Bibby's a difference maker

[HoopsGuru25]

Despite losses, team has faith in point guard's leadership

Not a single head was dipped in the Hawks' locker room after Saturday's 100-94 loss to Utah.

Moral victories still don't count in the NBA, but you'll have to excuse the Hawks for feeling good after suffering their seventh loss in their last eight games.

They battled back from an early 19-point deficit. They dug out a 16-point hole in the fourth quarter to within a basket. It all has a way of empowering a team still trying to develop chemistry four games into life with a new point guard, Mike Bibby.

"I think anyone paying attention can see that we're coming together," Hawks forward Josh Smith said after his 30-point, 12-rebound effort against the Jazz. "Mike's made us a much better team. With his ability to stretch the defense with his outside shot and then dive into that defense and create for everybody else ... I think when we get back home things will really start coming together for us. You'll see."

"He's made a huge difference for us," Marvin Williams said. "Playing with him gives us a different look in games and certainly changes the way teams play us on the defensive end. The floor has definitely opened up with him out there knocking down all those [3-pointers] and now it's up to us to make sure we take advantage of the differences."

That didn't always happen against the Jazz.

The Hawks were messy on offense, piling up 22 turnovers resulting in 25 points for the Jazz

[HoopsGuru25]

Bibby has been as good as I could have hoped for with the exception of the 2nd quarter against the Lakers where everybody played horrible. His court vision is much better than his assist numbers would lead you to believe. Even Josh Smith was suprised at the lob he threw after a routine pick and roll. Scoring 50 points in his last 3 games is also a huge upgrade when you consider the previous point guard averaged 6 a game. It will be interesting to see what the Hawks do once they start facing weaker competition.

[D21]

...His court vision is much better than his assist numbers would lead you to believe...

When we were talking about what would be the best PG to trade for, this was a point I was already sure. The assists stats of Bibby don't match his skills. The fact is all these players did not play with a PG like him for years, only Joe knows since he played in PHX.

I am so happy it just needed some minutes to see it will open lots of thing, and the addition of Richardson is also helping. But it's so much of a radical change that it will need some time to use all the potential benefits.

The thing not fixed at this moment (except the need of a big guy) is getting a "winning mentality", something you can feel in some other teams. But with all these L in the last seasons, the only way to fix it is winning, winning, winning... hope it will start once back to ATL

[conleyorbust]

Good read. By the way, did anyone read Sekou's latest blog entry?

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared ... owaye.html

Says he unsure if we'll make the POs because we don't have a guy like Artest that can push people around - calls it oomgowaye. Sometimes I think Sekou just tries to hard and I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

[LL Cool Scott]

I'm really looking forward to next year and how this team comes together with a healthy Bibby and a full offseason and training camp to mesh. This year isn't too crucial to me because even if we sneak in the playoffs, we're probably getting swept by pistons or celtics.

Regardless - Bibby has looked AWESOME so far, especially considering he's injured and rusty.

[Lue_4_MVP]

Bibby = best PG that Atlanta had since Mookie

Hits shots, underrated passing, and doesn't dominate the ball like many players do. If only he played defense, he would be the perfect PG.

[Hawkamanic81]

Yeah, you can tell he is really helping. The Hawks are about to fall to 1-4 with him on the team. They were lucky to win that one game since GS had important players out.

[smabie]

Bibby's had 1.5 practices with the team since he joined them, and has played in 5 games over 7 nights during the same time. And the Hawks were in position to be 3-2 over the same stretch. And even more likely should have been 2-3.

I don't put the 1-4 record on Bibby. I put it on Woodson.

[Hawkamanic81]

It's not his fault, but the trade is going to mean nothing at the end. I don't care what they were in a position to do. Moral victories don't mean a thing.

[JoshB914]

^^^ I put our 1-4 record on being an awful road team and losing to LAL, GS, and SA- three teams that are better than us with our without Bibby. But I guess I'm still the only guy thta blames the Atlanta Hawks for games the Atlanta Hawks lose.

[HMFFL]

It's not his fault, but the trade is going to mean nothing at the end. I don't care what they were in a position to do. Moral victories don't mean a thing.

I'm assuming that you mean as far as the playoffs go. On the other hand the trades means everything to many fans because I feel more comfortable with the ASG now and I have some respect for them. I'm convinced their willing to go over the cap, maybe not by much, but it's still going to be over, and Billy Knight has filled a hole that's been open for years.

[tontoz]

The only problem i have with Bibby is that he frequently jumps to pass. He should probably cut out the no look passes until he knows the players better.

[smabie]

^^^ I put our 1-4 record on being an awful road team and losing to LAL, GS, and SA- three teams that are better than us with our without Bibby. But I guess I'm still the only guy thta blames the Atlanta Hawks for games the Atlanta Hawks lose.

You're only upset that Acie's out, so you don't have him to blame anymore.

I, personally, assess some of the blame on the players, when they deserve it. But also, personally, I believe that in order to win, you need to be put into a position to win. And I believe that Woodson so utterly fails at putting them in a position to win, that he puts them into a position to lose instead.

---
My wife and I watched the Spurs/Hawks game, since we're fans of both teams (I'm from there, she's from here; Spurs are the only game we definitely go to each year; I was the guy you can occasionally hear during the broadcast calling for them to Fire Woodson back at the November game). After the 1st, she was excited about the Hawks beating the Spurs, and wanted to call my folks at the game; I told her to wait. Got to halftime, up by 7 still, and she again wanted to call; I said don't bother. She asked why, I said, "The Spurs will win. Pop adjusts, Woodson doesn't." By the Hawks timeout in the 3rd (that's the 8 minute mark, when the Spurs were up 51-41), she went in the other room to work on her homework.

