Mar 07 2009
No Gurantees for a Hawk’s Post Season
The Atlanta Hawks are far from a post season birth in 2009. In fact, you could even say the odds are against the Hawks for making a back to back post season trip that seemed like a lock around the all star break. It was just before the all star break when you seen the team start to slip a little. They are having a lot of trouble against teams far weaker than them and games they should be easily winning. A well-coached team can usually dominate a lesser opponent in the NBA and Atlanta hasn’t done that all year long.
The Hawks only true route of another NBA team came when they faced the Milwaukee Bucks and Joe Johnson didn’t play in that game. It seems the troubles are surrounding Joe Johnson and his status as a superstar or star in the NBA has never been real. Joe Johnson plays more minutes than any other player in the NBA and still can’t find his way into the top 10 scorers in the league. His style of token defense doesn’t work and he never plays defense on a fast break that most NBA players would take fouls on. Once again we get to bring up the trade with Phoenix and the Suns got the better end of the deal. It doesn’t matter that Boris Diaw doesn’t play for the Suns anymore or the fact the 2 first round draft picks have been no shows to this point. The Hawks got out-played by a Charlotte Bobcat team that had Boris Diaw scoring 13 points and 13 assists. Mike Glenn named him his performance player of the game and even went on to mention that Boris Diaw is one of the most complete players in the NBA today. Joe Johnson isn’t even close to complete and he continues to show poor effort, low scoring totals, and shoots air balls from open jumpers. The same broken record continues to play in Atlanta with the words “Joe just isn’t on his game tonight” and “Flip Murray gave the Hawks a great effort from the bench tonight”. The Hawks need to “flip” Flip Murray for Joe Johnson in the starting lineup. The pride from a trade 4 years ago is still costing the Hawk’s team wins and a coaching change needs to be made or the Atlanta Hawks will not see the playoffs in 2009.
Excitement started up on Sunday evening with a time change for the game, because ESPN decided to put the Hawks on national TV. It was actually LeBron James they were after and he just happened to be playing the Atlanta Hawks. That was a game the Hawks should have won, but the coach Mike Woodson didn’t feel Josh Smith was needed down the stretch. Pretty much the same thing happen tonight in Charlotte as the coach didn’t see no reason to play Josh Smith in the 2nd half. He sat out the entire 2nd half of the game and apparently it was a punishment being handed down for something that took place in the locker room at halftime. This isn’t the stage to be doing things like this and this is a little league move if I have ever seen one. These are grown men playing and these guys must be working together to win games and sitting your 2nd leading scorer at halftime out is not the right way to go about it. The Hawks have no chance of hosting a first round playoff game with Mike Woodson making these fatal decisions with one of the most talented teams in the NBA today.
The Hawks have a ton of home games this month, but the majority of these are against first class opponents and it takes your only superstar on the team to help win these games. Josh Smith is that superstar with Marvin Williams budding brighter everyday. These two guys with Flip Murray is going to win basketball games in Philips Arena in March. The streaky shooting of Joe Johnson and Mike Bibby isn’t going to be enough coming down the stretch and our guards need to pass it to the wing players and to the post for guys like Al Horford and Zaza Pachulia.
The Atlanta Hawks learned nothing from the loss at the Garden to the Knicks and this was a Knicks team that was playing without key guys in their line up. The loss in New York should have been the wake-up call, but the team came down to North Carolina and performed in the same fashion and once again found their self on the wrong side of the scoreboard. It doesn’t take a genius to see what type of competition is lined-up against the Hawks in March and the way the team is performing against the League’s weaker teams; it is shaping up to be a few blowouts at Philips and the Hawks won’t be on the right side then either.
It all starts with the Detroit Pistons visiting Atlanta Saturday Night and this is a must-win game for the Atlanta Hawks. The Pistons are playing better with Rip Hamilton starting while Allen Iverson is out right now. Detroit is coming to Atlanta with the thoughts of walking out with a win and the Hawks aren’t putting any fears in the opponent’s locker room. Saturday night is going to go a long ways in determining where this group from the ATL will go from here.
