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Saturday, January 31, 2009
Hawks dig ditch, get buried
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Milwaukee - Nights like these make it hard for people to watch the Hawks.
And thanks to a glitch in the TV schedule (it wasn’t on the local schedule), most people didn’t have to watch them get taken to pieces early by a Milwaukee Bucks team searching for its own identity Saturday night at Bradley Center.
Whatever has ailed the Bucks this season - center Andrew Bogut has been in and out of the lineup with injuries and captain and leading scorer Michael Redd is out for the year with a knee injury - they play with a fury that isn’t reflected by their 24-27 record.
They play with a win or lose fury that these Hawks wish they did. Study the box score all you want, this game was one by the team that played with the requisite energy and physical presence needed and not anything else.
There’s no doubt the Hawks could learn a little something from Bucks in that regard.
Because rarely do the Hawks play as hard without some sort of imminent threat, and yes, an 18-point second quarter deficit qualifies as an imminent threat to these Hawks (27-20).
That would be the same 18-point deficit they chewed into in the same second quarter of a game they would go on to lose 110-107.
“It’s kind of been somewhat our trend,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. “And I hate to say that. But we think we can spot teams 18 and 20 points. It takes too much energy to try and get back in it. And once we got back in it, we didn’t make the plays down the stretch.”
In a league where you’re defined by your last performance, having a reputation as a team that plays only when pressed is not an admirable quality.
Whether they like it or not, that’s exactly the reputation the Hawks have developed over these past two years (no one gave them much thought at all before that, when they were in the foundation pouring stages of their rebuilding project).
The Hawks are a reactive team, not a proactive one.
“I just think that we react to teams instead of us forcing the issue and you saw early in the game they got up and pressured the ball and made it hard for us to catch and extended that lead,” Josh Smith said. “We had to counterpunch. And it shouldn’t always come to that. It took them putting the pressure on us to step back up and pressure them. And that should be the other way around. And if that’s the way we’re trying to play we need to change it up, because it’s not working.”
A night after pulverizing the New Jersey Nets at home, the Hawks spent the first 16 minutes against the Bucks sleepwalking like they have so many times at the start of games this year and last.
As detailed in a story earlier this week, the Hawks remain one of the league’s worst first quarter teams. And you earn that distinction the same way you earn plaudits for being one of the best first quarter teams in the league, with a nearly three-month body of work as evidence.
Consider this, the Hawks and Bucks both played Friday night. the Bucks played on the road, winning in Toronto.
But you couldn’t tell by the collective energy levels of both teams Saturday night. The Bucks routinely sliced into the teeth of the Hawks’ so-called defense, riddling them with layups and wide-open baskets, double their production in the paint from the get-go.
“It’s been a carbon copy the past few games,” Joe Johnson said. “It’s how we start the games. Fighting back is the hard part. And then you get back in the game and tend to relax a little bit and they go on another run. And we knew they were going to come out and play hard. So it wasn’t like they caught us off guard or anything.”
So many times the Hawks were caught flat-footed as the Bucks went up for shots and chased rebounds, making you wonder if it’s the Hawks’ mettle or conditioning that’s lacking more (or a robust combination of both).
Normally the Hawks can rely on a superhuman effort from Johnson to pull them through on nights like this, or at least to keep them in the hunt until the rest of them pick up the intensity.
But credit Bucks coach Scott Skiles with keeping good notes from his days with the Bulls. He would often defend Johnson with Kirk Hinrich, a feisty but undersized defender that gave Johnson fits because he could get up into his torso and force him to handle the ball more than necessary.
Skiles went back to that with both Charlie Bell and Ramon Sessions Saturday night, keeping Johnson extra busy on the offensive end and playing a physical brand of basketball that infuriates teams like the Hawks - teams that will opt for jump shots over the beating they could take driving to the basket and parading to the foul line.
And make no mistake, the Bucks beat the Hawks up on this night, brandishing elbows and every sort of hard foul, screen and blow imaginable. It’s almost as if they knew that if you put the wood to these Hawks early, they won’t fight back in time to hurt you.
“They fed off making shots early, got up in us defensively and that’s what was disturbing to me,” Woodson said. “We didn’t start returning the favor until the second quarter. But if the officials are going to let you get up into each other, then you have to do the same thing. And we didn’t. And I tip my had to the Bucks. The officials let them do that and we didn’t answer the bell to start the first quarter. The second quarter, after a few timeouts and me yelling a little bit, we were able to start playing like that and we got back in the game. But we just exhausted too much energy.”
