Official Game Thread: Knicks at Hawks

[AUhawksfan]

1 hour ago, JeffS17 said:

Man it feels so good beating the Knicks when 1/3 of the arena is orange.  I swear there are 100,000 NY transplants down here.

Have you been to New York?

I don’t blame them, just keep your fandom away from State Farm. 

[JeffS17]

2 hours ago, kg01 said:

And do what tho?  As always, this Nix team has no counter when a team plays as hard as they are.

I kept thinking they're shooting over 70% in 1st half and barely had a lead.  Never bode well for them. 

Lol i kept telling my buddy not to get nervous, Randle and Barrett will always find a way to shoot themselves out of the game.  Happened as soon as we tightened up defense in the paint

[sturt]

10 hours ago, Jdawgflow said:

From your lips (er, fingers) to @sturt ears.

I hear that, but still, too soon, too small a sample size.

Big road trip coming up.

Coincidentally, that one takes us right up to the trade deadline.

It is, indeed, those 5 games since CC got back and the 8 games still to come that I believe will offer some solid conclusions about whether this rotation genuinely has what it takes to make a run.

Yes, so far so good in terms of wins... I still feel like, though, there's a higher level of performance they're not yet achieving, and I expected that they would develop chemistry sufficiently to achieve. I recall starting a thread suggesting preseason this may be the Hawks' strongest 1-thru-10 roster in decades, assuming AJ and JJ show development. Still working on that.

 

What still is disturbing to me is that we really don't have a 3rd unit wing that you can feel good about giving significant minutes if we run into any health troubles... not JDay, not Vit, and not Tyrese.

Don't think we can get away with that. At least one of those needs to be replaced with a veteran who does at least one thing on the court pretty well, and who at the same time doesn't do anything so lousy that you can't really afford to put him on the court for any length of time. At the same time, not sure how you make that happen.

[Sothron]

I had to take a neighbor to the ER so I missed the entire game. The neighbor will be okay. Can someone give me a cliff's note version of the game tonight? Judging by box score it looks like both teams just scored a ton of points. Glad we won obviously.

[Final_quest]

4 hours ago, Sothron said:

I had to take a neighbor to the ER so I missed the entire game. The neighbor will be okay. Can someone give me a cliff's note version of the game tonight? Judging by box score it looks like both teams just scored a ton of points. Glad we won obviously.

Both teams couldn’t miss in the first half.  NY came back to earth in the second half, but particularly went cold the start of the 4th.  We were up by almost 20 with 4 minutes to go.  They hit a couple threes in a row during last two minutes to make the score look closer.  
 

DJM was abusing them with mid range and paint shots.  He walked to the same spot three times in a row and hit them all.  

[Final_quest]

4 hours ago, sturt said:

Big road trip coming up.

After the 5 game west coast trip, we stay east coast most of the rest of the year with virtually no road trips at all.  17 of the last 26 games at home.  The only road trip of any length is two stops, Miami and Washington, but 4 games.  Got to give it to the Heat in Miami two games straight.  

[Gray Mule]

8 hours ago, Diesel said:

I wanted to see Favors get some minutes. 

Apparently Nate is supersticious.  Hawks have won 5 in a row and Favors has not played.  Why break the jinks and let him on the floor?

I expected to see him when Nate "emptied" the bench.  Nope.  He & the other Holiday didn't get in the game at all.  Perhaps, if he's still around when we lose, then he will make an appearance.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

6 hours ago, Sothron said:

I had to take a neighbor to the ER so I missed the entire game. The neighbor will be okay. Can someone give me a cliff's note version of the game tonight? Judging by box score it looks like both teams just scored a ton of points. Glad we won obviously.

Snapshots are the Knicks shot chart by quarter

1st  ( 16 - 20 FG . . . 80% )

 

2nd  ( 14 - 22 FG . . . 63% ) . . . . Knicks shot 71% FG in the 1st half, but only led by 3.

