]

2 hours ago, Diesel said:

OO hasn't regressed.   OO just haven't progressed.   OO is an energy player with good instincts.  That's all he is right now.  He will follow the ball like a dog.  That's good sometimes and sometimes other teams use that to maneuver him out of position.   

Right now...

He needs coaching working with him on the court and especially in the film room showing him his errors.  He's a smart guy and I have already seen him change his game for better in some places. 

Over the Summer...

He needs time with a big man's coach.  A good one.  I don't know who does it but it may be Hakeem or Kevin McHale... or whoever.  but he needs a guy that can teach him offense. 

The Center position is the hardest position on the court.   Some say PG but PGs is a birthright.   The Center position is usually the slowest developing position and it's basically because there's so many technical things that a center has to learn.   I think OO will get it. 

 

He's progressed quite a bit compared to last year.