Free Throw Shooting Clinic

You can't miss 15 free throws.

I'm so happy I was in my car listening to miss after miss on the radio as opposed to being at home watching it on television. At one point I thought Steve Holman was going to leave in disgust. Could we really blame him if he had just said to hell with this?

Come on guys. Just, come on.

Again.

Practice makes perfect, or in this case hopefully practice makes at least average.

Free throws aren't the only problem, they aren't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that our starting back court has lost it's ability to make shots. Flip Murray has been the best guard on the team for the past 3 games. With all due respect to Flip, this is not a recipe for success. I'm not just saying that because Flip terrifies me on any given night. They've lost the last 3 games. I can't make this stuff up.

Normally teams lose when the guys who make the big bucks don't play well for several games at a time. In this case those two guys are Joe Johnson and Mike Bibby. They've played so poorly I openly plead for Flip when he's not on the floor.

Josh is making big bucks, but he's played relatively well of late.

If things keep going the way they are going the team is going to have to adjust it's goals from winning 50 games and making the playoffs with home court advantage to something more feasible like winning at least 41 games and making the playoffs period. (which is what Rick Sund had in mind, not necessarily only 41 games, but at least having a winning record)

They really need to finish off January on a positive note because February's schedule is not going to be kind to them. They only have 3 home games.

I mean I know it's the shortest month and all, but damn. Of course they get it all back in March where they have 11 out of 12 at home, but they could be out of contention by then. Do I actually think they'll fall out of the playoff race in the East? No, but stranger things have happened.

I'd love to think that when Al comes back we'll right all of our wrongs, but Al can't do anything about the fact that Bibby and Joe can't seem to score anymore. All players go through shooting slumps so I can deal with that reality, but they (Mike in particular) have to find other ways to contribute when their shots are not falling and they (Mike in particular, Joe, not so much) haven't been able to do that. Mike is the point guard so he is still responsible for making sure the offense (whatever it is) runs smoothly. He's not been doing that. He's become one of those one dimensional players who when they aren't scoring they might as well be in the locker room. That is unacceptable. Maybe he just needs to be reminded that he's in a contract year.

While they are still on pace to end the month at 4-3 like I'd hoped, I don't feel good about the upcoming New Jersey game. They had them down by 20 at the half the last time they played and they lost. Mike Bibby isn't going to all of a sudden be quick enough to keep Devin Harris in front of him. Heaven help us if Vince Carter decides he wants to channel his inner Vince Carter circa 2000. It could get ugly. I have to assume Mike and or Joe will come to life sooner rather than later.

I'm going to go ahead and assume it will happen Friday.

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.