NBA Playoffs 2012 - Page 29

On May 02 2012 11:51 jeeeeohn wrote:
Well, Atlanta, I really don't know what to say. Words cannot describe how incredibly frustrating it is to watch you piss away game after game. I don't mind close games. I don't even mind blowouts that much. Those I can forgive. What I can't forgive is seeing past an opponent who are down 2 of their best players.

I've watched the Hawks since I was 8 years old. I was a Celtics fan for a while just because of Paul Pierce, but I eventually went back because I'm a stupid bastard like that. I watched this team grow from a 13 win season into perennial playoff fodder.

Take it from me: this team is garbage. For every good play on offense, you get five minutes of standing around, isolation play. For every time Josh Smith does something good on defense, you have 10 possessions of him being a complete lazy ass. It's the culture of this organization that needs changing.

And Joe. I love Joe. If I have kids who like basketball I'll tell them about Joe and how great he was. But his shot selection is legendarily horrible. He'll chuck up threes like the world was about to end.

I can't take it anymore. I really can't. I'll tune in and root for them, but beyond Joe Johnson and Josh Smith I don't really have any favorites. Al Horford was a nice complimentary piece, but I think people built him up to be the defacto leader when all he really did was provide emotional sparks and 14 points / 9 boards. Jeff Teague is awesome, but I doubt he'll stick around.

The Hawks as I know them are going to blow up after this season. There's no point in keeping them together. They have failed to prove anything except a lack in focus. They play down to their opponent's level. They don't play within their own skill sets (Josh Smith can't shoot jump shots). They are frustratingly dumb to watch. But hey, that's the Hawks. The Hawks have always been mediocre in every era of basketball except for the Nique era and Bob Pettite era--and in Nique's time he was stonewalled by, guess who, the fucking Celtics.

I don't even know what to say anymore, except that I've been saying the same things about this team for the past 6 or 7 years. Let me count the ways:

-No quality big men (Rasheed Wallace played ONE game for us before being traded)
-No quality point guard (Teague sometimes disappears)
-Too many isolation plays
-Too many rotations on defense
-Marvin Williams needs to be traded or let go or possibly drowned in the river

Let me give you a brief history of Marvin Williams. He was the second pick overall in some draft. He has spent the entire time making Hawks fans wonder why oh why did we pass on Chris Paul and generally bricking fadeaways when he's wide open. Do you catch my drift? HE FADES AWAY WHEN HE'S WIDE OPEN. A SUPPOSED SHOOTING GUARD / SMALL FORWARD HYBRID FADES AWAY NEEDLESSLY. That's a problem you expect with big men. If you see it with little guys, you know to pass on them immediately, because they are terrible. My hatred for Marvin knows no bounds. He's an awesome person, but he's third string material at best and shouldn't see more than 5 minutes of garbage time on the court.

-Letting Josh Childress go was retarded
-Management is stupid (120M contract to an aging SG)
-Management is cheap (weird, huh? but they never go over the luxury tax)


Part of me is excited to watch a brand new team spring up and start growing. But another part of me knows that nothing is going to come out of the effort. You start to get a brain for recognizing patterns, both in life and in basketball, and when you know it's crap, it's crap, and will always be crap. Some teams and some towns just GET IT. Some of them are learning how to. But Atlanta? Never.

Sigh.