AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2008 > December > 05
Friday, December 5, 2008
Playing fast!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HAWKSVILLE - Before I get to the point hinted at above (Hawks-Knicks Friday night at Philips Arena), I have to ask one quick question.
What kind of town allows a stunner like Ciara to sit all by her lonesome, at courtside no less, at a Hawks game for three full quarters without anyone having the courage to sneak down there and keep her company?
If I didn’t think I’d get in trouble, I would have headed over there myself.
Well, that and I didn’t want to miss any of the fastest game I’ve seen all season.
Whoever said Mike D’Antoni didn’t have the personnel to run his offense doesn’t know basketball, NEWSFLASH … it doesn’t take a group of Navy S.E.A.L. trained cats to play offense 100 miles an hour and treat defense like the plague.
Because these Knicks, however flawed they might be, certainly know how to play 7-second basketball (seven seconds is about all the time that goes off the scoreboard before one of the Knicks takes a shot, some good and some not so good).
The Knicks are no more despicable at 8-10 (prior to Friday’s finish) than half the rest of the sub-.500 teams in the NBA right now. And at least they’re playing a high-octane brand of basketball that keeps the fans interested.
They were all up in the Hawks’ mix for every second of the first half, trailing 57-55 behind 20 points from former Hawks captain Al Harrington.
Harrington told me Thursday that the beauty of D’Antoni’s system is that it fits whatever personnel he has. Players that wouldn’t seem ideal can be melded into the offense because it’s form fitting. Whatever it is you do well, and everybody in this league can do a little something, that’s what your staple is.
That makes good sense to me. And it certainly makes offense look a lot easier than it does most nights, specifically for teams that run a lot of half court sets.
The Knicks get plenty of easy shots, basically off of creating for each other. The ball moves around the floor without any regard for whose hands it will end up in, and there’s no better boost for team building than indiscriminate ball sharing.
The rest of the league should be worried about this team in the future (the hawks, down 67-65 with 4:52 to play in the third quarter need to be worried right now), like some time around the fall of 2010.
