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Wednesday, February 4, 2009
So much more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Minneapolis - As much as I’d love to agree with the Hawks about a win being the only important thing to take from Wednesday’s rubbish-filled effort here against the Timberwolves, I can’t do it.
I can’t take much more of this ends justifying the means logic of the NBA that allows a team to continually stumbled its way to the finish of games simply because it lacks the focus necessary to finish off games.
Yeah, the Hawks won. They beat a Timberwolves team that went on a tear last month and earned Kevin McHale Western Conference Coach of the Month honors (without their best player, All-Star and captain Joe Johnson).
But they did so with a whimper, save for Mike Bibby’s huge 3-pointer with 44 seconds to play that saved the Hawks’ tail at Target Center.
This team needs saving far too often. Blame the coach, the players or whomever else you want. I’m sticking it on all of them.
Somewhere along the line, they’ve miscalculated what it takes to be a legitimate home court playoff team. You can’t play as loose with the little things and expect to reach any of the lofty goals you’ve set as a team.
It’s like those speeches your folks gave you when botched a class in high school because you didn’t study as hard as you could have.
“You got a B but you could have gotten an A if you’d applied yourself,” was the line I used to hear back then.
It applies to these Hawks.
Yet the consequences for their inadequacies could be far reaching.
Keep shooting the way the Hawks have from the free throw line this season and you’re setting yourself up for disaster down the road.
I promise you, it’s a certain recipe for disaster at some point in the season (like a 10-day Western Conference road trip like the one the Hawks will be on after the All-Star break or in a playoff series where everything is on the line).
The Hawks’ 25-for-38 effort Wednesday night didn’t get them popped. But you can bet it will somewhere down the road.
Hawks coach Mike Woodson said after the game that he “can’t believe we’re shooting worse from the free throw line this season than we did last year.”
Believe it coach.
Josh Smith is reaching a Shaquillian level of futility from the foul line, shaking his head after misses and everything (he was 1-for-4 in the fourth quarter Wednesday, negating what had otherwise been a pretty good night with 19 points and six rebounds).
Inevitably the poor free throw shooting leads to a lost opportunity elsewhere (like on the offensive glass, where the T’Wovles pounded the Hawks 19-7, enabling the home team to stick around long enough to rally from a 17-point deficit late and almost steal this game away from the Hawks).
“We got the win,” Marvin Williams said to me after coming up big with 23 points and 10 rebounds in the game. “Somehow, someway, we had to get it. Nobody said it had to be pretty Sekou. We just had to get the win.”
No doubt. But at some point, it has to be fundamentally sound.
At some point it would be nice if a big lead turned into a rout and stayed that way.
And eventually, it would be nice to see the growth and maturity that’s reflected in the Hawks’ 28-20 record reflected in some consistency on both ends of the floor, the way the league’s best teams do it on a night in and night out basis.
“I think there were some little details that we didn’t take care of,” Al Horford said in his first game back in weeks, and his impact was greater than the six rebounds, four points, three steals and two blocks he piled up in his 24-plus minutes of action. “That’s stuff we have to shore up. But they made their run like teams always do. And Mike stepped up and made a huge shot, the kind of shot you’d expect a veteran to make in a situation like that, and we got the win.”
Absolutely.
But there’s so much more to be had.
So much more.
