Official Game Thread: Timberwolves at Hawks

[lethalweapon3]

“So you never had Steve Kerr chew you out? Hmph. Casual.”

 

John “Hook” Milton first put The Peach State on the peach-basket map. A pioneer of the odd but effective hook shot, the 6-foot-3 forward swooped his way from a Savannah military school to stardom in Chapel Hill, and then enjoyed a cup of tea as a pro in the nascent BAA pro hoop league.

Georgia Tech’s Jim Nolan, a two-sport athlete and the 6-foot-8 towering pride of Macon, was the next cager to get drafted into The League. His sip of tea was even smaller, at five games to Milton’s 22. But in the 1949-50 season, Jim and Hook offered hints that the Empire State of the South could be a draw for scouts in more than just baseball and football.

As for Atlanta-raised players making a splash in the pros? As Miss Jackson may have crooned on Saturday night in Piedmont Park… let’s wait awhile.

Carver Vocational School on Atlanta’s southside produced the city’s first great hope, future Morris Brown head coach Charlie Hardnett. Playing alongside Willis Reed and Ernie Ladd at NAIA hoops power Grambling State was enough to earn the burly Hardnett a third-round selection by the now-NBA’s Hawks, the St. Louis team shipping him to the Chicago Zephyrs in 1962.

Once Hardnett took his talents to the regional Eastern Basketball Association in 1965, Atlanta the city struggled for years to have an NBA talent to embrace as a product of its basketball bumper crop. You were more likely to find top-level hoops talent emanating from other Georgia locales: Rome (the Stinger!), Macon, Columbus, LaGrange, Hogansville, Barnesville.

Walt Frazier certainly came on the scene in the late 1960s, but Clyde’s Broadway Joe-style persona as a Knickerbocker obscured his more humble beginnings around Sweet Auburn. Atlanta natives like World B. Free, Robert Reid and Norm Nixon developed their scholastic-era games elsewhere before getting recruited for college and plucked by pro teams.

Mike “Mitch the Stitch” Mitchell, Sedale Threatt, Dominique Wilkins’ bro, Gerald, Chris Morris, and Willie Anderson were all exemplary second-bananas in the NBA’s emerging era of the ‘80s and ‘90s. But there wasn’t much in the way of folks that would qualify as unsittable stars for the league’s new Player Participation Policy.

With all due respect to the coaching staffs at Atlanta’s struggling public schools during those drug-fueled decades, “player development”, for hard-nosed Atlanta prospects like Anthony Carter, took more of the informal form of Tupac’s antagonist Birdie in “Above The Rim”.

Then, a switch was flipped. Well-moneyed private schools, and suburban public schools, began committing more resources toward building basketball powerhouses, while religious academies propped up their prep programs, often to showcase the talented prodigies of its parent-coaches.

This evolution was occurring just as Anthony Edwards was getting introduced to the world, as a newborn bound for Atlanta’s Oakland City neighborhood that Minnesota’s Star-Tribune noted, “friends and family caution out-of-towners to visit only during the day – and don’t slow down driving through it.”

Growing to reach 6-foot-4, and 225 pounds, Edwards dreamed of football glories like many of his ATL predecessors. But he never slowed down when driving to the hoop, or above the rim. Now, everywhere you turn – not just around Atlanta, where the Hawks face Edwards’ Timberwolves (7:30 PM Eastern, Bally Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, BS North in MSP) on the back end of a back-to-back, but around the globe – people are pegging The Ant-Man as The Next Great Thing. All the while, wondering aloud: who’s next to come Straight Outta ATL?

Like a posterior anatomical feature, when it comes to Atlanta regional products in the NBA, it seems these days as if everybody’s got one. If a team isn’t hitching their current title hopes to a Jaylen Brown, or an Edwards, it’s banking their futures heavily on top picks like Jabari Smith, Devin Vassell, Walker Kessler and Scoot Henderson.

Championship wannabes and gonnabes scramble to fill out their main rotations with mid-tiered players bearing ATL pedigrees, be it Malcolm Brogdon, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, or Bucks teammates Malik Beasley and Jae Crowder. USA Basketball seems to get fare more hyped about their chances of securing gold medals with Atlanta-based talents than they do for random overachievers from, say, Norman, Oklahoma.

Goodness knows our Hawks have tried, over the decades, to nab a territorial star worthy of exemplary residence in our arena rafters. “ATL’s Own” Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Josh Smith suited up for the Hawks at times when the organization wasn’t prepared to maximize their All-NBA potentials. Local Players Made Good for the Hawks, as a strategy, had panned out only slightly better than the franchise’s decades-long efforts to corral a Dirk, a Sabonis, or a Giannis from overseas.  As Janet might say, there’s no longer a need for us to go too far.