Has nothing to do with the players. Has nothing to do with who's hot or who's cold. Has everything to do with who's put into a position to win. Spurs are, Hawks aren't. And Woodson hasn't learned this fact in 30-odd years, I don't expect him to do so now.

[killbuckner]

Whats so funny is that if you look at the game thread EVERY loss there are fans blaming woodson for it. Obviously the Hawks would be the only undefeated team in the history of the league if we had a different coach since its always on the coach and never on the players.

[smabie]

And if you look at every game thread, there's fans who are blaming JJ for it. Or Smith. Or Marvin. Or Shelden, Zaza, Lue, AJ, Acie, etc etc etc.

There's even some fans who irrationally blame a single player, time after time, even in situations where the player has no control over the situation. Much like you say the coach does.

Does Woodson play? No. So some aspects of a loss are, obviously, the players' responsibilities. But certain of y'all say that Woodson has Zero, or minimal, liability, and that is just out and out wrong.

Some of us have given you, repeatedly, examples of poor coaching decisions which come up time and again and time and again with Woodson, where Woodson makes a decision that affects the team's performance, and makes that same mistake on multiple occasions. (Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.) Not saying that the players didn't fail to perform, but that some responsibility for their failure lies not with them, but with him. Others of us choose to ignore any influence Woodson has, and instead put the blame solely on the players. If it was isolated incidents, fine. If it was stuff that involved the same specific player over and over, fine. But it's not. Its a team-wide malaise, a team-wide infection. And the only person who has team-wide influence of that magnitude on a day-to-day basis isn't the individual players, and it isn't, despite your best wishes, the GM. It's the Head Coach. And as long as Woodson is the Head Coach, the Hawks will be a bunch of losers, even if you bring Kevin Garnett or Amare Stoudamire or Kobe Bryant in.

I mean, look at y'all's number one reason for wanting to bring in a "pure" PG: so that he can minimize Woodson's influence on the play-calling. Gee, sounds like someone's ignoring their own arguments there, hmm?

Until Bibby knows the terminology used well enough to not mix up his calls with his Kings plays, he will be dependent upon Woodson to call the offense. Same with any other mid-season replacement. So as long as we have Woodson, we have Woodson's offense.

[killbuckner]

Fans criticize woodson every game and will just say that whatever he did was wrong because it didn't work at the Hawks lost. Bibby shoots 1-11 and people blame Woodson. Marvin has a lousy game on offense and some ridiculous poster will say that Jeremy Richardson should have played half the 4th quarter against the spurs. I have said for a long time that it was time for Woodson to be fired because fans jsut scapegoat him for every loss and they won't look at the flawed roster until Woodson isn't there to blame anymore.

[Rod700]

^^^His rotations are terrible. He leaves lineups like Zaza, Solo, Chill, Richardson, Salim on the floor for far too long when they shouldn't all be out there at once anyway. This has been a problem long before Bibby arrived. Bibby cannot be expected to be the savior of the team when he is playing hurt and hasn't practiced much and hasn't learned the system yet. I don't think you can blame all the losses on Bibby just because he shot 1 for 11 in one game. When you have a coach that doesn't know how to utilize his players in effective lineups, that is the first problem you have to fix, and it's one that's affected our recorded long before Bibby arrived. Even if you think Woodson is a scape goat, I don't think you get to be high and mighty and pass a much more unfair judgement on Bibby this early on.

[killbuckner]

Rod- I am not blaming anything on Bibby. He had a bad game against a better team- it happens. I simply think that it would be tough for ANY coach to use this bench effectively. Its a really crappy bench where Childress is the only useful player. The funny thing to me is the woodson gets blamed by half the people for not using the bench enough and half for using it too much. In the end its just fans complaining because the hawks lost and people are using Woodson as the scapegoat.

[smabie]

FMarvin has a lousy game on offense and some ridiculous poster will say that Jeremy Richardson should have played half the 4th quarter against the spurs.

KB, I swear, if you misquote me one more GD time...

I did NOT say that JRich should have played half the 4th quarter against the Spurs.

I DID say that Salim should have played half the 4th quarter against the Spurs, and if not Salim *then* JRich. Instead of a Cold and Poor Shooting and Underperforming to Be Quite Frank Starter.

If someone can't hit the side of the barn, and someone else might have a better night at it, then you give the other guy a chance. That's how Speedy Claxton and Steve Jackson made names for themselves while on the Spurs -- they were played IN THE PLAYOFFS because the STARS ahead of them were failing to perform.

Stop focusing on the bloody names. Focus on the fact that guys who were having bad nights were out there at crunch time, and guys who were having good nights were on the bloody bench, where they most certainly can't score.

[JoshB914]

Woody is a bad coach. But if we had some toughness on this team we would have more wins. I just can't bring myself to put the majority of the blame on a guy in a suit. Players get paid all that $$$ for a reason, because they win games.

I would say Jax and Claxton made names for themselves because you have to be deep to win a title and not simply because they were "given a chance." Those two guys are a lot better players (this of course being when Speedy has knees) than our backups. You say you want Woody to give guys a chance, but then everyone goes off on him when Zaza/Salim/Solo get minutes and play awful. It's a double standard.

As for substitutions, you are right on with Woody's stupid rotations. That is where he hurts us most, I swear he forgets Horford is on the bench sometimes in the second half.

Is Woody a bad coach? Absolutely. Does he deserve the majority of the blame? No. I think a lot of people just don't want to admit that we are not a very good team (with Bibby we are a .500 team or slightly above that).