Sorry for the absence. Emerging from some intense times at work.
From the Pacers game, I went with the old lady and the boy. Had a blast. I treasure the old lady’s insights; when we were down for most of the first half, and I was fearing yet another loss where we didn’t play hard, I asked her what the Hawks’ problem was. She responded, accurately that “they can’t get the lead - (dramatic pause) no matter what.” Well, spurred by her challenge, the Hawks came back to win easily, by double digits. I guess beating the Pacers isn’t what it would have been last year (no Artest, either), but I’ll take it.
Also, I had a chicken finger basket that was pretty darn good. Jennifer had nacho soup, which was nasty. The chips were swimming in the cheese, a disgrace.
Oh, and this may have been posted on, but that is fucking disrespectful to close our concession stand (Grab-N-Go). Now we have to walk 3-4 minutes away to get a beer and miss game time. Cheap fucks.
On the Phoenix game, my family sat with the Massar family and it was a lovely affair. Hawks mixed in some atrocious play with some great play to hang around and make a game of it. Also really important, we had a chance to tie it late and we actually ran a play that got a good shot out of it. No, it didn’t have Childress taking a doo-doo jumper at the buzzer; there was a nice pop-out that had Lue get a good look. Although he missed, the frustration that typically sits in my guy wasn’t there. Part of that was b/c Toddy jerked me off in my popcorn bucket at halftime.
On Diaw, I seethed about seeing him looking so good on the court. I think it is more about him not getting put in positions to make plays, combined with being poorly motivated. To me, I think a good point guard and a good/decent coach would have solved these problems and enabled him to be better/progress as a player.
Also on the game, seeing Nash was a highlight- he is in command on the floor, for sure. He made Marvin Williams look silly 2X on one drive, kind of like Sussman said he did you guys in practice.
Also, got that bobble head.

I haven’t seen a tooth as long as that since the last known public appearance of Captain Longtooth- June, 1992 at the Atlanta Civic Center for the North Atlanta High School graduation.

Boris Diaw killed us on Friday; I never saw anything close to that when he was with the Hawks. I really wonder how much was the system and how much was his lack of effort.

This was my first time seeing Steve Nash- I think what makes him so good is that he’s constantly moving front and back and keeping the defender unbalanced. He rarely moves laterally to give the defender a break. When he sees a slight misstep, he always takes advantage of it. He also almost never makes a bad pass- even though he commits himself in the air, he still seems to always find the right weight on it.

The Hawks actually played really well the entire second half and had a shot to win. We got some good looks in the last minute but just couldn’t knock down the shots. A couple of really piss poor calls bailing out Nash on some walks didn’t help either. I think that the Hawks must be the most screwed team in the league- I think because they have such a bad record, the refs seem to never give them the benefit of the calls.

Joe Johnson bobblehead Night- they still had them at game time; a very different story than the Thrashers games where they run out at least 30 minutes before the game starts.

For the 4th or 5th time, I was asked about Ismail’s age and told that next time, he would need a ticket. I wonder when they’ll actually make me go out and buy a ticket for him.

The refs pulled out the King James version of the rule book late in the game yesterday and helped negate a strong effort by the Hawks. Not that the game was decided entirely by the officials, but there were a couple of crucial series where I heard the whistle blow before anyone got close to LeBron. I know the guy drives hard to the basket and gets fouled more often than not, but I wish they wouldn’t anticipate a foul every time. That’s one thing that really pisses me off about the NBA: the preferential calls given to superstars. A foul is a foul; it shouldn’t depend on the player.

Along with the bad calls, the Hawks did their share to throw the game away. They missed free throws at the end and made shitty passes and let Donyell Marshall hit threes when they weren’t letting LeBron score on drives. What sucks (again) is that they played a decent game for the first 3 quarters: Josh Smith played solid defense and got great team help on LeBron, Royal Ivey played well and made a nice save by pinning a breakaway layup to the backboard, and the team in general made nice passes and worked well together. I don’t have much more to say about the loss; instead, I’ll try to focus on the positive.

The crowd was enthusiastic, and even though they initially came out for LeBron, they supported the Hawks at the end. There was a guy down the aisle from us who refused to give up the ghost; as fans were leaving with the Hawks down by 10 or so with less than a minute to go, he was shouting, “I don’t know where ya’ll goin’ — game ain’t over…dumbasses.” I made sure I stayed until the end of the game…out of fear.

The announcer pulled the ol’ “Emmanuel Lewis in the houusssee!! Hey Emmanuel, where’s Mr. Papadapoulos (sp)?”. I did a cursory search just now for Emmanuel Lewis on the web and saw a link that said he got a law degree from Brown University, but when I clicked on it, the page couldn’t be found. I’ll search some more. Can anyone else confirm or deny?

