A sh!tacular west coast trip and we will be 6th in the tankathon

[Diesel]

8 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

 so 0-10 now @Sothron @NBASupes. I’m calling out this thread we ain’t tanking we 2-2 in the new year. #goals

Should be 3-1.  One tip... the other way and we're slurping mimosas and eating oven baked ribs at Trae's house. 

 

[macdaddy]

This guy ain't going to lose the race to the bottom.   No guarantee the ping pong balls fall their way but feels likely.   

[Wretch]

We're much better than our record.  You can see it in how this team sporadically dominates.  We routinely erase big double-digit deficits and build big leads only to give them away.  We have dominated some really good teams (especially early) and we gave Brooklyn, fully staffed, all they could handle without Trae.

We are not a lottery team.  However, I'm as interested in seeing us get smacked around in the play-in as much as I am interested in seeing Nate continue to coach this team.  The 9th and 10th "seeds" are faux playoff spots.  That's not a goal for us.  That's an achievement for teams climbing out of lottery. 

It's too early to talk tanking now, but closer to the end of the season...there's no point for me.  When we were rising, I would have gladly taken it.  As it were, I'd rather have the asset if this is who we're going to be going into the playoffs.

[NBASupes]

2 hours ago, Spud2nique said:

 so 0-10 now @Sothron @NBASupes. I’m calling out this thread we ain’t tanking we 2-2 in the new year. #goals

Why you @ me for?

[Atlantaholic]

50 minutes ago, Wretch said:

We're much better than our record.  You can see it in how this team sporadically dominates.  We routinely erase big double-digit deficits and build big leads only to give them away.  We have dominated some really good teams (especially early) and we gave Brooklyn, fully staffed, all they could handle without Trae.

We are not a lottery team.  However, I'm as interested in seeing us get smacked around in the play-in as much as I am interested in seeing Nate continue to coach this team.  The 9th and 10th "seeds" are faux playoff spots.  That's not a goal for us.  That's an achievement for teams climbing out of lottery. 

It's too early to talk tanking now, but closer to the end of the season...there's no point for me.  When we were rising, I would have gladly taken it.  As it were, I'd rather have the asset if this is who we're going to be going into the playoffs.

I don't really agree. If anything our record is probably a little better than our overall play merits as is evidence by the fact we our SRS puts us as the sixth worst team in the league vs our current 9th worst record. Our Orting is a terrible 22nd and our Drting is below average at 16th..

Maybe our team's talent is better than that, but they haven't played better than that virtually all year. Our record started off pretty good but I pointed this out to the chagrin of many at the time that it was a laughably easy schedule bunch of games against Orlando, Detroit, Houston severely banged up Raptors and Bucks. The moment our schedule got tough and we suffered an injury or two and the team came completely undone. Even if we were 100% healthy and stayed that way all year no way are we competing with the top East teams, maybe we could finish in front of NY. Maybe. 

[shakes]

1 hour ago, Wretch said:

We're much better than our record.  You can see it in how this team sporadically dominates.  We routinely erase big double-digit deficits and build big leads only to give them away.  We have dominated some really good teams (especially early) and we gave Brooklyn, fully staffed, all they could handle without Trae.

We are not a lottery team.  However, I'm as interested in seeing us get smacked around in the play-in as much as I am interested in seeing Nate continue to coach this team.  The 9th and 10th "seeds" are faux playoff spots.  That's not a goal for us.  That's an achievement for teams climbing out of lottery. 

It's too early to talk tanking now, but closer to the end of the season...there's no point for me.  When we were rising, I would have gladly taken it.  As it were, I'd rather have the asset if this is who we're going to be going into the playoffs.

naw, we are who we are.  Our record is who we are.  We're a play in team who could also fall out of the play in.  Same as last year.

[sturt]

57 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Our Orting is a terrible 22nd and our Drting is below average at 16th..

Of course, it's well documented that I don't assign any conclusive meaning to any of the numbers amassed so far.

But. That said.

 

About 90% (?) of this board pre-season said words to the effect of "Dang, if we can just merely be average defensively, we're going to have an exceptional 2022-23 season."

 

They weren't wrong. Almost no one thought we'd be struggling offensively.

 

But that's the state of play on 1/9/23.

