HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Well, the 2008 portion of the 2008-2009 season is over for the Atlanta Hawks and I don't think we could have asked for a better start than 21-10. I mean, we could have, but that would have just been greedy.

These are happy times for Hawks fans so I'm not even going to nitpick today. I hope everyone has a splendid New Year and hopefully we'll pick up in 2009 right where we left off in 2008.

Although I hope sometime between now and the New Year Coach Woodson finds some minutes for Acie Law (without Flip alongside him). WE just want to know if he's capable.

JOE THE BASKETBALL PLAYER

Joe The Basketball Player (as Steve Holman calls him and as I shall now refer to him) was fantastic tonight. He had 41 points against the Baby Bulls. J-Smoove had a very very good night adding 24 points. My boy came to play tonight.

Next up is Denver.

Let's Kiss And Make Up.

Alright Josh (Childress) this has gone on long enough. Come on back for this playoff push we're about to make. I know you probably hoped the team would play horribly and have to come crawling back to you, but obviously that's not the case. It's okay, swallow your pride, say you were wrong and we'll all pretend you were just out with an injury. You know, like Craig Claxton.

If it will make you feel better you can just say you're returning because of all of the recent rioting in Greece. Yeah, just tell everyone you feared for your own safety and you thought it would be in your best interests to just come back. (wink)

Where will your minutes come from? Who knows? But let's be honest, the bench has been up and down since early in the season anyway. I'm sure Woody can go from a 7 man rotation to an 8 man rotation seamlessly.

There, we've addressed all of the things that may give you pause about returning. I'll see you next year.

Say It Ain't So Joe.

I felt sick when Joe missed that possible game tying free throw, so I can only imagine how he felt.

The officials were just ridiculous in the third quarter, but of course no one will mention it...... except Drew.

I have never seen a player fall down (Paul Pierce) and an official call an official timeout instead of a travel. Ever. Ever. Ever.

I have never seen someone dribble and then dribble again (Garnett). and then get a foul call against the Hawks.

Something Rajon Rondo said that couldn't be more true... "If they played everyone else the way they play us they'd be a top five team."

I have to mention a few things about Josh Smith and the fans view of him. It's no secret that I'm a Josh Smith fan. Not the delusional type, but I do want him on this team. That being said, sometimes I'm sure I can come off as sort of a Josh Smith apologist. That's not what I'm going for at all, but I think he takes an unfair amount of blame for a lot of the things that are wrong with the team.

Do we want Josh out there jacking up shots outside of 12-15 feet? No, but it's going to happen from time to time. The problem I see is that fans seem to only have a problem when Josh takes a bad shot. No one says anything when Flip is out there shooting at will. Everyone just accepts that this is what Flip does. What's that about? I could go on, but the point I want to make is that Josh is not the only player on the team who takes bad shots. He has plenty of company in any given game.

Every shot Joe takes is not a good shot. I know that may be a hard pill for some folks to swallow, but when he has two guys on him and he has to spin and fade away just to get the shot off, not a good shot.

And, if the Hawks ran some semblance of a fluid offense Josh wouldn't even be in a position to take some of the bad shots he takes. They dribble too much, way too much and the play doesn't even develop until there's only a few seconds left on the shot clock. That alone leads to a lot of the bad shots that numerous players on the team take.

I'm not making excuses for Josh, but it does irritate me that people look at him as one of the biggest problems on the team.

It's like the inconsistent rotations, poor clock management, bad play calling and other countless offenses have nothing to do with what plagues the team.

That short, sweet O.J. Mayo Interview I promised... Also featured in Score.

I’m the opposite of moderate, immaculately polished with the spirit of a hustler and the swagger of a college kid.”

That’s a line from Atlanta’s home-grown rapper T.I. off of the song “Live Your Life,” and that sentence pretty much sums up what rookie phenom O.J. Mayo is right now. He just has IT. He was in town recently to play the Atlanta Hawks as well as to help introduce the marketing agency Eighty81, which is opening up a new office in Atlanta. I caught up with him for a few minutes to get his thoughts on life in the league.

Calandra Coone: What’s life like in the NBA? How is it different from college?
O.J. Mayo: I think it’s all the travel, you know, the climate changes. The travel is really rough going from city to city. You go from a cold city to a warm city and you’ve really just got to make sure you get enough rest.
C.C.: You’re averaging over 20 points per game, so you seem to be adjusting pretty well. Is Rookie of the Year something you’re shooting for?
O.J.: Nah, not really. I’m not really a person who looks for individual goals. I’m more of a team-goals type of person. I’m just looking to help better our team.
C.C.: What was it like for you on draft night being traded from the Timberwolves to the Grizzlies? Did you take that personally?
O.J.: Well, it just let me know that the NBA is definitely a business. I didn’t know I got traded until I saw it on TV. So it just let me know that it’s a business and I have to maintain, be a professional and stay strong.
C.C.: Are you going to be extra-motivated when you face the Timberwolves for the first time?
O.J.: Yeah probably so, haha, probably so.

6-0 seems so long ago.

