Atlanta Hawks vs Houston Rockets game thread

[ATL Boy]

Starting 5: Atlanta Hawks
PG: Jeff Teague
SG: Joe Johnson
SF: Marvin Williams
PF: Josh Smith
C: Al Horford
Bench: Tracy Mcgrady, Vladimire Radmonovic, Jason Collins, Zaza Pachulia, Ivan Johsnon, Jerry Stackhouse, Jannero Pargo, Donald Sloan, Willie Green
Key Injuries: Kirk Hinrich
Coach: Larry Drew
Houston Rockets
PG: Kyle Lowry
SG: Kevin Martin
SF: Chase Budinger
PF: Luis Scola
C: Jordan Hill
Bench: Goran Dragic, Courtney Lee, Chandler Parsons, Marcus Morris, Patrick Patterson, Samuel Dalembert, Jonny Flynn, Terrence Williams, Hasheem Thabeet.
Key injuries: Jeff Adrien
Coach: Kevin Mchale
Where:
What happened last game:
Atlanta: Hawks 105 - Nets 98
Houston: Grizzlies 113 - Rockets 93
Storyline: Tracy Mcgrady playing his former team the Houston Rockets.
New Years eve game: ITS GONNA BE A PARTY IN HOUSTON!!!!!! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8&ob=av2e[/youtube]

[MaceCase]

We match up well with these guys and even have more than a few advantages in our starting lineup outside of PG where Houston has some horses behind their stud Lowry. Will be good to see how well the bench fares because Houston actually has talented depth outside of C so the starters are going to have to do some damage before they sit.

[Ruhiel]

Lowry isn't playing around. Wonder how JT will match up or take some things from Lowry. Word is Houston is out of shape.

[HMFFL]

Nice thread.

Hawks are favored to win by 2 points.

[rg doc]

Jeff Teague against Kyle Lowry should be an interesting matchup

[Superiorblogman]

Cool, this could be a loss. I actually don't think we match up so well with them they have things we don't have like a long athletic big in Dalembert, a crafty low post scorer in Scola, and the arguably have better depth than us.

[nvc]

First real challenge of the season - should be a fun game to watch. Lowry, Martin and Scola can all do damage, so Hawks are going to have to continue their defensive focus to come out with a win here.

[Guy986]

The Rockets are on the 3rd night of a b2b2b.

[LarsV8]

good luck

[HMFFL]

0-3 from the line. Yup, it's time to turn that around.

[Bucked19]

Man we need to trade Smith he is so stupid,why does he think he's the PG.

[ShaY]

Larry Drew with stupid rotations tonight , how in the hell Pargo and Green playing before Mcgrady.
Pargo is really bad we need Kirk back asap.

And Smith he never makes the outside ' he could have been such a better player if he stopped shooting those.

[LarsV8]

Good game.

Good luck with your season.

[parson]

Although we only lost by 11, I never felt we were in it. Teague was gassed, as was Marvelous. I've decided the sign that Josh Smith is tired is when his IQ drops. I declare he thought he'd been moved to the PG position.

I guess we're gonna see a whole lot of these kind of games this year. Oh well, the regular season doesn't matter, anyway.

[parson]

Seriously though, we'd better figure out why the last 2 games have seen so many wide-open 3s from the other team. Either our defense is sleeping or the other guys are REALLY getting lucky.

[baseline33]

wow, Lowery is the man, but i'm not too upset by the lose. it really seemed like the Rockets were playing above themselves rather then having the better talent.

Hawks could easily beat the Rockets in a series, but tonight was just a special night for Lowery, and because of that, he got everybody open looks.

it is funny how great Teague does against elite PGs like Deron, Rose, and Wall, but Lowery is just a different type of PG, and Teague was just use to those shoot first, super athletic PG, that Lowery's pace and style, really just threw him off for one night.

it seem like alot of players on the Rockets had a career night, or close to it, and even with everybody playing great on the Rockets, the Hawks were still in it.

the only thing that concerns me is Horford's rebounding, but besides that, Josh, Joe, Jeff, and Marvin had a slightly off night, but i don't think it is a big deal, it is just one game off a back to back on the road.

Kirk would have helped in this situation, and that would have probably been enough to get the victory, but i think Kirk is going to get traded soon.

[FCNATL85]

No more excuses. hawks got complacent with a ream who was playing their 3rd game in row and got in at 3>00 a.m. from MEM...
We are not there yet...
Needed more minutes from Teague, Pachulia and Marvin.

[MaceCase]

Won't comment on the game too much, all I sayw was about 3 quarters on my phone where Josh was doing his best Andray Blatche impression but our defense as a whole was horrendous. LD clearly has a collapsing defense that depends on our athletes to recover to the perimeter but tonight we were just getting killed. Like seeing Al continue to work in the post though but just wish his jumpshot and freethrows were existent at the same time. Clearly spent too much time lifting weights because he's jacked but he's lost his touch on his his jumper outside of the post hook shots.

[Ruhiel]

8 FTA, nuff said.

Same old stupid Hawks. Full of guys who can't control the game pace via FTA. So they give it to a guy who is offensively inept at creating anything but FTA. A player who gets FTA by driving left but then he misses them or you play off of him and easily goad him into best shot available. A jumper, that he often misses.

Yeah hes a talented passer but he is not a superstar, luckily HOU is a WC team

[Skyhawk1]

Smith makes it really hard for anyone to enjoy watching the Hawks. He's got some really bad mental breakdowns. It's been like that since he joined us. Now, Teague wasn't prepared for this game obviously. The only problem I have with this loss is the fact it was the Rockets 3rd game in 3 nights, so even though the Hawks are also a little tired, not many teams would lose a game like that, specially if they have something to prove... maybe the Hawks just don't care.