Did resting the starters finally catch up with us?

[ChuckChilly]

I think majority of the reason the Hawks no longer look like they did mid season is because of coach Bud getting carried away with resting players. It changed our chemistry, which made our ball movement and defense decline. I think this is the reason why Stever Kerr didn't use the same strategy heavily. Because he valued chemistry over potential health.

[Jamaaliver]

Not sure I follow this line of thinking. Our starters have years of experience playing together in the same system.

The playoffs are harder cause teams now focus solely on our personnel, weaknesses and system.

Playing Teague, Millsap and Korver limited minutes in March doesn't explain why we suddenly can't hit open three pointers in May.

Also, Blatt is a poor in-game manager. But his between game adjustments are actually pretty strong. Bud hasn't been as good in either postseason as during the regular season.

[Geaux_Hawks]

Resting guys certainly could have an affect on guys being cold and out of rhythm, which is why we could be shooting bad, and settling into iso situations. We probably needed the rest though. Our injuries would have probably been worse without it.

[MaceCase]

Can't say that Kerr didn't use the same strategy heavily when he kind of did use the same strategy heavily. Oh okay, he didn't sit 4 or 5 men down at a time, sure, but he did alternate 2 guys getting rest and kept guys' minutes so low to the point that they'd sit most of many 2nd halves.

Bud drew blood from a stone and now that stone has bled out. It's a unit that does a lot of its damage off of effort but of course that effort gets strained when despite resting you have the unlucky event of having a few of the component parts get dinged up right before and during the playoffs. Guy's already giving maximal effort can't go above and beyond that to cover for other guys whose focus wanes or are preoccupied with their injuries.

[Jamaaliver]

Jeff Schultz over at AJC suspects the opposite may be true. That dead legs, weary bodies are catching up to a team that's never played this deeply into the season:

They look like they have nothing left. There is a line between quitting and what happened Friday night. Hawks’ players didn’t quit. They just appeared to hit a wall, physically and mentally, and gave a weak attempt to fight through it. The training staff is running low on ice and duct tape.

If this is the breakdown moment, there were warning signs. The Hawks’ inconsistent play down the stretch of the season and in the first two rounds of the playoffs suggested the problem was more than a sudden lack of rhythm or forgetting to move the ball.

Fatigue affects everything. It leads one of the NBA’s best shooting teams to suddenly go 10-for-49 (20.4 percent) from outside the 3-point arc in the first two games of this series. The Hawks are shooting 32.6 percent in 3-pointers in the playoffs after ranking second during the season at 38 percent.
Is fatigue playing a role?

Horford: “That’s a possibility. But we’re in this position and we have to be able to push through that. It’s definitely challenging. I’m not going to make excuses, but that definitely plays a factor.”

They’re running low on healthy bodies. And hope.

[JonFromVA]

Once the Spurs went down, the path to the finals was wide open to a whole lot of teams that had never played on this kind of stage. Fatigue? Frustration? Lack of leadership? Inexperience? Injuries? Extreme scouting and game planning? Denying a superstar what he wants to do?

These are all things teams new to the grind either have to figure out how to deal with, or fall by the wayside.

But yes, missing wide open shots is a sign of fatigue and tired legs; but sometimes the spotlight is just too bright.

[ChuckChilly]

Jeff Schultz over at AJC suspects the opposite may be true. That dead legs, weary bodies are catching up to a team that's never played this deeply into the season:

They look like they have nothing left. There is a line between quitting and what happened Friday night. Hawks’ players didn’t quit. They just appeared to hit a wall, physically and mentally, and gave a weak attempt to fight through it. The training staff is running low on ice and duct tape.

If this is the breakdown moment, there were warning signs. The Hawks’ inconsistent play down the stretch of the season and in the first two rounds of the playoffs suggested the problem was more than a sudden lack of rhythm or forgetting to move the ball.