The game could not have started any worse. Seriously, had the Hawks decided to not send any players on the court and just let Houston get the game going alone, they couldn't have gotten off to a worse start. They didn't score their first points until the 6:52 mark of the first period. Dreadful. Even still somewhere between spotting Houston a 13 point lead and losing 84-92 the Hawks had an 8 point lead late in the game. What happened you say? Missed shots, no free throws and untimely turnovers. Not that there's ever a good time for a turnover, but you know what I mean.
One thing that stuck out to me was Josh Smith's turnover (bad pass) with 5:36 left to play. Turnovers are bad, they really are, but turnovers should also be quantified because some are worse than others.
For instance, if Josh is dribbling out of control when there's a more capable guy to his left or right and he turns the ball over, that's a bad turnover. Unforgivable.
However, if Josh just got a steal and he sees a teammate ahead and he tries to throw the ball to him but it sails out of bounds that's a turnover I can live with. Why? Because of the intent. I see what he was trying to do and it was a good idea, it just didn't work out.
I guess coach Woodson doesn't quite look at turnovers the same way I do and hey I don't blame him, he's obviously a bottom line kind of guy.
He yanked Josh at that point (while they were clinging to a two point lead and had completely lost the ability to score) and he didn't put him back in until there was only 1:53 left and that two point lead had turned into a 10 point deficit.
Josh is not the best defender in the league.
Josh is not the best defender in the East.
Josh is probably not the best defender in the Southeastern division.
Josh is the best defender on the Atlanta Hawks.
Josh was bad on offense.
Josh was not bad on defense.
Since Woody is a bottom line sorta guy he should have thought to himself since we can't score maybe I'd better try to stop Houston from scoring.
Woody could have genuinely thought Za Za was a better defensive option at that point. We'll never know because no one asked him. Maybe he was trying to teach Josh a lesson. Hey, I'm all for getting your point across, but there's a time and a place for it. That was not the time. Berate him during the time out, question his heart, question his manhood, then put him back on the floor because as bad as you need a bucket, you need a stop.
Yes he was dreadful leading up to the turnover. He missed three or four shots in a row to help Houston get back into the game. Dreadful.
But, for everything he was lacking on offense he was still pretty effective on defense. The bottom line is even though he was having a bad night, he was still the best option at the time.
I have no idea what to make of this team right now. All I know is if they are going to be bad, I want them to be all the way bad. Don't be middle of the lottery bad. Be number one pick bad. I know its waaaaay too early for this talk, but I'm seeing some of the same things this season that I've seen in the previous four seasons. That's not good.

For a thorough analysis of the game go see Brett.

O.J. Mayo

I will be posting my 23 second interview with O.J. Mayo later this week. I'll leave you with this picture of him playing NBA2k9 against rapper Killa Mike. He looks so intense.

As seen in Score.... sorta.

I wrote the paragraphs following this paragraph for Score this week. The editor left out a very important thought (highlighted in orange) so the end of my rant does not make sense in the paper. I've decided to include it. In fairness to the editor he did tell me it was kind of mean spirited. I did not intend for it to be mean spirited because hey, tis the season.....Truth hurts sometime and I'm not making this stuff up. When I wrote this they were only a -27 together, now they've jumped to -39.

I am not a stat geek, not by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t feel like stats always tell the whole truth. Besides that, stats sometimes get in the way of the opinion I want to have about certain players. Sometimes they work against the point I’m trying to make so I just don’t deal with them.
Every time I watch the Hawks play I get this nagging feeling that when Acie Law and Flip Murray are on the floor at the same time nothing good happens. Now of course I had nothing concrete to back this up, but this feeling just kept intensifying so I finally decided to look it up Friday night after the Hawks lost to the Raptors. I went to 82games.com and I was not surprised to learn that I in fact was correct. The Law Murray combo this season is absolutely awful. In defense of Murray, he’s equally as awful when he’s on the floor at the same time as Marvin Williams and Maurice Evans. In defense of Law, when he’s on the floor with Maurice Evans it’s also dreadful. It's not just the two of them together. See, this is exactly why I don’t bother with stats. The only point I wanted to make is that Coach Woodson should stop playing Law and Murray together unless there is absolutely no one else available. I don’t just limit that to point guards and shooting guards. I mean they shouldn’t be on the floor together unless there is no one else available in uniform. It feels that bad when they are on the court at the same time. What I discovered is that Woodson needs to not play Acie, Flip or Maurice much at all. Now that doesn’t make any sense. I told you stats don’t tell the whole truth.

The Washington Wizards fired Eddie Jordan last week after they started the season 1-10. My only feelings on this are if they were ready to fire him after only 11 games they might as well have fired him last season. They obviously weren’t convinced he was the right person for the job anyway.

COME ON HAWKS FANS

Let's get Mike Bibby on the All Star team for the first time people.

VOTE HERE

And while you're there you should go ahead and vote for the rest of the Atlanta Hawks starting five.

I'm not just being lazy.....for the most part.

Since I wasn't there for the photoshoot

It's simple, I have very limited computer access right now. I'm basically only online while I'm at work and I'm almost 100% certain my bosses would prefer I use my time at work being productive as opposed to blogging about the Hawks. Don't fret, a new laptop is on the way from Dell. It won't ship until December 9th so to my 4 loyal readers you should go here and here for your daily fix of Hawks news.

Howeva, I did take a few minutes to write for the Hawks Blogger Roundtable.

Where you at Drew???

Brett quit making me look bad with all of your statistics and facts. There's no place for that in my world.