I believe that it can work.....

[Diesel]

These are the teams with the lowest defensive ratings in the game today...

 

The Pacers are the worst rated defensive team.  I watched them dismantle the mighty Celtics in the playin game.  Here's what I saw...

The maintained their offense.   They are proving that you can win games by outscoring your opponent.   What happened last night is that they scored, scored, and kept on scoring and waited for Boston to hit a drought... and Boston did.  The draught was not caused by good defense necessarily, it was caused by the fact that a lot of teams just make mistakes. 

If we can hinder the teams we play just enough, i.e. don't give up the really easy baskets... and we can keep scoring on every possessions, it can work. 

We are better defensively than Dallas and Indiana.. and just a little worse than Phoenix...  I believe we are built to outscore...

 

[JayBirdHawk]

16 minutes ago, Diesel said:

The maintained their offense. 

That's been our problem in most of our games. We hit these severe droughts where we just CANNOT score.

Could be in the 1st quarter when we get run off the floor, Or the 2nd quarter, or the dreaded start to the 3rd quarter, or the end of the 4th. We are just all over - just no consistency from quarter to quarter, minute to minute, player to player.

[Diesel]

2 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

That's been our problem in most of our games. We hit these severe droughts where we just CANNOT score.

Could be in the 1st quarter when we get run off the floor, Or the 2nd quarter, or the dreaded start to the 3rd quarter, or the end of the 4th. We are just all over - just no consistency from quarter to quarter, minute to minute, player to player.

I don't disagree.  I think our main problem happens when we REVERT.   Sometimes in the game we go back to "Hero ball" and that's when stuff starts falling apart.   The three headed monster of Trae, DJ, and Bogi start this thing where they want to score.  These are our main facilitators.   I don't mean to give Dre an excuse... however, offensively this year, Dre has been a reliable scorer.    We just have to stop going into Hero Ball mode.   Our players need to understand that the ball movement is the key to our success. 

Lately a big problem has been missing JJ.   Everybody has their role.. but JJ's role quickly became one who can run the break.  Have you noticed that our break has slowly disappeared since he's been gone.   

But all of that withstanding.

Without a major trade.. I believe that we can be a team that will be an offensive juggernaut once JJ comes back and gets comfortable.   I have like the experimenting that Snyder has done with the lineups.  For instance.

1. Mathues in the lineup..   Love it. 
2. Matthews in the lineup...   Love it. 
3. CC/OO lineup...  Love it. 

We just have to know when to use what lineup and not blow the offensive momentum.   The one thing we must get better at (something that Indiana does well) is rebounding the ball. 

The difference between us and Indiana in terms of margin of victory is them 3.21.. us 0.37.  Our games are too close... mainly because we give up some many rebounds.   So that may mean more CC/OO lineups... until we can do better. 

 

 

[Wretch]

There's a lot to be said on this topic...

If you look at clutch wins as tracked by the NBA (games within 5 points of each other in the last 5 minutes of the 4th) we rank near the bottom.  It's not that hard to understand why.  The game slows down in crunch time and teams tend to go more iso/pnr.  For us, it means we're back to Nate-balling.  When we play teams that are soft in the middle, like the Bucks and pacers, we look like world beaters.  When we play "handsy" teams like NY and Miami...the headlines read "Trae Young Exposed!"

Good offense and good defense are not mutually exclusive.  It not an either/or situation where wholesale changes or "A Serviceable Big Man^TM" are going to magically solve our problems.  Not pointing this at you @Diesel, because this thread reinforces my beliefs as well.  Like you, I think we're closer to being a threat than a lot of people realize. 

If you're just looking at W/L's, box scores, and metrics, you won't see it.  If you look back over the last couple of seasons at how we dominate in stretches, especially the last couple of seasons of storming back from double-digit deficits, you start to get an idea of what we could be.  Collectively, excluding the hater outliers, I think we've come to a consensus on what's needed to make the leap.

[Packfill]

This Hawks team is streaky offensively.  Hard to win consistently like that when you cannot lock down on defense, though it can lead to some good results (i.e., a trip to the ECF).

[Diesel]

12 hours ago, Wretch said:

There's a lot to be said on this topic...

If you look at clutch wins as tracked by the NBA (games within 5 points of each other in the last 5 minutes of the 4th) we rank near the bottom.  It's not that hard to understand why.  The game slows down in crunch time and teams tend to go more iso/pnr.  For us, it means we're back to Nate-balling.  When we play teams that are soft in the middle, like the Bucks and pacers, we look like world beaters.  When we play "handsy" teams like NY and Miami...the headlines read "Trae Young Exposed!"

Good offense and good defense are not mutually exclusive.  It not an either/or situation where wholesale changes or "A Serviceable Big Man^TM" are going to magically solve our problems.  Not pointing this at you @Diesel, because this thread reinforces my beliefs as well.  Like you, I think we're closer to being a threat than a lot of people realize. 

If you're just looking at W/L's, box scores, and metrics, you won't see it.  If you look back over the last couple of seasons at how we dominate in stretches, especially the last couple of seasons of storming back from double-digit deficits, you start to get an idea of what we could be.  Collectively, excluding the hater outliers, I think we've come to a consensus on what's needed to make the leap.

We stand with agreement.   The thing is that team that would come back in stretches had something that we haven't molded yet.   Big Johnny.  I hear people saying that JJ is better than JC.   And it's true that he's better at some things.   I expect him to fit in better when he gets back in the flow and we will look really good because everybody will be cooking.   But people just ignored the defense in spurts and rebounding in spurts that JC provided. 

The other thing is the efficiency of Trae with the ball in PNR.   it's a Blessing and a curse.   You won't turn it over... Trae will pick a defense apart.  BUT.. we were always setting up against a set defense.  We walked the ball up and we ran the most predictable sets known to man.  This is why people should respect Trae.  He ran an offense where everybody knew what he was doing.. Similar to Stockton to Malone... and he pulled it off most of the time. 

JJ comes back we have to run again.   JJ comes back, we need him to improve our rebounding and defense.   He is still learning too... but he must catch up and be what we need. 

 

 

11 hours ago, Packfill said:

This Hawks team is streaky offensively.  Hard to win consistently like that when you cannot lock down on defense, though it can lead to some good results (i.e., a trip to the ECF).

Without JJ.. we are very streaky.  With JJ, we're really good.