the NEW Atlanta Hawks

Harry10 · Post #1 » by **Harry10** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:56 am

before the Bibby trade.... the Hawks could only win if Joe had a good shooting night. if his jump shot was falling, he would have an outside game and be able to bring it to the basket.

but Bibby has really changed the Hawks. he has definately lifted Joe's game to another level. people keep talking about how Joe has stepped it up towards the end of the season, but really it is mainly to do with Bibby, and the respect he brings on the court which makes it hard for other teams to double Joe now.

but the thing is, before the Hawks were dependent of Joe's jumpshot.... and now the Hawks are dependent on Bibby's jumpshot (mainly his ability to hit open 3s).

it really doesn't matter how many assits Bibby gets, or how good or not good his defense is, or how few turnovers he gives up..... basically, if Bibby can hit those open 3s from Joe's doubles, the Hawks can win, or atleast compete with any team. Bibby is basically a one trick horse, which i'm fine with because it has really been effective for the Hawks.

JoshB914 · Post #2 » by **JoshB914** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:51 pm

Let's give JJ some credit here. He's really started to play like a star and assert himself on the floor. I was very critical of him early in the season, because when he plays at his highest level we will win games this time around as our team is good enough to do so. He has been one of the best players in the league since the AS Break.

Bibby has helped a lot. A lot of it is just his presence as a perimeter threat. He hasn't exactly been fantastic for us (just decent in my opinion), but just having a guy that can stretch the defense has completely changed our offensive outlook.

conleyorbust · Post #3 » by **conleyorbust** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:08 pm

Yeah, having a real pg has certainly helped the guys play better. Al and Josh have done a better job shooting the ball since Bibby got here and the improvement in Joe's game has been pretty obvious. Give those guys some credit too though.

I looked at our team rankings (the stuff Hollinger keeps track of). Our offensive efficiency has gone up a ton since Bibby got here and so has our pace... on the other hand our defensive efficiency has slipped from 8/9 to 18/19 which is partially from replacing a solid defender in AJ with an atrocious one in Bibby and partially from losing guys who could at least grab some boards and give hard fouls in the front court.

The nice thing is that we can keep our core, or only move one or two players, and improve a lot just by getting a bench that contributes ANYTHING (defense and 3pt shooting would be the priorities of course).

Anyway, this season has had a strange arch, we started out slowly but then found our groove as an athletic-gritty defensive team, then we lost that groove, traded for Bibby, looked terrible and then became an uptempo athletic team that couldn't play a lick of D.

Retrovision · Post #4 » by **Retrovision** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 8:21 pm

this team lives or dies with JJ/Bibby the only way we have a chance in hell at beating the celtics is if another player steps up as a costant scorer thoughout the series

conleyorbust · Post #5 » by **conleyorbust** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:55 pm

Retrovision wrote:this team lives or dies with JJ/Bibby the only way we have a chance in hell at beating the celtics is if another player steps up as a costant scorer thoughout the series

Smith and Horford's scoring have been up quite a bit since Bibby got here and the team got into synch... Smith's scoring in March was 16 on around .500 and his scoring the 6 games in this month has been 20 on .47 and Horford has been at about 12 ppg on .57 shooting.

Our offense has been fine, our defense has slipped a whole bunch and since we have no depth we don't have a guy to bring in to hit shots so even if Johnson and Smith have monster games we can still lose (see the Indy game).

Like I said, it'll be easy for the new coach to look better than Woody because the new gm should re-load the bench and people will say, "he got X many more wins with basically the same squad" even though the depth issue won't (shouldn't) be here.

Retrovision · Post #6 » by **Retrovision** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:59 am

I dont understand why J-Rich doesnt get any burn. He can shoot the ball at a great rate, and his defensive isnt any worse then anything else we ever put on the court. Maybe the depth issue can get better without bringing in alot of guys, speedy claxton might ( .01% chance he is healthy) be a solid 2nd string point guard who can change the tempo of the game when he steps on the floor. Which is something we have been lacking since.. well since... Ummmm?? Yeah its been that long.

conleyorbust · Post #7 » by **conleyorbust** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:12 am

Retrovision wrote:I dont understand why J-Rich doesnt get any burn. He can shoot the ball at a great rate, and his defensive isnt any worse then anything else we ever put on the court. Maybe the depth issue can get better without bringing in alot of guys, speedy claxton might ( .01% chance he is healthy) be a solid 2nd string point guard who can change the tempo of the game when he steps on the floor. Which is something we have been lacking since.. well since... Ummmm?? Yeah its been that long.

Yeah, Sekou wrote about that in his last blog. He basically thinks that while our second unit isn't stacked, they are definitely better than they have looked lately. I tend to agree, there are a lot of times we will bring Chil in the game when we really need a shooter on the floor, Chil is probably a little less of a mark on D but we end up with too many guys clustered around the basket on offense and it gunks up the works.

Speedy becoming healthy would be nice, so would Speedy retiring... one of the two. If he was healthy he'd be a nice change of pace backup who could stay in front of other pgs, if he retired we could bring back AJ with that room.

Post #8 » by **HMFFL** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:18 am

Retrovision wrote:I dont understand why J-Rich doesnt get any burn. He can shoot the ball at a great rate, and his defensive isnt any worse then anything else we ever put on the court.

Woodson needs to realize that he needs another 3 point option. He can't continue to expect Joe and Mike to make all them, and J-Rich could be very useful for us. Coach Woodson is just extremely bad at utilizing all his options, not that you didn't realize that already.

Retrovision · Post #9 » by **Retrovision** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:18 am

yeah, I loved what AJ did for this team. I wish that this organization didnt give up on sheldon so quickly I believe that he was way better then what everybody on the board gave him credit for.

conleyorbust · Post #10 » by **conleyorbust** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:27 am

Retrovision wrote:yeah, I loved what AJ did for this team. I wish that this organization didnt give up on sheldon so quickly I believe that he was way better then what everybody on the board gave him credit for.

Wouldn't go that far...

I wouldn't mind bringing AJ back because he would be a really useful backup for not much money - by the way, newest Slam has an article about him.

Shelden was better last year than this year so yeah, he was probably better than he showed but he has to learn his role in the league. He has to kill the notion that he was hot **** in college and just become as tough as possible. He needs to use that strength to become a nasty post defender and rebounder, he needs to become automatic with that midrange J, and he just needs to outwork the other guy because if he can't do that he won't have a spot in this league.

JoshB914 · Post #11 » by **JoshB914** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:49 am

Shelden Williams is terrible, I never want to hear his name again.