This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > May > 04
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Hawks a real team with bright future
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Boston — Sometimes a game is just too big. Sometimes the opponent is just too good. Sure, it would have been nice if the Hawks could have pushed the Celtics in Game 7, but they’d already pushed the No. 1 seed to the wall. This series ended with a crashing loss, but in the long run it will be seen as a shining victory.
We Atlantans have spent years inventing ways to ignore the Hawks. After the three games in Philips Arena, we can ignore them no longer. They’re a real team again, a real team with a real future.
“I’ve always felt the city wants good basketball,” said Josh Childress, a Hawk since 2004. “Wherever I go, whether it’s the mall or the movies — or the Publix on South Cobb Drive — people say, ‘We’re cheering for you guys.’ It was just a matter of us stepping up to the plate.”
OK, so they sat down in Game 7. They lost by 34 points. They couldn’t muster any offense — they made 15 baskets, five of which were follows or tips, in the first three quarters — and were unprepared for the Celtics’ defensive ferocity. You’d think, having played the C’s six times in the past two weeks, the Hawks would have seen everything their opponent had to offer, but they hadn’t seen how a really good team responds to a Game 7.
They have now. They saw how first Kevin Garnett and then Ray Allen, All-Stars both, dove for the same loose ball with their team leading by 34 points. Or how James Posey, who’d played on an NBA champion with Miami, outhustled Zaza Pachulia to another loose ball a minute later. The Hawks had gotten all the loose balls in the three games in Philips, but not in Game 7. This game simply meant more to the Celtics.
“We didn’t have it today, for some strange reason,” Joe Johnson said, but there was nothing strange about Game 7. The team that had won 29 more games over the regular season prevailed. Relieved Hub fans will now turn their attention to LeBron James and Round 2. We Atlantans, however, shouldn’t forget what we just saw.
“We played a great series,” said Michael Gearon Jr., one of the team’s several owners. “We established some respect for ourselves around the league. Are we disappointed to lose? Absolutely, but it doesn’t take away the direction we’re going, and that’s to be a premier team for a long period of time.”
There are issues, yes. The Hawks should have won more than 37 regular-season games, and this series cast doubt on Mike Bibby as the final answer at point guard. (He was terrible again Sunday, managing one basket and two assists.) Mike Woodson mightn’t be the coach to take this team any higher, and general manager Billy Knight seems to have lost the faith of his employers.
But the bigger picture is far brighter. The Hawks proved they have enough talent to scare the imperial Celtics, and their city proved it’s fully capable of going nuts for good basketball. We weren’t sure of either of those things until now.
Said Woodson: “[The series] definitely changes the perception. … I think our fans like our product, and it really doesn’t get much better than those three games in Atlanta. … Basketball is back in Atlanta in a big way.”
Even as his Celtics put the Hawks — finally! — in the rear-view mirror, their coach was willing to acknowledge the turning of a corner in the city he once called home. Of the Hawks, Doc Rivers said: “They’re a fun team to watch, very similar to us [meaning the Hawks in late 1980s]. If you’re a basketball fan and you were in that arena [meaning Philips], you want to come back.”
Then Rivers said something else: “For this to be a quick series, I thought we had to win Game 3. Because once that athletic team awakened, we were going to have to deal with them.”
After a decade of hard slumber, the Hawks have begun to stir. From here on, we’ll all have to deal with them.
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Game 7 view should be better
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(Editor’s note: This will be Mark Bradley’s live blog from courtside in Boston. Follow his comments as the game unfolds and provide your own thoughts as you watch on TV.)
Boston — Riding on the elevator at the arena this morning, two workers were discussing the series that has extended six days longer than anyone here could have imagined. “They’ve been getting some bad calls,” a guy said.
“Oh, bull,” a lady said. “They’ve been playing horrible.”
They were speaking of the hometown Celtics, who will take part today in what Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe described as “a Game 7 embarrassment.”
Gee. I don’t think the Celtics should feel so bad. The Hawks have a history of being a money team. I think of them as the San Antonio Spurs of the East.
Kidding.
Understand: Nobody pulling for the C’s finds anything funny today. Almost everyone is saying they still expect the No. 1 seed to win - Vegas favors Boston by 14 1/2 points, which has to be a record spread for a Game 7 - but the New England fatalism that once shrouded the Red Sox, who went 86 years between World Series titles, is being transferred to the proud club that has taken 16 NBA championships.
The Hawks, by way of contrast, are in fine spirits. They could even laugh when their second team bus - there’s an early and a later one - backed into the door of the loading dock at TD Banknorth Garden and had to sit on the ramp for 15 minutes. “A typical Celtic trick,” said Arthur Triche, the chief publicist, laughing.
Triche had a trick of his own. In the locker room are two T-shirts bearing the Golden State logo and the words, “We Believe.” They were printed up last spring, as the eighth-seeded Warriors were in the process of toppling No. 1 seed Dallas.
“I made a call to my counterpart at Golden State,” Triche said, “and I said, ‘Send me some of that karma.’ “
Marvin Williams, you should know, has a brace on his knee but said, “I’m pretty sure I will [play].”
And here was Mike Woodson, speaking of his team: “We’ve put ourselves in position to do something really special … [The players] read the paper and hear all the comments being made, and that speaks volumes … I don’t think anybody in that locker room fears that [shock-the-world opportunity].”
One last media note: The Celtics have had to clear their press dining room to provide space for all the national writers who’ve come in to cover the game. And your AJC correspondents have seen their press seats upgraded: For the first three games in Boston, we were along the baseline. Today we’re at midcourt. I’ll let you know which view is better.
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