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Ryan the right QB for Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flowery Branch — He was the right pick at the right time, and here’s why: When you watch the Falcons work, your first thought is no longer about the man who isn’t there; instead your eyes keep moving until you find the new guy. And you like, it must be said, what you see.
That other person, the one who’s in prison, has been rendered yesterday’s news. Tomorrow belongs to the new guy, and this franchise is better for it. The Falcons needed to move on, and how better to do it than with the first draft choice under new management?
Thomas Dimitroff said he didn’t take Matt Ryan because of “symbolism. We needed a quarterback, and he was the best fit for the team.” But then Dimitroff, who grasps both the details and the big picture, concedes the ancillary point: “Now that [the need for a clean break with Michael Vick] was a sidebar.”
Just as there are Falcons fans who aren’t ready to look beyond Vick, there are those who believe this team would have done better by drafting someone else. Those folks will soon feel differently. They will see what Dimitroff saw in Ryan, and what the general manager has seen again in the first two days of minicamp.
“He’s quite impressive,” said Dimitroff, watching the first of Sunday’s two sessions. “In his first practice yesterday there was an element of focus and — I don’t want to say comfort exactly — presence. You look at him now, and you see his savvy and his ability. Yesterday he was tapping himself on the helmet if he made a mistake, saying it was his fault.”
For the record, Ryan hasn’t done everything perfectly. No quarterback ever has. But he’s further along than any rookie has a right to be — “I’m a little more comfortable today,” he said Sunday — and he’s conspicuously the best at his position on this roster. The ball leaves his hand with more authority than when Chris Redman or Joey Harrington delivers a pass, and there seems a palpable sense of purpose when Ryan takes even the third string in and out of a huddle.
“I’ve been really pleased,” said Mike Mularkey, the offensive coordinator. “He’s got more on his plate than most players do; he’s taking a play from me and executing it with all the mechanisms. He can only get better, but does he need to get a whole lot better? No. … He’s not turning around and asking, ‘What was the play?’ He’s got the right answers about everything, and he’s got the right questions, which is even more important.”
We keep hearing about first-round quarterback duds — Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, David Carr, even Harrington — but what we need to ask is: Did any of those possess the same set of tangibles (size and arm strength) and intangibles (football intelligence and leadership capability) as Matt Ryan? The answer is no. He might not win a Super Bowl, but he will not be a flop. He will not allow himself to be a flop.
Mularkey again: “I see him fixing things. I’m usually in the back [during practice] fixing things, but I can’t be there during games. I’ve told him, ‘You’ve got to get the team to follow you.’ “
He did it Boston College, and he’ll do it here. Here’s head coach Mike Smith, recalling Ryan’s predraft workout in Boston: “There were five guys working out with him, and you could feel the energy when he walked into the room. ‘Hey, Matty Ice!’ Seeing the respect he commanded was the thing that struck me the most.”
Some guys just have ‘It,’ however we define that tiny but mighty word. Matt Ryan is among the few. He’ll be starting before the year’s out, and he’ll be winning soon enough. And we don’t need to concern ourselves about what could or should happen when No. 7 gets out of prison. The Falcons have their quarterback, and he wears No. 2.
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Braves lose pitchers, manage wins
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For a team in terrible shape, the Braves are in great shape. They keep losing pitchers, and still they’re 18-15 in a division where nobody has caught a flying start. They’re leading the league in batting average and ERA, which tells us that everything the brass thought about this club in spring training is coming to fruition.
Too bad the pitchers keep going splat.
The Braves have needed seven starters to get through 5-1/2 weeks. Two of those seven were pressed into service Thursday, and that doesn’t include Buddy Carlyle, who’s more starter than reliever.
Jo-Jo Reyes, who wasn’t on the Opening Day roster, started the game and lasted eight outs before developing a blister on his index finger. He gave way to Carlyle, who lasted six outs before getting run over by Kevin Kouzmanoff. Two innings later Jeff Bennett, who has both started and closed, took the ball. It was almost a trick question: How many starting pitchers does it take to get through one nine-inning game?
