Official Playoff Game Thread: Hawks at Celtics -- GAME 5

[lethalweapon3]

“I’m BACK!”

 

PEG Season is here! Probably, and mercifully.

Another Playoff Ending Gamethread is in store for the Squawk. Your Friendly Neighborhood Gamethread Starter, as usual, doesn’t have much to add to these things, aside from appreciating you for putting up with my streams of semi-consciousness over 80 times every year.

In case this is the only PEG we’ll need, I would like to wish each of Bob Rathbun, Dominique Wilkins and Steve Holman a prosperous Hawks offseason focused on wellness and recuperation. Watching and commenting about every moment of these Atlanta Hawks on the floor, in their current form, is not easy. Yet only a few people are obligated to not turn away when the proceedings aren’t favorable.

The Human Highlight Film had to miss Games 3 and 4 at The Highlight Factory due to illness, while his broadcast partner had to be hospitalized mid-season after an unfortunate pregame ailment. And Holman is well into his fifth decade of, “Oh, Brother!”.

Everyone gets their own heaping spoonful of health-related issues, wholly unrelated to the daily outcomes of sporting events. My hope, though, is that the Basketball Club rebuilds in the upcoming months in ways mindful that the performance on the court can impact the overall well-being of our beloved, senior-most play-by-play personnel. To say nothing of the esprit de corps among Hawks Nation members in the stands and watching from afar.

“You are a cheat code, young man!”, Bawb exclaimed with joy during the dazzling Trae Young’s first official game-winning play before the home crowd as a prized rookie. Five seasons in, the two-time All-Star remains a cheat code, and is still a young man by NBA standards. But nearly two years removed from an unanticipated run to the cusp of the NBA Finals, the team Trae headlines still appears too wet behind the ears to be taken seriously. And too easy for veteran-laden contenders to play them like a PS5.

Indeed, those ears replacement coach Quin Snyder is trying to bend on the fly are quite damp. Only Memphis entered the Playoffs with a younger roster by average age, the Hawks and Grizzlies hovering around a nightclub-cardable 24. No other teams in the Playoffs are simultaneously bottom-ten in the league for average age. There are times when youthfulness serves a brash, bold, and bouncy team well. Other times, as Ja Morant and Dillon Brooks can attest, not so much.

The second-oldest club in the NBA East, 8-seeded Miami, stumbled at home against the Hawks during their Play-In, but has recovered in time to give the league’s eldest club, top-seed Milwaukee, the business. Meanwhile, the third-oldest club, the 2-seed Celtics, will seek to tuck the 7-seed Hawks into bed tonight (7:30 PM Eastern, Bally Sports Southeast for likely the last time and 92.9 FM in ATL, TNT) at Boston’s TD Garden.

Trying to be taken seriously as a playoff-worthy threat, Atlanta swung for the fences last June and traded for a backcourt partner to Trae, 2022 All-Star Dejounte Murray, with seven playoff starts under his belt. The Big Idea, as was the thought surrounding Trae and John Collins (5.0 RPG, 1.3 FTAs/game, team-low 32.4 FG% vs. BOS), or Trae and De’Andre Hunter, or Trae and (previously) Cam Reddish and Kevin Huerter, was that they could grow together, organically. Well, they do all age together. But they don’t necessarily mature together. Nor do they evolve their individual skills, at the same necessary pace.

Two teams Young vanquished in prior postseasons, New York and Cleveland, responded to the Murray signing by going all out to replenish their backcourts with Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell (the Knicks would later flip Cam in a multi-team Deadline deal for Josh Hart). The Hawks were trumped by both the Knicks and the Cavs, as both avoided the Play-In, although the silver lining is that one of those teams’ seasons will conclude by this weekend.

From the internal strife over the Murray deal going forward, Atlanta in 2022-23 found itself afflicted with immaturis disarrayus, an organizational malaise that turned operations president Travis Schlenk into a come-sit-by-me puppet of the Ressler clan, and helped cost Nate McMillan his head coaching gig before he could bow out gracefully. Fittingly, Murray had a bout with gediminas petraitis. The resultant suspension for his Rondo-lite tiff with a referee at the close of Game 3’s loss in Atlanta made tonight’s road elimination game, as the Hawks have done to themselves all season long, needlessly harder.