The current-day brass at Hawks, Inc., including Landry Fields and player development guru Kyle Korver, certainly don’t need my advice when it comes to scouting, but I’m going to offer it anyway. Save yourself some frequent-flyer miles and spend more time hanging out at OTE, the Millsaps’ CORE4, the Henderson’s NextPlay 360°, and our region’s still-growing array of developmental hoop gyms. At draft time: who’s the best ATLien prospect of the moment, and is it worth our while to trade up, or down – as the prior regime did at great risk to reel in De’Andre Hunter and Trae Young, respectively – to get Him?

2020’s 1^st-overall selection, Edwards is touted among the top under-25 talents in the game, and his improving perimeter shot (7-for-12 3FGs, two games in) and ball-control serve as validating reasons. Unlike the J-Smooves of days gone by, Edwards also demonstrates a willingness to sponge up biting coach criticism, be it from the likes of USA Basketball head coach Steve Kerr, who gave Edwards grief during pre-draft assessments and began World Cup exhibition play with him coming off the bench, or less accomplished play designers, like the Wolves’ Chris Finch.

The T’wolves (1-1) on Saturday needed only to go seven-deep to dust off visiting Miami, who rested star Jimmy Butler and ex-star Kevin Love one night after the heat fell to the Celtics in Boston. Edwards’ rising-star has managed to obscure Minnesota’s hopes to be led into greatness and prominence by 2015’s 1^st-overall, Karl-Anthony Towns (35.7 FG% on 37 shots, 2 O-Rebs through first two games).

By retaining virtually everyone from 2023’s playoff campaign, Minnesota’s second-in-a-row for the first time since 2004, a 42-40 record (+0.0 Net Rating, 20^th in NBA) concluded with a 4-1 opening-round defeat absent glue-guys Jaden McDaniels (calf strain, questionable but a likely season-debut tonight) and Naz Reid at the hands of the eventual champion Nuggets, and adding Shake Milton to the backcourt, the belief remains that a healthy core will be enough to finally make some noise in the postseason.

If it becomes clear that it doesn’t work, in the rough-and-tumble Western Conference, and lackluster performances like the 97-94 season-opener in Toronto is more of the norm, not only will there be calls for a midseason upgrade for Finch, but given how the franchise painted itself into a corner by acquiring Rudy Gobert, Wolves exec Tim Connelly will be pressured to work a deal that somehow makes Karl-Anthony skip town.

No matter what transpires, going forward for the next year or so, Edwards, now a literal movie star, will get the benefit of the doubt that peripheral All-Star franchise favorites like the Hawks’ Young, topped out currently as an occasional rasslin’ heel, are no longer granted.

Minnesota (70.1 D-Reb%, 25^th in NBA), like Atlanta (70.0%, 26^th), was a weak defensive rebounding club on the road last season, despite their on-paper personnel. Edwards, like Young, is being pressed into being more impactful and assertive on the defensive end. In each case, their bigs and super-sized wings must do a better job at limiting second-chance opportunities, further making each team’s stars literal supernovas in transition.

Mission-accomplished for the Hawks (1-2) in last night’s resounding 127-110 victory in Milwaukee (12 O-Rebs, 25-7 ATL fastbreak advantage), while Dejounte Murray did his best to confine Damian Lillard, and Bogi Bogdanovic displayed Korver’s work on the former’s patented catch-and-loft three-point shot. While Atlanta joins eight other clubs with an NBA-high 15 back-to-back pairs, coach Quin Snyder’s club benefits from a league-high of 11 of the back-ends, like tonight’s, in front of home crowds.

Maintaining momentum from Sunday’s defensive-minded road win could prove valuable for Atlanta, and not simply in evening up their record at two apiece. Impressing the State Farm Arena crowd on the heels of blitzing the Bucks would be swell, but even better is the possibility that the NBA’s next Ant-Man or Scoot, inspired by the home team, may be sitting in the stands, or watching nearby, ripe for the future picking.

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[AHF]

Game day threads remain a work of art regardless of whether the "good" Hawks or "bad" Hawks show up on a given night!

[lethalweapon3]

We'll get to see if Jaden McDaniels indeed gets reactivated today, and if he gets re-inserted into the starting unit in place of Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Shake Milton (sore foot) is also listed as Questionable.

Krawczynski's 2022 feature on Edwards in The Athletic (subscription required) notes that while the Ant-Man did rise up out of Oakland City and in-town Therrell High, he didn't get blind-sided, if you will, by the potential benefits of seeing his athletic pursuits through around this town.

 

Quote

 

"I really used to dream about the NFL, for real," Edwards said.

More specifically, Edwards wondered about living a life far removed from the dangers of Oakland City, one he didn't really think possible — until he crossed paths with a former Viking.

All-Pro offensive lineman Chris Hinton played two of his 13 NFL seasons with the Vikings. Starting when Edwards was 8 or 9, Hinton's son Chris and Edwards became best friends through football.

There were plenty of nights Edwards stayed over with Chris Jr., a defensive lineman at Michigan who declared for this month's NFL draft, at the Hintons' 12,000-square-foot house on a 3.5-acre plot in Johns Creek, a suburb northeast of Atlanta.

