Hawks analysis for the upcoming season

[cyman3]

ok, so i saw my hawks play for the first time this year. heres my preseason thoughts after watching the game vs the heat.

1)A WALKER- whether or not u like him, thinks hes a ballhog, or think hes a mere 1-yr rental- 1 fact remains: we need him badly on our team!

how many times did we see guys just passing the ball left and right? no one on our team takes that INITIATIVE to get make a move offensively. That is why we need A WALKER on our team... for atleast THIS YEAR- just to stay competitive. w/o Walker, we would average 60 ppg this year. And as for his 3-pt shooting, i think Woodson talked to him about it and u can tell- hes not shooting the 3 ball as much.

2)K Anderson is clearly the best PG on our team. R Ivey looks like a great energy player to have on the team.

3)Childress and Diaw do NOT need to be on the floor at the same time. both are hesitate to shoot the ball. childress is struggling. as for Diaw- i just wish Coach Woodson would try out a little experiment. MAKE DIAW take atleast 15 shot attempts in a preseason game. if he doesnt take 15 shot attempts, he gets benched for a long long time. warn him that he'll get benched if he doesnt take more shots! that'll make the dude shoot more!

4)Willis (at this stage) and Collier are both backup Centers in this league. However, playing in the EAST- u dont need an allstar CENTER to be successful.

5)At this point, Josh Smith looks more ready to contribute than Josh Childress. In 20 minutes, Smith went to the FT line 8 times. he was very productive.

6)At times, i saw Jon Barry try to make our team a little more uptempo offensively. a little bit of the SACRAMENTO KINGS flavor, but once he passed it- no one had intentions of running the floor w/ him.

7)Which leads to my final point- CHEMISTRY! these guys are getting used to playing with each other. for few players, like Anderson + Walker, they know exactly how to play with each other. for the rest, they need more experience playing w/ one another.

[Weez]

I am was truly impressed with AW's handles and aggressiveness in getting to the basket, drawing fouls. part of his game that I didn't know existed. However...he's a career 66% FT shooter? 55% last year? WTF!?!

KA has really impressed me as well. It's amazing how differnt it is watching the Hawks with a true pg running the show...just remarkable really. Too bad we can't afford to play ihim more than 25 minutes a game or so.

Barry is our bench energy guy. Plays D, can run the fast break, hit the deep shot...he's prefect for a sixth man at this point.

Harrington is learning what it means to be a number one or two option on a team, and all that comes with it.

Willis appears to be our best center...unfortunate that if we want to have his services for the entire year we've got to really watch his minutes, how we use him.

Collier's nice in that he has consistently hit the 15 footer...but he's simply not starting quality center in the L. Doesn't have enough D or enough O to warrant that.

[Employee8]

Weez, if you take a look at Walker's "mechanics" and "form" at the FT line, you'll see why he is a 66% career FT shooter....He looks like he is just flinging them ala a Catapult to the basket....Plus, he doesn't bend his knees enough to have a Good Arc on his shot.

If Walker could make at least 70% of his FTs, he'd be scoring over 25 a night easy.