Janet, Ismail and I went to the first preseason game of the season last Saturday. This was the first chance to see our new seat locations for the upcoming season. We moved up two rows (From the 4th Row) to the second row of the upper deck. Believe it or not, you can notice a difference.

This was the first time i’ve ever seen Shaq play live, so I was happy to see that he actually got a decent amount of playing time. However, D. Wade, Payton and Mourning did not play, so that was a bit of a letdown (at least in D. Wade’s case).

The Hawks looked pretty good for the preseason. JJ and Zaza played well. Josh Smith didn’t play for unknown reasons, but everyone else that was expected to play did. The biggest improvement from last year to this year was Marvin; he was really aggressive and took it STRONG to the hole. Last season, he just settled for jump shots or made half-hearted attempts to drive the lane. However, on this night, he had a couple of strong takes to the hole and a few slams with men on him. J-Chill didn’t look so good except for the latter stages of the 4th quarter. He took some ugly shots well outside of his range; the one thing I always respected about him last year is that he knew his limitations. I hope that this season he doesn’t plan on shooting more.

The worst looking player was definitely Shelden Williams. He had no clue what to do on the floor. At first, I thought he was a non-roster invitee by the way he was playing. He had terrible hands and must’ve lost the ball five times. He missed some sitters underneath the basket and badly missed some open looks from the 10-15 foot range. I guess like everyone else, it’ll take time to grow into the NBA game, but I was surprised by how nervous he played.

The Hawks won the game 91-81 and pretty much held the lead the whole 2nd half. I was pleased with how well the core group played under pressure in the 4th quarter; hopefully, this is a sign of things to come.