Fatigue affects everything. It leads one of the NBA’s best shooting teams to suddenly go 10-for-49 (20.4 percent) from outside the 3-point arc in the first two games of this series. The Hawks are shooting 32.6 percent in 3-pointers in the playoffs after ranking second during the season at 38 percent.
Is fatigue playing a role?

Horford: “That’s a possibility. But we’re in this position and we have to be able to push through that. It’s definitely challenging. I’m not going to make excuses, but that definitely plays a factor.”

They’re running low on healthy bodies. And hope.

Im not buying it. The last thing I would expect this squad to be is tired with the amount of minutes the starters played, and the 4 or 5 games they sat out. I just think we peaked extremely early, and Coach Bud got a little too ahead of himself thinking that we were better than we actually were, causing him to focus on other things instead of our weaknesses.

[MaceCase]

I think Bud recognized that this team is an intricate engine that can only perform to optimum ability if all the gears and cogs are intact and running smoothly and tried to adjust accordingly. Unfortunately, due to the NYPD and guys getting dinged up right before or at the beginning of the playoffs gunked up the engine. It's a far cry from teams that run by having two diesel engines and a nuclear reactor, they can survive losing any two of those and still manage to churn out production.

[theatlfan]

Jeff Schultz over at AJC suspects the opposite may be true. That dead legs, weary bodies are catching up to a team that's never played this deeply into the season:

They look like they have nothing left. There is a line between quitting and what happened Friday night. Hawks’ players didn’t quit. They just appeared to hit a wall, physically and mentally, and gave a weak attempt to fight through it. The training staff is running low on ice and duct tape.

If this is the breakdown moment, there were warning signs. The Hawks’ inconsistent play down the stretch of the season and in the first two rounds of the playoffs suggested the problem was more than a sudden lack of rhythm or forgetting to move the ball.

Fatigue affects everything. It leads one of the NBA’s best shooting teams to suddenly go 10-for-49 (20.4 percent) from outside the 3-point arc in the first two games of this series. The Hawks are shooting 32.6 percent in 3-pointers in the playoffs after ranking second during the season at 38 percent.
Is fatigue playing a role?

Horford: “That’s a possibility. But we’re in this position and we have to be able to push through that. It’s definitely challenging. I’m not going to make excuses, but that definitely plays a factor.”

They’re running low on healthy bodies. And hope.

Have to agree with this. Remember seeing a SportsVU stat that measured how much a player ran in a game and throughout the season. Don't recall the exact figures, but Korver was clearly #1 and 2 other Haws' starters were in the top 5 (IIRC, it was Millsap and Teague). Obviously, this is a product of the motion offense which Coach Bud wanted to counteract by using his depth. Unfortunately, Thabo's injury led to more minutes for wings while the ineffectiveness of Schröder, Mike Scott, and Pero especially earlier in the playoffs really hurt is other positions.

I think we can look at the 3PT% of many of our top of the rotation players as proof of dead legs:
- Korver - regular season 3PT%: 49.2%; postseason: 35.5%
- Millsap - 35.6%; 30.6%
- Teague - 34.3%; 32.3%
- Schröder - 35.1%; 23.5%
- Bazemore - 36.4%; 21.4%
- Horford - 30.6%; 22.2%

Demarre, who remained about the same, and Pero were the only ones who didn't show a dropoff. Somehow, we went from elite here in the regular season to well below average in the postseason.

My eyeballs on the game tells me the same story - we were lethargic especially in the 3Q and a career journeyman like Thompson was able to use his fresh legs to dominate the paint against us. I'd also be willing to bet that our 3PT% against was significantly higher as well (albeit part of that was Josh Smith's incredible g1, we didn't close out on 3PT shooters nearly as well as we did in the regular season either). The only time we showed life was after the incredible comeback by the backups in g3 of the WASH series which, even though we lost the game, gave the starters a 2nd wind and led to us taking 3 in a row even though WASH should have had the momentum with a 2-1 series lead and having taken home court advantage. I was hoping that would continue on into the CLE series, but it really didn't. We could only keep the momentum of that incredible effort for so long.