Almost inevitably, the Braves won. They scored five runs, four unearned. A key hit was again delivered by Greg Norton, who wasn’t on the team five days ago. The winning hit was struck by Matt Diaz, who became the author of the team’s first one-run victory of 2008.
Thus has a team without a full rotation and a settled closer won six in a row. Even if there’s an air of unreality about this latest surge, the Braves will take it.
“All of this,” said Tom Glavine, who landed on the disabled list for the first time in his durable life, “is a testament to the depth Frank [Wren, the general manager] spoke about this winter.”
That’s the good news. The bad: It can’t last. Either the Braves start keeping some pitchers healthy or they will, inevitably, begin to lose. You can mix and match for a week or even a month, but not forever.
Said Bobby Cox: “Frank’s working as much as he can [to find more pitching].”
Said Wren: “We’re always looking, always talking. … We’ve got to get a little more definitive on when guys will get healthy.”
In the case of Mike Hampton, the answer could well be never. In the case of John Smoltz, it’s even more complicated. When/if he returns, he has said he’ll move to the bullpen. That would bolster the relief corps while leaving a massive hole in a rotation that, at least on paper over the winter, looked as stout as anyone’s. Then again, should a rotation consisting of so many aging arms ever been deemed sound?
Said the fairly ancient Glavine, parrying the point: “Even the young guys are getting hurt now.”
The spring consensus was that the Braves had nine big-league caliber starters: Glavine, Smoltz, Hampton, Bennett, Carlyle, Reyes, Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens and Chuck James. Four of those have done time on the DL, not counting the two who were dinged Thursday. This doesn’t include the closer Rafael Soriano or the set-up man Peter Moylan, both of whom are ailing. (Or Mike Gonzalez, coming off elbow surgery.) What in the name of horse liniment is going on?
Roger McDowell doesn’t know, and he’s the pitching coach. As such, someone asked, does he take it personally when one of his men gets hurt? “No,” McDowell said. “Everyone’s put together differently. A guy might be throwing his last pitch, or he might have 10,000 pitches left in him.”
The Braves needed 152 pitches from seven pitchers to win Thursday. The victory capped a splendid homestand, but a team cannot subsist on such extraordinary events for long. (For one thing, the already-taxed bullpen will be gassed come June.)
This has been, all things considered, something approaching a great 5-1/2 weeks. But Cox, as he usually does, had it right when he said: “When we get all our top guys back, we’ll be greater.”
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Weird Spirit reward niceness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s weird, yes, but pretty much everything about the Atlanta Spirit is weird.
Don Waddell takes his team from the playoffs to 28th place in a 30-team league, and he keeps his job. Billy Knight finally lifts his team to the playoffs, and he asks out.
Knight finally finds a point guard, and somehow it’s kinda sorta held against him for taking so long. Mike Woodson takes that point guard and still doesn’t lift his team to .500, and it would seem he’s coming back. (The Hawks were 21-28 on the day Mike Bibby arrived, 16-17 thereafter.)
If there’s a lesson to be learned from all of this - and that’s a big “if” - it’s something like: It never hurts to be nice to people.
Knight wanted to be left alone, which would have been fine were he a forest ranger, but he was the general manager of an NBA team. He could barely bring himself to speak with the media, and when he did he talked rather airily. (His quote from 2006: “I think I know more than anybody else.”)
Said Michael Gearon Jr.: “Billy wasn’t the best with the press. He might have been the worst.”
Waddell, by way of contrast, is famously affable and accessible. He has ingratiated himself with owners - chiefly the Gearons - who were initially skeptical of his Thrashers stewardship. The younger Gearon now defends Waddell the way he used to defend Knight, and if you’re wondering how you can keep your job as your team is falling to pieces … well, that’s one way.
