"It's extremely frustrating," Josh Smith said. "For us to come out and play well and beat a team like the Lakers with Gasol, and then to beat Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Orlando and those types of teams, that tells you what type of team we could be. And then to come out and not be able to stay on the same floor with Houston ... and that's not to take anything away from Houston, because they're a great team.
"But we should be better than that. If we can beat the teams we've beaten this year, we should be able to beat anybody."
There is agreement in the locker room that these Hawks, as presently constituted, haven't given a true representation of who they are. Whether that's a product of their makeup or something else is the lingering question.
"I can't speak about the time before me," Hawks point guard Anthony Johnson said, "but our record is certainly not indicative of how good a team we are. And it's disappointing to every guy in this locker room. There's no way we should be below .500. That's the worst-case scenario for this team. The bottom line is you have to go out there and get it done between the lines. And we haven't done that consistently."
It's enough to make some Hawks players agree that any change, might be a good thing.
"Obviously, I'm paid to play and not to make decisions from the management side," Josh Childress said. "But when you see stagnation in your style of play or the way things are going, you have to look to see if you can add something or subtract something, whatever that may be, to get things rolling in the right direction.
"And that means anything, maybe just something to change the locker room dynamic. It could be something so small that might help. And I guess we all need to be a little more analytical about that and certainly be more proactive. Because the worst thing we could do is sit by and let another opportunity pass us by without doing whatever we needed to in order to make good things happen."
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