Josh Smith had 2 nice throwdowns — one from outside the paint.

Tar Tar seems to like the enforcer role. I counted at least 3 hard fouls. At least when he fouls someone, they have no chance of making the shot.

Ashley attended the game with me and went in hoping to see a great game from LeBron. After he didn’t do much in the 1st quarter, she got disappointed and started picking on his jacked up black socks and bow legs. I think she likes Zaza better than LeBron.

That’s all I got.

I have been pretty slack. In my defense, I only went to Friday night’s game against the Bucks ’cause Dave invited me. He should be responsible for the post. How many posts has he done anyway? About the game…It was easlily the worst attendance yet, and the Hawks responded in kind with a poor performance. In the early part of the season, despite the terrible record, it seemed like the team was in just about every game. Lately though, it looks like they’re is giving up. It’s time to let Woody go. It doesn’t help getting beat by your immediate predesessor.

The game itself was pretty boring. Dave fell aspleep at one point, and I was distracted the whole time. Dave kept pointing out that Bogut’s stats were unimpressive (we all know Dave hates whitey). Whatever comparison you want to make between Bogut and Williams, Bogut’s thinking about the playoffs in May. I’m sure all Marvin has on his mind is where he’ll sign as soon as his contract with the Hawks is done.

P.S. I wrote this not knowing the result of Monday’s game against the Pacers.

Where are the posts? At least put a short summary down to let us know you went to the games.

As expected, pistons had the game in hand by the third quarter. chauncey hit some threes down the stretch. Rip hit his base line jumpers. Looked like marvin williams is coming along slowly and the Hawks really need a point guard. Joe johnson is a 2. Zaza should turn out to be pretty decent. He’s going up against Bogut friday so that should be a good matchup to watch. I really enjoyed the seats. you could see the sets the teams were running more easily than from the side. Thanks again for the tickets.

The Hawks played a complete 4th Quarter! A much needed win over the T-Mac and Yao-less Rockets 94-83. Al Harrington had a great game with 28 points and seems to have found his touch again after Saturday’s woeful performance vs. Washington.

I’ve made the call before but it bears repeating:

Jeff Van Gundy and Keith Gordon, Rodney Dangerfield’s son in Back to School

Pics of JVG:

Gordon:

On another note, I was watching the first episode of the second season of Entourage and the boys were at the Lakers game with Jeremy Piven (AKA Marco Fideli) and Piven starts bitching at a referee for making horrible calls. That referee happened to be Jess Kersey, the object of my ire at the end of the Charlotte game.

I was surprised there was not already a post about Saturday’s game when I checked the blog this morning. Todd had many rants he was sharing with me after the game. I felt sure they would all be immediately posted. I’ll let Todd, if he feels the need, fill you in on the details of the game. He is a much better Basketball analyst than me. Suffice it to say, it was a typical Hawks game. They started both halves slow, were in it till the end, and then came up short. They’ve got to learn how to close these games. When you have the ball in a tied game with 18 seconds left coming out of a timeout, you’d think you’d come up with something better than Joe Johnson dribbling around for 15 seconds then throwing up an off-balance j from the corner.

On a positive note, Todd discovered a loophole in Phillips’ nazi-esgue policing of self-seat-upgrades. I keep the details quiet since the heavy traffic on this blog may draw the attention of the powers that be. You’ll be informed in due time.

A word of explanation for the lack of post last Monday: 1. Mike doesn’t give a shit about this blog. He’s a terrible web master. 2. Mike and I were in Disney World that morning…more specifically, MGM studios. There’s a ride called the Tower of Terror. It’s a variation on the freefall rides you’ll find in many amusement parks. The twist is it will drop you, and then bring you back up only to drop you again. You’re never sure how far you’ll fall, or how high you’ll rise. It’s sort of a microcosm of the Hawks season so far, except it only last about 30 sec. and is thus more fun to ride. We rode it more than once, and did not get out of Orlando till after 2 pm so Mike did not make it back in time to use his tickets.

With the Hawks in New York, I spent some time today with our favorite team.

Early on Friday I went to the Hawks shootaround at Madison Square Garden. I ended up sitting on the bench and watching them shoot for about an hour with my man Arthur and Sekou Smith and Steve Smith. Al Harrington made a few threes and declared himself a candidate for the three-point shootout at the All-Star Game. Steve Smith said if Al was in the contest, he better wear a Steve Smith jersey (like Josh Smith wore the Dominique jersey in the dunk contest).