As for Woodson: It was clear all along the Gearons wanted to keep him, too, and the Hawks’ playoff run gave them that justification. “Mike deserves an opportunity to see what he can do with this team,” Gearon Jr. said Wednesday, glossing over the reality that Woodson has had this core group - Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams and the two Joshes - since 2005.
There was a time not so long ago when it seemed the Spirit would have no choice but to fire everybody. Given that Knight is leaving of his own accord, it appears the Spirit will fire nobody. Indeed, the only guy to get canned by this unbelievably patient band of owners - even Bernie Mullin technically “resigned” - is Bob Hartley.
Having a career record of 106-222 is apparently cause for an extension. Losing six in a row to start a season … now that’s a firing offense.
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Who are the true Atlanta Hawks?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thirteen hours after the Hawks made their latest and last return from Boston, they gathered at Philips Arena to clean out lockers and to make sense of what they’d just done. And, more to the point, what they might do.
“We can do something special,” said Josh Smith, who will have to be re-signed for this buzz to linger. “We’ve always been a team at the bottom of the totem pole, but now we’ve been in the playoffs and been successful.”
Here, however, is where it gets tricky. As this suddenly buoyant franchise sails on, does ownership judge the Hawks on what happened over a six-month regular season that ended with the team 37-45, or does it take the stirring events of 15 spring days as the new reality?
“I have not spoken to my [Atlanta Spirit] partners,” said Michael Gearon Jr., speaking by phone Monday, “but we will take a step back for several days and let the emotion settle. And I would not take that statement and conclude that one or the other [meaning general manager Billy Knight or coach Mike Woodson] is gone or will be fired. That is not a foregone conclusion.”
That caveat aside, the guess is that the Spirit will shed Knight and keep Woodson. That belief took root in March, after Knight’s latest attempt to sack Woodson was rebuffed (and made public). If ownership differs with its GM on such an essential matter, what’s the point of keeping him? And, even though Knight has finally constructed a roster of playoff caliber, in-house consensus seems to hold that he took too long to do it.
Woodson is a trickier case. His record (106-222) is a horror, but there’s appreciation for his work within the Spirit. He was given a wretched roster in 2004 and then was handed Marvin and Shelden Williams (as opposed to Chris Paul and Brandon Roy). Through all the losing, he managed not to lose his players. The proof came in the series just completed.
“Woody had his team ready to play,” said Celtics coach Doc Rivers, the erstwhile Hawk. “Even in Games 1 and 2, you could tell they believed they could win.”
The sentimentalist in me would say Woodson deserves to stay for riding out four difficult seasons and keeping his team on the upward trail. Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing wrong with his X’s and O’s — nobody who played for Bobby Knight and who worked for Larry Brown can be accused of not knowing the game — and his half-court offense is essentially the same as everyone else’s: pick-and-rolls and pin-downs, curls and isolations.
“If the players want me, I’ll be the coach,” Woodson said Monday. “If the owners want me, I’ll be the coach.”
How far away, he was asked, are the Hawks from being a bona fide contender?
“Not far away,” he said. “We’re 13 games from 50 wins. Would 50 wins have gotten a [first-round] homecourt advantage?”
Yes. Forty-six wins would have. And that, as cold-hearted as it might sound, is why the belief here remains as it was 2 1/2 months ago: That Woodson’s Hawks, for all their skill, leave too many winnable games on the table. (Five more regular-season victories and they’d have played Orlando in Round 1.) He had them primed for the playoffs, but what about for January?
“A lot of games slipped away,” Smith said. “We should have been way better.”
There are men available — Avery Johnson, Jeff Van Gundy, perhaps Mike D’Antoni — who could take Woodson’s foundation and dress it up, who would arrive without the baggage of four consecutive losing seasons. The guess, though, is that Gearon and his partners will see it differently.
And if the Hawks perform under Woodson next season as they did in Games 3, 4 and 6, that will be seen as a shrewd decision. But what if, eight months hence, the Hawks are again treading water and we’re hearing the old lament, “We weren’t ready to play”? Will we regard one giddy series as a new beginning … or a false spring?
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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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