In contrast, Ime Udoka’s reportedly immature off-court dalliances threatened to spoil second-year hoop-ops executive Brad Stevens designs on a follow-up campaign to the Celtics’ 2022 second-half sprint to The Finals. Fortunately for them, the mature players on the floor, like Al Horford, and the otherwise seasoned ones, like Marcus Smart, helped lay the foundations to keep the team upright despite Udoka’s unexpected suspension.

It is possible to be an older team, yet insufficiently mature or talented to help stars carry teams into consistent contention, as Young’s draft-day foil over in Texas can testify. But veteran leadership on the floor helped firm up Jayson Tatum’s and Jaylen Brown’s All-NBA campaigns. In this series, that and Atlanta’s thorough lack of composure has so far negated the vast coaching experience edge Snyder holds over rookie head coach Joe Mazzulla.

Youth allows the capacity and the time for players and teams to adapt and transform, especially in an NBA where supreme conditioning allows tricenarians like Al Horford and Lebron James to thrive. But maturity carries with it the will for adaptation and transformation. “Blame it on our youth!” sells, whenever these Hawks go haywire on the hardwood. But it won’t sell forever.

Yes, there is an angle whereby the Hawks re-assert their rebounding edges from Game 3 and the end of Game 2, tighten up defensive and shot-creation schemes ensuring their buckets come from easier shots, and outshine Boston’s bench brigade, to offer Murray a redemption game before the home faithful on Thursday. Sadly, given Dejounte’s contributions to date in this series (25.3 PPG, 39.4 3FG%, 7.3 RPG, 5.8 APG, 2.3 SPG), the absence created by his obtuseness makes this angle acute.

I do expect Atlanta (last win in BOS in February 2021, where Trae dropped 40 with Smart sidelined), tonight, to avoid looking ahead mid-game to what should be a busy offseason, headed by the Amateur Hour managerial regime that the Ressler clan has cobbled together. But I don’t castigate Hawks fans, as many of us have been halfway-tuned out on this collective since at least the lame run-up to the All-Star Break, or at least the wlwlwwlwlackluster loss to Murray’s old team in San Antonio last month.

My request to the players is to avoid the resort towns that follow the 1-2-3 chants – Cancun! Tulum! Acapulco! – as travel to those spots is getting too hot, and I’m not talking climate change. If Trae must put his passport to work this summer, it ought to be on behalf of Team USA in Abu Dhabi and Manila. Bogdan Bogdanovic will do all he can to help Nikola Jokic and Serbia punch a ticket to Paris 2024, but I beg him not to overextend himself and risk becoming next season’s version of Boston’s Danilo Gallinari.

As for team president Landry Fields, development guru Kyle Korver and the reconstituted front office, I would like to see, by this time next year, a Hawks team that not only makes far more sound decisions under pressure, but also heeds the late Joan Rivers’ persistent directive to her audiences: “Oh, Grow Up!”.

That’s going to require stern direction from Coach Quin and his team’s assistants and development staff to expand the skillsets of the Hawks they elect to keep, assuming they have much choice in the matter. That will also require filling in the gaps with a more robust array of veteran leaders than Frank Kaminsky and Justin Holiday. Whatever the moves are for the future, I hope Atlanta’s staff bears in mind that our dutiful play-callers in the media aren’t getting any younger.

That’s about all I’ve got for a PEG, although I wouldn’t mind a few more cracks at it. In closing, you can’t have a PEG, and you can’t spell ATL, without an AL!

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

gediminas petraitis

Beautimus!

19 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

the absence created by his obtuseness

[Guest]

I, too, suspect this will be the last game of the season.  I hope for that not to be true and will be watching and cheering in the first half (another ZOOM meeting, so my curse from the last time I bailed for a ZOOM meeting will mean the meltdown begins at 8:30 pm EDT).
Fingers crossed but eyes wide open.  
Go Hawks!

[JayBirdHawk]

23 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Another Playoff Ending Gamethread is in store for the Squawk.

NOOOOOOOOO!!

2 minutes ago, LongTimeFan said:

I, too, suspect this will be the last game of the season.  I hope for that not to be true and will be watching and cheering in the first half (another ZOOM meeting, so my curse from the last time I bailed for a ZOOM meeting will mean the meltdown begins at 8:30 pm EDT).
Fingers crossed but eyes wide open.  
Go Hawks!

NOOOOOOOOO!!

[JayBirdHawk]

What you gonna do fellas! Maybe we pull the okey doke and kill 'em in the paint.

 

 

[REHawksFan]

1 minute ago, JayBirdHawk said:

What you gonna do fellas! Maybe we pull the okey doke and kill 'em in the paint.