Smitty also told a great story about Ken Norman, the Snake. Smitty said when the Hawks got Christian Laettner, Smitty told him that Snake liked to be called “Snakey-Poo.” So Laettner went over to Norman and said, “What’s up, Snakey-Poo?” Snake then cursed him out.

After shootaround I went to lunch with Arthur and Sekou. No new news on the Artest trade, although I heard that Billy Knight turned down two first round picks and Nene for Al Harrington. I don’t know why, other than maybe because we have enough kids already.

A few hours later before the game, I went into the locker room and Josh Childress called me over. He asked me if there were any good places in NYC to buy shoes, because he wanted to get some Air Force 1s. I told him I’d hook him up with a guy I know at Nike, so we exchanged Sidekick info and he’s already emailed me tonight.

Josh Smith was complaining about the hotel they were staying in, the Ritz Carlton Battery Park, which is on the southern tip of Manhattan. The players all said they couldn’t get good cell phone reception there. JSmith said that to get a good signal, he had to stand up in his room, so he’d been stading around his hotel room for the last 48 hours.

I heard JSmith and Harrington lead the Hawks in most visits to Atlanta’s finest gentlemen’s clubs. Harrington has become known as “Thirst” among his teammates because he’s “always thirsting” for the ladies.

Before every game at the Garden, a bomb-sniffing dog is led around under the arena, into the locker rooms and press rooms, I suppose just to make sure things are good. When the bomb dog came into the locker room pregame, Marvin Williams suddenly looked all nervous. As the dog came around, going clockwise locker to locker, Marv up from his corner locker and started moving clockwise as well, staying 5 or 10 feet ahead of the dog, watching over his shoulder. Someone pointed out that Marv appeared to be scared of dogs. They were right.

“I don’t mess with dogs, man,” Marv said, totally unmoved by reassurances this this dog was well-trained and wouldn’t hurt a fly. My co-worker Ryan asked if he’d gotten bit when he was a kid.

“Nah, I got chased. We were messing with some dogs and they started chasing us. I ran and ran and finally jumped up on a car. I cut my leg open and it was gushing blood.”

Ryan asked if the dog bit his leg, but Marv said, “No, I cut it on the car.” We didn’t point out that maybe this should’ve led to a fear of cars, not dogs.

As it was, Tony Delk was pretending to have misheard when someone said “bomb dog” and thought instead they’d said “drug dog.” At which point Tony leaned over and pretended to stash something in the pocket of Sekou’s jacket.

According to one of the ball boys, a few years ago the bomb dog came into the locker room and ate Antoine Walker’s quesadilla. Just thought that was awesome.

Someone started talking about Kentucky basketball, and Delk got all fired up, saying that Randolph Morris was “no savior.” Sekou said he heard the people in Kentucky were ready to take Tubby out and run him over with a bus. Delk said, “I hope they let me drive it.” I guess he’s not too excited by the Tubby Smith era.

As for the game, it was the same ol’ same ol’. Hawks got behind early, battled back, kept it close throughout and then fell apart at the end. They are definitely getting better play from the point guard slot, than they were earlier this season. Salim Stoudamire has plummeted down the depth chart mostly because he has a bad attitude. Steve Smith does a great imitation of Salim pouting as he walks off the court when Woodson is taking him out of the game.

As I see it, the biggest problem now is at the center position, where Zaza is pretty good offensively and pretty bad defensively — when was the last time you saw him block a shot? And behind Zaza, the Hawks are horribly thin. John Edwards didn’t even play, and the Knicks were just killing us around the basket.

The other big problem is the Al Harrington situation. He knows his contract is up after the season, so he’s basically trying to prove he’s worth as much money as he can. Down the stretch, with the game relatively close, Al took a few ill-advised shots. They were completely out of the team offense, and it wasn’t a good thing. They either need to trade him or sign him to a contract extension so he can forget about that and concentrate on the team.

The kids on this team are so young, and they have a lot to learn. When there were about three minutes left, Josh Childress made a steal and made back to back spin moves for a nice layup. Seconds later, Josh Smith made a steal and tried to outfancy Chill, throwing a behind the back pass out of bounds. They’ve got to learn when that stuff works and when it doesn’t. As Sekou said, “This ain’t AAU ball.”

On the positive side, a few times Woody employed an all-swingman lineup (Joe Johnson, Childress, Smith, Harrington and Marvin Williams) that was pretty cool to watch. Smith kept getting caught out of position on defense, though, because he couldn’t remember when to rotate around to the open guy.

I really like the way Marv has been playing lately. When he’s aggressive he can get past almost anyone and get to the rim and get fouled. I think once he gets some confidence and starts playing more he’s going to be pretty darn good.