 

Will there be regression to the mean offensively in the remaining games? Or will there be regression to the mean defensively? Which is more likely?

[Atlantaholic]

2 minutes ago, sturt said:

Of course, it's well documented that I don't assign any conclusive meaning to any of the numbers amassed so far.

But. That said.

 

About 90% (?) of this board pre-season said words to the effect of "Dang, if we can just merely be average defensively, we're going to have an exceptional 2022-23 season."

 

They weren't wrong. Almost no one thought we'd be struggling offensively.

 

But that's the state of play on 1/9/23.

 

Will there be regression to the mean offensively in the remaining games? Or will there be regression to the mean defensively? Which is more likely?

Outside of Collins and Trae improving their efficiency back to their career avgs not sure what our mean is. Last year's #2 ranked offense isn't this team's mean, Last year's team is gone, this isn't it. We have Murray taking the second most shots and he is shooting close to his career avgs, Hunter, Cap, Okonguw, Bogi all at around where they have always been and outside of AJ everyone else is a terrible offensive player. If Cap comes back and plays every game how he had been playing we can get to top 10 in defense maybe, but our offense isn't going to suddenly turn into a good unit when it's been below average to bad all year long.

[macdaddy]

4 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Outside of Collins and Trae improving their efficiency back to their career avgs not sure what our mean is. Last year's #2 ranked offense isn't this team's mean, Last year's team is gone, this isn't it. We have Murray taking the second most shots and he is shooting close to his career avgs, Hunter, Cap, Okonguw, Bogi all at around where they have always been and outside of AJ everyone else is a terrible offensive player. If Cap comes back and plays every game how he had been playing we can get to top 10 in defense maybe, but our offense isn't going to suddenly turn into a good unit when it's been below average to bad all year long.

I agree with this except that the guy taking 20 shots a game improving his FG% a lot is not insignificant.  

[Atlantaholic]

2 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

I agree with this except that the guy taking 20 shots a game improving his FG% a lot is not insignificant.  

of course it's not, but it won't move us from 22nd to top 10

And of course, it's still an if. 

[sturt]

6 minutes ago, Atlantaholic said:

Outside of Collins and Trae improving their efficiency back to their career avgs not sure what our mean is. Last year's #2 ranked offense isn't this team's mean, Last year's team is gone, this isn't it. We have Murray taking the second most shots and he is shooting close to his career avgs, Hunter, Cap, Okonguw, Bogi all at around where they have always been and outside of AJ everyone else is a terrible offensive player. If Cap comes back and plays every game how he had been playing we can get to top 10 in defense maybe, but our offense isn't going to suddenly turn into a good unit when it's been below average to bad all year long.

 

I'm not advocating either way.

But I ask myself which of our offensive players are actually doing better than last season?

And is there any reason to believe that the replacements for guys like Gallo, KVon and Delon from last year's rotation may approach, meet, or exceed those players' production?

 

[JeffS17]

The hope that players will regress back to their offensive production and efficiency is just a failure to acknowledge the fit issues we have that are causing the poor numbers.   Nate's offense is the same as last year so the only changed variable are the players.  We have less shooting and less spacing and less depth leading to a materially worse offense.  And hope isn't a strategy, so unless we see changes, I'm not optimistic about us making any noise in the playoffs.

[AHF]

2 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

The hope that players will regress back to their offensive production and efficiency is just a failure to acknowledge the fit issues we have that are causing the poor numbers.   Nate's offense is the same as last year so the only changed variable are the players.  We have less shooting and less spacing and less depth leading to a materially worse offense.  And hope isn't a strategy, so unless we see changes, I'm not optimistic about us making any noise in the playoffs.

Nate knew coming into the year that we would have to do things differently on offense to succeed.  We replaced a strong perimeter shooter in Huerter with a more diverse and less efficient scorer in DM who was going to need to touch the ball more.  We replaced a veteran offensive weapon in Gallo with someone that Nate didn't think warranted developmental minutes last year.  Hopefully Nate could see that Collins didn't have his 3pt shot (and hasn't for roughly a year since his finger injury).  Bogi was entering the year hurt.

Implementing the "same (offense) as last  year" was going to be problematic if we didn't make some adjustments to optimize the personnel that were actually going to be playing games for us over the first quarter of the season.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

1 hour ago, shakes said:

naw, we are who we are.  Our record is who we are.  We're a play in team who could also fall out of the play in.  Same as last year.

