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The hawks beat the Cavs abd raps lost twice to them but raps beat hawks twice now explain

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We've lost to Toronto twice, I can't say we're better.


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It's hard to gauge when literally our whole roster was on fire the whole night. Cleveland, Atlanta, Toronto, Washington, and Chicago are the top tier eastern teams though that's for sure.

Raptors beat Cleveland once. Then they lost to them twice without DeMar DeRozan in the lineup. Raps were outplayed in the second game, but had control of the third game until the fourth where they allowed them to come back. Raps showed they can compete with Cleveland even without their second best player. I don't think those two losses against Cleveland are a good example of how good the Raps are.

Wait until DeMar comes back in a couple weeks and Atlanta plays a couple more good opponents until you decide who's better than whom.

Big3JJ2PatnLou wrote:The hawks beat the Cavs abd raps lost twice to them but raps beat hawks twice now explain

1. Puncuation...please.

2. Regular season head to head matchups don't determine who is the better team. it's why we play 82 games and play every team multiple times before letting more than half the league into the post-season. You can gauge the caliber of a team, but determining who is better based off a single Wednesday night game in December is near impossible.

H3ll, we lost to the Lakers, but no one anywhere thinks they are better than we are. (Except Kobe.)

Come back in a couple of months when DeRozan is healthy again, our schedule has gotten harder, and we have more games played against common opponents. THEN we can debate the merits of which team is better.

I thought we'd beat Toronto at home, but the Raptors shot lights out from 3. Both teams are very underrated/unappreciated, but are very dependent on the 3 point ball. In a series, the games would be very high scoring I'd imagine. I can't say we are better than them when they're 2-0 vs us though. The media and fans in general still have Atlanta/Toronto/Washington below Chicago and Cleveland, but I think there are a lot of question marks surrounding Cleveland and Chicago. Chicago obviously has health concerns, and I'm not a fan of the way they overuse their players during the regular season. Come playoff time, they're going to be spent if their patterns remain the same. Cleveland looks great on paper, but they're soft down low and defensively. I think Irving and Love are a bit overrated IMO. Both are still really good, but they're flawed defensively and Love gets bullied down low by the more physical bigs. I'm curious to see how we perform vs the top tier West teams.

Tendo64 wrote:Raptors beat Cleveland once. Then they lost to them twice without DeMar DeRozan in the lineup. Raps were outplayed in the second game, but had control of the third game until the fourth where they allowed them to come back. Raps showed they can compete with Cleveland even without their second best player. I don't think those two losses against Cleveland are a good example of how good the Raps are.

Wait until DeMar comes back in a couple weeks and Atlanta plays a couple more good opponents until you decide who's better than whom.

Even with DeRozan I think Raps wouldve lost the 2nd game. The third, it felt like LBJ simply decided to come back rather than Raps letting them do so. Even though Raps had a ~10 pt lead for like 96% percent of the game, it still felt like LBJ was controlling the tempo. Even game 1 was a freebee because LBJ was trying to "teach" his team a lesson.

Hawks could've blown out any team in the league with the way they were shooting against Cavs.

Anyhoo my point is using Cavs as a gauge is not a very good metric. Both teams have had relatively easy schedules and this thread should be re-visited after the AS break.

Push......

Even with a healthy DeMar DeRozan, i think the Hawks equal the Raptors, or sum it up in another way. If the Hawks and Raptors are in a series, it will go to 7 games.

I think the reason why the Raptors are so good right now is because they had all last year to play together and build team chemistry . While the Hawks didn't have Horford and Dennis last year.

As for the Hawks, they are only 50% their when it comes to team chemistry. Horford is still learning how to fit in with Millsap and Dennis is still learning because its only his second year.

Even with Horford at 50%, the Hawks are still up their with the Raptors and Wizards. So the big light at the end of the tunnel with Hawks fans is "will Horford go back to being 17/10?" If Horford can, then most Hawks fans will feel comfortable with the Hawks steadily moving past the Raptors and Wizards as the season goes on. If he doesn't, then it will probably be a 3 way battle in the east, all the way up to the end of the season.

It's a tough call. Al wasn't playing as well then as he is now. I'd be curious to see how TOR will take account of Al.

For what it's worth, if there was a team to beat the Raptors and come out of the Eastern Conference, I'd hope it would be the Hawks!