Wed: Miami at Atlanta

[ATL DirtyBird]

Bench needs to buy at least two minutes. I now realize how much Jamal means to our bench. Our bench looks sooooo lost out there.

[ATL DirtyBird]

Not the way you want to enter the all star break. Worst offensive game since the last time we played this team. Wade didnt do much but JO had a ridiculous game. Were starting to lose ground on the Magic.

[BAMABIRD]

Terrible game, Jamal Crawford or not. All the turnovers help kill us. We have to wait until next week to erase the taste of this loss, that sucks. I'm still trying to figure out why we resigned bibby? Oh well.

[parson]

Huge difference, ey what?

[evildallas]

Evidently we are one injury away from being mediocre. Couldn't buy a basket from outside. Horrible night for Joe and Bibby and Marvin. Our bench was impotent.

[ATL DirtyBird]

Evidently we are one injury away from being mediocre. Couldn't buy a basket from outside. Horrible night for Joe and Bibby and Marvin. Our bench was impotent.

Evidently so. We were handed some adversity and we folded. Joe and the bench folded. We got outscored by 15 in the 4th. We usually do the outscoring in the 4th. Bad game. Lets move on!

[parson]

Evidently we are one injury away from being mediocre. Couldn't buy a basket from outside. Horrible night for Joe and Bibby and Marvin. Our bench was impotent.

Well, one injury to a major-minutes guy (Crawford), one injury to a big man off the bench (Zaza) and influenza to our best player (Joe).

Apart from that, you're right.

[Hawkeyes]

Just goes to show you how important Crawford is to this club. I still don't know why we even bother having Joe Smith on the roster. The guy is old, slow, unathetlic, and a joke out there. I liked the signing in the offseason, but he is easily done.

[BigAlHorfordROY]

I know we were without the two best players on our bench but lets look at something here

Started out 19-6

Since 14-12

Honestly tonight can't be used as an excuse for the near .500 ball over the last 26 games. Don't get me wrong I love the Hawks and the squad we have, but if this continues it will be another year like last year. Great season but we will all be left saying this current team isn't championship material. Just like we were left saying after last season...

Any thoughts to the .500 ball being played? The only reason it still looks somewhat good is the east is so weak aside from Cle, Orl, Bos and us

[SAUCERY_SWEET]

It is what it is, no one should be really that much of a homer to think we are NBA Championship ready. We're clearly not. If we develop any kind of substantial injuries, we're a .500 team. We've been lucky in that aspect.

Now to say that we have no chance at a run is being pretty silly also but i'm just saying, let's get real here. We are on the fringe but not quite there yet. Next year there should be no reason we shouldn't make a run for it.

This particular game being the last before the break and everybody's mindset going in different directions and 2 of your main bench guys out, 1 who plays starter/clutch minutes. I'm not terribly surprised at this , NO. Margin was a bit out of hand and i'm sure we can do a lot better than that 4th quarter slowdance but this isn't anything i'm worried about overall.

[DirtybirdGA]

They just had the break on their minds...It seemed Uncle Joe Smith did has he got owned by Haslem.

[playa_lev]

Am I the only one, who thinks Woody bloomed this game big. In the first quarter when we were dominating this game, who was the first player to take a sit on the bench? The best hawk in the game, Josh Smith.

When we were up by 10 (or so), and the Heat started to have a run, our bench players still stayed in the game, and our starters on the bench.

Woody had a couple of big mistakes in this game.

[general]

Woodson does not know how to coach we have a freak athlete in josh smith and a hard working big man in Horford and Johnson who's a big guard and a offensive machine in Crawford.That's why our record is what it is today woody lost us a few games this year due to his rotation at times..He panics and starts losen it...

[evildallas]

I would see that 14-12 stint as an indication of us facing better competition or at least ones we have matchup problems with:
2 losses to Cleveland
2 losses to Orlando
2 losses to Oklahoma City
1 loss at Denver
1 loss at San Antonio
1 loss at Miami

The other 3 losses during that stint were less understandable:
the OT loss to Chicago on the road that was a blown opportunity and lead.
the OT loss to Nate Robinson's comeback and the Knicks.
the home loss to Miami without 2 rotation players.

To somewhat defend Woodson last night, he couldn't play the starters every minute. In retrospect he could have subbed differently by leaving 2 or 3 starters on the floor in the 1st half and breaking in only 2 or 3 subs at a time. He tried this in the 2nd half and it didn't really work, but it might have protected the early lead longer to change the flow of the entire game. As bad as the reserves played in the 1st half it was overshadowed by how bad the team did in the 4th. We couldn't get stops and we could hit shots. Cook might have gotten most of his points against backups but O'Neal was shooting over Al a lot. We did a decent job on Wade which is what we've proven we can do, they just had other players to step up. Furthermore being without 2 key subs meant that we didn't have our best alternative to a cold Joe, Marvin and Bibby and we experienced a bigger drop-off when we subbed on the front line.

BTW, our first 6 losses contained the understandable:
road loss at Lakers
road loss at Charlotte (end of long road trip)
loss to Orlando
and the inexplicable:
loss to Knicks (Josh ejected)
loss at Detroit
loss at New Orleans (no Paul)

[ATL DirtyBird]

Woodson does not know how to coach we have a freak athlete in josh smith and a hard working big man in Horford and Johnson who's a big guard and a offensive machine in Crawford.That's why our record is what it is today woody lost us a few games this year due to his rotation at times..He panics and starts losen it...

Its one game.