 

 

Use that aggression against them.  Either get them in the air for a foul or drive for the paint.  Play smart. 

In all honesty, my fear for tonight is Boston will just play like Miami did last year when there wasn't any secondary playmaker on the court with Trae.  Trap him to get the ball out of his hands and then play 4-4.  Trae needs to walk the line being under control but also aggressive.  

[909]

My starting lineup would be

(Young)pg

(Boogie) 2g

(Hunter) sm

(Bey) pf

(Collins) c

[benhillboy]

I’ve seen much crazier things than the Hawks pulling this one out.  Celtics gotta have an off night from range and the bench gotta bounce back a little.  I expect the ball movement to be more varied and no bad passing lane steal gambles.  Get ‘em back to The Farm and tighten that sphincter a tad.  John has to actually breathe oxygen and pump blood in this one tho.

Hawks lost their last game and are 3-4 without DJ (not counting Game 82).  We all know what that means, but the Celtics have no idea how phenomenally mediocre the Hawks are.  That 4th loss is just looking for a winning mate.  She got on a yellow minidress and scarlet red lipstick with bleach blonde hair pulling up to the bar.  She ready.

If a win is too much to ask, for goodness sakes cover the ridiculous 13 point spread.

Edited April 25, 2023 by benhillboy

[JayBirdHawk]

When the Hawks win tonight, what happens to the Janet Jackson concert slated for The Farm that same evening?

[h4wkfan]

13 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

When the Hawks win tonight, what happens to the Janet Jackson concert slated for The Farm that same evening?

That and Taylor swift all get pushed back a day! And teenage girls and parents riot .  

[Gray Mule]

8 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

When the Hawks win tonight, what happens to the Janet Jackson concert slated for The Farm that same evening?

I suppose we move to the home of the Skyhawks!!

With everyone thinking, "Woe is me" please remember when we went to the finals a couple of years ago Murray wasn't a Hawk so it's possible to win without him!  Play some defense and have our shots fall and we walk away to live another day.

LW3, if this is the final Hawk article until this fall, I look forward to your Dream coverage this summer.

Meanwhile, GO ATL HAWKS !!

[macdaddy]

22 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

When the Hawks win tonight, what happens to the Janet Jackson concert slated for The Farm that same evening?

games are set for 1pm

[lethalweapon3]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

When the Hawks win tonight, what happens to the Janet Jackson concert slated for The Farm that same evening?

Fans will... miss... miss her much?

~lw3

[DieHardHAWK]

I will keep hope alive and pray to the basketball Gods that the Hawks are lights out from 3, Trae will float them to death, Capella will go up strong and not pay Pattycake at the rim, Hunter doesn't disappear, and Collins gets his balls back. Maybe....MAYBE the refs are competent. 

[JayBirdHawk]

I hope so Dre, I hope so!

 

Can he string 2 great games together?

[Spud2nique]

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Another Playoff Ending Gamethread is in store for the Squawk.

HEWWWLLLL NAAAHHHH noooo!!! Keep it alive! WE WANT MORE! WE WANT MORE!

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

The Human Highlight Film had to miss Games 3 and 4 at The Highlight Factory due to illness

Whaaaat?  Get well Legend!

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

And too easy for veteran-laden contenders to play them like a PS

4… lol.. and I had big trouble. 
 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

organically

I’m jaded now as a human. Lol. Not that I wasn’t before..

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

obtuseness

@LongTimeFanfirst the shrinkage now the oop for this? @JayBirdHawk what did I do to him? 
 

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

you can’t spell ATL, without an AL!

NO HEWWWL NAAAHHH GET BACK HERE @lethalweapon3!!!  

Vegas has Celts -13

It was worse on 2K… Celts by double that! 

[Spud2nique]

We are going with the white association (old school would be home colors) jersey’s tonight vs Boston’s city jersey’s.

We shoulda busted out MLK on the Celts court. 
 

Are we allowed to wear white @JayBirdHawk   SHERMAN GONNA HAVE RELATIONS  

[BrazilianHawk]

Uphill battle, 

 

LET'S GO HAWKS!!!

[JayBirdHawk]

REPPING  THE A!!!!

 

 

 

[Spud2nique]

 

 

.  

1 minute ago, JayBirdHawk said:

REPPING  THE A!!!!

 

 

You beat me!!! Fast winger Buuurddd #fasttwitchburd