Bringing it Back...

Ok, so I haven't posted anything in a really long time, fact is, I get busy and don't have time to write stuff and my short attention span kills any interest in writing...well the interest is back and I've decided I'm going to try and write short entries to keep me posting. Tonight I'm talking Atlanta Hawks.

Which is the real Atlanta Hawks? The team that reeled off three straight home wins or the team that lost 4 of 5 before that and lost the two since? I'd say it's probably closer to the latter. A win over the Lakers in front of a hostile crowd at Philips (let that soak in) is impressive, but you know what? Winning these games against the top teams in the West loses luster when you put on two performances back-to-back like they did these last two nights. LeBron James is a great player, but the Cavs role players are solid but not spectacular, so with 4 of the top 7 out (Varejao, Pavlovic, Gooden and Gibson) you need to win games like that. Instead a great comeback effort was wasted when the Hawks, once again, faded down the stretch. This team has regressed in the intestinal fortitude department. When it looked like they were turning a corner earlier in the season they've taken steps back.

I don't even want to get into that atrocity tonight. Talk about over matched. That's the second time the Hawks have gone to Texas and left their game back in the ATL. They needed a 14 point rally in the 4th quarter just to lose by 19. Ugh. The Hawks have gone from a three game win streak to a two game losing streak, this after a dreadful west coast road trip. Guess what comes after the Hawks should split games with Detroit and Charlotte. The All-Star break. Ok, what comes after that? Oh yeah, another trip out west which will see the Hawks destroyed by the Lakers, Jazz and Spurs and probably the Warriors as well before returning home to two winnable games with Sacramento and New York. The best case, realistic scenario for the Hawks would be to enter March 25-31. That number includes wins on the road over Charlotte and Sacramento and the way this team has been playing as of late, road wins are anything but guaranteed. Like I said, that's a best case scenario.

That number, 25-31, is better than the number last year entering March (22-37), and the Hawks still have the two-for-one with the league's worst team Miami, so the Hawks could creep closer to .500 then, but everyone expected the Hawks to be better this year, and the improvement, record wise, hasn't been that spectacular. The fact is this is a team in dire need of a shake up and it's up to an incredible inept management to make it happen.

Losing to Cleveland doesn't bother me, it's the way the Hawks lost to Cleveland that bothers me. for a team with just two active players 30 or older (Lue and AJ) they seem to lack energy night in and night out. They seem beaten down. Why does a team full of 2o-somethings not look excited to play basketball for a living? It's a fair question. These guys are beat down and they need a spark. I'd suggest a trade, but can you really put faith in the current GM to do something right now to better this team? And besides, the two biggest needs for this team, a starting point guard for the here and now (I still believe Acie Law is the future) and a post presence to take the heat off the tremendous Al Horford aren't readily available and don't come cheap.

So the other option is to fire a coach who has proven that he can't motivate these guys and that he can't diagram any sort of functional half court offense. Essentially he's proven to be in over his head with this current bunch of Hawks since day one, yet they move along treading water in the East. If the Hawks make the playoffs it will be due to the relative incompetence of the bottom half of the Eastern Conference, not anything special the Hawks do. If the Hawks were to make a change it could spark a run to the playoffs and even perhaps get them into the 6th seed, avoiding the fatal Boston or Detroit first round match up. It's up to them, the time is now, they need to make something happen.