"Crazy big," Edwards said. "They had a big ol' pool and court. … I used to say, I want to live like this. That was a lot of motivation. I tried to stay there as long as I could."

 

 

~lw3

[Sothron]

I hate two hawks game a season. This is the first of the two. I will ofc root for the Hawks but man I hate rooting against the Twolves. Oh well.

 

[kg01]

2 minutes ago, Sothron said:

I hate two hawks game a season. This is the first of the two. I will ofc root for the Hawks but man I hate rooting against the Twolves. Oh well.

 

I hate soth two Hawks games a season .... 

Do the twolves still wear volt unis every once in a while?  

Anyways, we'll see if Magic City is in regular season form yet since the wolves have been in town for a couple nights.  Let's go, ladies!  I wanna see MIN with no legs in the 2nd half! 

[Peoriabird]

Minny has some bad shooters on that team!

[benhillboy]

I should like Anthony Edwards more seeing how he grew up on/ around Campbellton Road same as me (you’re more likely to have your crib or person robbed on his side no doubt) but I just don’t.  I guess my All-Atlanta/ East Point/College Park team would be Malcolm Brogdon (who I like but didn’t play HS ball in the area)/ Gerald Wilkins (cool little player, went to my HS)/ Anthony Edwards/ Josh Smith (indifferent, also didn’t play HS ball in the area)/  Derrick Favors (rarely watched him) with Walker Kessler (also like) as 6th Man.  A few decent players from Marietta (Scoot, Jaylen, Shareef) but they don’t count, it’s Marietta.  
 

Only 1 HOF from the entire state of Georgia in Walt Frazier out of 146 players.  We gotta do better, I guess Dwight will join him soon but he never did anything for me.
 

I’m just here for Jalen swatting Towns’ shot 6 rows back and flushing one in Gobert’s mug.

Edited October 30, 2023 by benhillboy

[kg01]

1 minute ago, benhillboy said:

..... We gotta do better, I guess Dwight will join him soon but I’ve had my nose turned up at him from the jump...

"Where you lay your nose in your business, benhillbilly." - Dwhine Howard 

[lethalweapon3]

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

The matchup I'm watching tonight - OO vs Naz Reid.

[benhillboy]

11 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

The matchup I'm watching tonight - OO vs Naz Reid.

Yeah that is a good’un.  Naz likes to stretch so hopefully OO won’t have 2 fouls in like :55.

Edited October 30, 2023 by benhillboy

[JayBirdHawk]

I am enjoying Quin's take on what he's seeing and how the players are adapting.

 

...all about Execution.

[JayBirdHawk]

Another start. As it should be.

 

 

 

[Spud2nique]

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Sedale Threatt,

Loved me some Sedale the Sonic he was a bad boy.

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Willie Anderson

Shandon was a baller  

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Birdie

rip the great Pac! 

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Jaylen Brown, or an Edwards, it’s banking their futures heavily on top picks like Jabari Smith, Devin Vassell, Walker Kessler and Scoot Henderson.

 

Hot bed for talent is the ATL, reminds me of the yay back in the late 80’s with GP’s dad and all the younguns around then. I love Brown and and Scoot is gonna be a too. 
 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Jae Crowder.

My man  

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

While Atlanta joins eight other clubs with an NBA-high 15 back-to-back pairs, coach Quin Snyder’s club benefits from a league-high of 11 of the back-ends, like tonight’s, in front of home crowds.

This helps a lot. Home court edge when you’re tired, fans can help motivate to pull some W’s out.

 

5 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Ant-Man or Scoot, inspired by the home team, may be sitting in the stands, or watching nearby, ripe for the future picking.

I’ve always wanted an Atlanta native who is a star ️ play for the Hawks. Don’t tease me lw3 .

You are the man lw3! Thank you for another beautiful Hawks game preview! 
 

Vegas line: Minny -2.5 ML Minny -135 Hawks +115 o/u 227.5

Let’s get our first 2 game winning streak in a row @JayBirdHawk misses those Will Ferrell streaking gifs  

GO HAWKS!!!

tip in 20!

[JayBirdHawk]

2 minutes ago, Spud2nique said:

Let’s get our first 2 game winning streak in a row @JayBirdHawk misses those Will Ferrell streaking gifs  

GO HAWKS!!!

...

[Spud2nique]

2 hours ago, kg01 said:

"Where you lay your nose in your business, benhillbilly." - Dwhine Howard 

Hey we been talking about Edward a lot tonight, @marco102 do you remember the dude that didn’t think he was any good?  

 

[Spud2nique]

Good start floater Trae!

JJ jumped over Jaden wtf

Wow JJ gonna make me pay a 33333333

Edited October 30, 2023 by Spud2nique

[Spud2nique]

Oooohhhh weeeeee D Hunt a 333333

[terrell]

DRe still hitting his 3's...

Trae made a floater..

THats a Good sign

[Spud2nique]

JJ swats Gobert wtf