Or ascend to a top 5 seed.

Some of you want to judge the Hawks on a game by game basis.

Just let everything play out.

[macdaddy]

8 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

so unless we see changes, I'm not optimistic about us making any noise in the playoffs.

this.  No way this team wins a playoff series.  That's pure fantasy.  Maybe if we bolster the bench we can do something. 

[Atlantaholic]

 

8 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

The hope that players will regress back to their offensive production and efficiency is just a failure to acknowledge the fit issues we have that are causing the poor numbers.   Nate's offense is the same as last year so the only changed variable are the players.  We have less shooting and less spacing and less depth leading to a materially worse offense.  And hope isn't a strategy, so unless we see changes, I'm not optimistic about us making any noise in the playoffs.

100%. And it's not only a "fit" issue. It's a lack of depth and talent issue. Gallo + Kvon + Delon are high quality NBA players. Holiday bros  and Jalen Johnson taking a lot of those mins are not (though I'm bullish on Jalen he has been AWFUL offensively). 

[TheNorthCydeRises]

22 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

I agree with this except that the guy taking 20 shots a game improving his FG% a lot is not insignificant.  

 

He's already started to turn the corner

 

[JeffS17]

8 minutes ago, AHF said:

Nate knew coming into the year that we would have to do things differently on offense to succeed.  We replaced a strong perimeter shooter in Huerter with a more diverse and less efficient scorer in DM who was going to need to touch the ball more.  We replaced a veteran offensive weapon in Gallo with someone that Nate didn't think warranted developmental minutes last year.  Hopefully Nate could see that Collins didn't have his 3pt shot (and hasn't for roughly a year since his finger injury).  Bogi was entering the year hurt.

Implementing the "same (offense) as last  year" was going to be problematic if we didn't make some adjustments to optimize the personnel that were actually going to be playing games for us over the first quarter of the season.

Agree on all points.  But we're halfway through with the season and Nate has not done anything different, so expect different outcomes for the last half of the season is just hope in my opinion.  I'd love to hear the arguments, but I struggle coming up with any reasons to think this team can win 45+ games this year or make it to the second round.  

[Atlantaholic]

6 minutes ago, TheNorthCydeRises said:

 

He's already started to turn the corner

 

It's really just the last three games (57%FG)  that make the 10 game split look good, he was shooting 43% the previous 7 games before that... but regardless yea. Encouraging to see him start shooting better. He's going to have to continue to do that for the next 40+ games for us to have a prayer at finishing with an above average offense. 

[AHF]

6 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

Agree on all points.  But we're halfway through with the season and Nate has not done anything different, so expect different outcomes for the last half of the season is just hope in my opinion.  I'd love to hear the arguments, but I struggle coming up with any reasons to think this team can win 45+ games this year or make it to the second round.  

Here is the only case I can make.  When we looked at the best 4 man groupings in the NBA this season, 4 of the top 10 were Hawks pairings with their starters (if I recall correctly all groups had Trae and JC and 2 of the 3 of Hunter, Cap and DM).  That and other numbers suggest that our starting lineup actually fairs very well.  4 of the top 10 groupings is way better than every other team.  As it happens, our 5 starters have played only 19 of the first 40 games together so to the extent you need them together to achieve these results we haven't had that for most of our minutes, let alone most of our games.  

I think the best case would be the recently improved play of Trae, Hunter and JC continuing in some form combined with our key players all being available for the playoffs.  Trae's track record says he should be significantly better as a scorer and that will make a material difference by itself.  JC and Hunter don't have that same track record so you are betting on JC to rebound to better performance consistent with prior years (or Nate  using him better ala recent play) and Hunter continuing to progress as a player. 

You could say that players being healthy is just hope but some version of that applies whether teams are good, bad or thoroughly mediocre.  Health is just a variable that is tough to predict.  But being healthy for long enough to win a playoff series is very possible if you accept the idea that our starters actually have produced some very good results so far this season.

But I agree with you that we can't expect any type of schematic adjustment with Nate.  At best, he will evolve his rotation over time so that some positive changes come about even if the game to game developments aren't much and the in-game adjustments are nearly non-existent.