 

3rd  ( 10 - 21 FG . . . 48% )

 

4th  ( 9 - 20 FG . . . 45% ) . . . Knicks shoot 46% FG in the 2nd half

 

Meanwhile the Hawks were really strong in the 4th quarter, led by Dejounte and Bogi.

 

 

[Diesel]

This should put the league on notice. 

As I said before the game, it will be a hard game because NY will come out and test our paint defense.  They did just that.  They came out and it was obvious to me that their game plan was to score inside at all cost.   I think in the first half, they may have shot 3 outside shots.   The shot 71% going right at us. 

But by the end of the first half, nobody on our team was in foul trouble and we were only down by 3.   Thibs is supposed to be one of the best defensive basketball minds in the game.    Yet, while they were shooting 71% from the field, we didn't have a problem finding buckets.  IN fact, DJ made it his show by going right back to the well.   Though we were losing in that first half, Nique was happy because he saw us doing something we rarely do... exploit.  We ran the same play over and over again because NY did nothing to stop it. 

The second half started... our defense came on... Clint was in the game and the revolving door was closed.   

The league needs to be afraid.. because this is the gameplan.. get Physical and play inside and you win.   Well, NY does that better than most teams and at the end of the game, they got the Nate Wave and we won. 

 

[Diesel]

 

[Diesel]

4 minutes ago, Diesel said:

 

Come on Spud!!!  Where you at...  You have to help me with the Emoticons!!   We can't enjoy this run without the Spud.  Take your Jamas off and get in the game sir!!

 

[sturt]

20 minutes ago, Diesel said:

 

Yeah, they're not wrong.

Difference in the game, right there.

[sturt]

10 hours ago, sturt said:

What still is disturbing to me is that we really don't have a 3rd unit wing that you can feel good about giving significant minutes if we run into any health troubles... not JDay, not Vit, and not Tyrese.

Don't think we can get away with that. At least one of those needs to be replaced with a veteran who does at least one thing on the court pretty well, and who at the same time doesn't do anything so lousy that you can't really afford to put him on the court for any length of time. At the same time, not sure how you make that happen.

 

Did a lil b-ref homework this morning.

I got nothin.

There's really no vividly apparent options for us to resolve this. There's no team that is so up against the 2024 lux tax that you can expect to deal JDay in exchange for approximately the same salary but longer years... that had been Diesel's theory that there would be such a team, and indeed, that was the one plausible idea for replacing him on the roster with some asset.

Yes, again, you can sit and hope for all of the stars to align and a two-team deal would need a third's $6.2m JDay contract as filler... but hope isn't a strategy, they say.

 

More disturbing still... Tyrese isn't having the G-League season that many of us anticipated coming out of summer league and preseason.

 

So, I'm left with this... our decision-makers should be doing everything within their power to be advancing the development of Vit now. He's our best option. We need to prepare for the possibility he'll be needed.

[marco102]

I love hearing this!

Edited January 21, 2023 by marco102

[JayBirdHawk]

39 minutes ago, marco102 said:

I love hearing this!

Not from the WOAT .

Love it!

[Sothron]

It is crystal clear Trae has had some kind of come to Jesus moment sometime in mid/late Dec about his defense. He's a much better player in January than he has ever been on defense. 

[MarylandHawk]

5 hours ago, marco102 said:

I love hearing this!

Love this. This is where Trae can excel defensively.  He knows what the offense is trying to do and he can read it a mile away. If he can communicate it and gun up what their offense is trying to do. UHO O. 

[Diesel]

Another day.. Another Opportunity. 

Welp,   we got a lot of work to do.   The work we have to do is trust building.  We lost this game because of bad play.  Sheez up by 19.. and you lose, it's everybody's fault.    It's the guy selling hotdogs fault.   It's the guy parking cars fault.   It's the dude at the announce table's fault.  Yep.. It's Nique's fault. 

Still.   we have some serious soul searching and work to do.  We left off bad... broken... and probably hurt.   This is where the coaching has to start.   Nate and Trae has to mend fences or none of this will work.   We've seen that we can be good.   We got to get back to that.

Let's not forget context.... 6 games in 9 days.. Damn.  We just have to make better choices though..