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Monday, November 17, 2008
What goes up …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HAWKSVILLE - In the NBA it’s always inevitable.
What goes up always comes down.
And in the Hawks case, that would be not only their overall performance but also their defensive intensity.
After stifling teams with their defense for six games and most of a seventh (in Boston), the bottom fell out in back-to-back losses to New Jersey.
While the Hawks argued the contrary, I saw guys who looked worn slap out. I saw guys who pushed themselves to play at such a high level (with little regard for what might be on the horizon schedule-wise beyond Boston, a tact I had no problem with then and none now), that they simply ran out of gas in their back-to-back road and home set with the Nets.
It happens to teams that aren’t used to playing at a ridiculously high level all the time, and this is definitely something new for the Hawks.
Having witnessed a team have one of those magical 60-win seasons before (the Pacers piled up 61 wins one year I worked in Indiana), I realized after that just how disciplined a team has to be to carry out a season like that.
In retrospect, the consistency of the performances is what was so remarkable about that Pacers team.
There weren’t any wild shifts in how they played. They never had a streak where they stalled on either end of the floor and couldn’t self-start themselves (they also avoided major injury to their core players, had near perfect symmetry between their starters and bench rotation players, player perfectly off of their defensive ton-setter, one Ron Artest, and rode a wave of confidence from training camp all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals - where they fell to the eventual champion Detroit Pistons - that they have not been able to recapture since). Most important, though, is that they were self-starters. They had a coaching staff that inherited them the summer before that season, so their motivation was already internalized.
That’s why it’s so important for these Hawks to dig out of their current, mini-rut the same way they reeled off those six straight wins (over mostly big-time competition). They have to return to the defensive-minded, ball-sharing approach that led to their initial success.
They trusted each other to make plays, on both ends of the floor, without fail during that 6-0 spurt. Now that they’ve had a couple of hiccups (there’s no shame in losing to Boston the way they did, but there’s also no excuse for being waxed by Jersey the way they were either), we’re going to see if they’ll trust each other when things aren’t going their way.
Of course, the Hawks won’t get Josh Smith (their defensive tone-setter) back this week or possibly the next, so there won’t be any immediate infusion of energy into the ranks to help solve the Hawks’ defensive crisis. So it will have to be a group effort to recharge their defensive principles (Mike Woodson favors a few practice days, as you might have read in today’s paper).
Like I said, what goes up in the NBA always comes down.
But it can always crank back up again, which is what the Hawks need to do between now and Thanksgiving in order to preserve the tone set during their 6-0 start.
