AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2009 > February > 25
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Men down, Hawks up … or not!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Admit it, the Hawks are a must-see TV train wreck you simply can’t do without.
Sure, they make you crazy. They dip when you think they should be soaring and win when all logic suggests otherwise.
But that’s why they’re your team.
That’s why you can’t divorce them.
They’re the team we all love to hate.
Take tonight’s game in Denver, without two starters, and the Hawks are clawing for their very lives as Josh Smith and Mike Bibby are sitting in Atlanta tending to family business and ill, respectively.
Obviously it’s not going to last, this slim lead they have just before halftime (oops, it’s gone already, Nuggets up 59-53 at the half. This would be enjoyable and even a bit amusing if you didn’t already know how this horror movie ends). But their resolve, even when it’s misplaced, is admirable.
The infuriating thing about this team is that they don’t give you this kind of gutsy effort for 48 minutes every night - and some of that is due to the fact that daredevils like Mario West don’t get to go crazy but once every three weeks or so and some of it is due to the fact the connection that was forming early on this season has been lost.
And that should bother you to no end.
Because these are the nights when a sure-fire system, one that incorporates all nine or 10 of your regulars comes in handy. Ironically, that’s the one thing the Hawks have never been able to locate the past four and a half seasons, a true identity as a team.
Let’s face it, contributions from likes of West or Thomas Gardner or even Randolph Morris, if he were to somehow shed his sweats and hit the floor for a second straight game, aren’t going to get this team through to the end of the season.
But in a one shot deal like tonight, it would help to get a game-changing effort from one of their semi-anonymous bench cats.
And we all know it’s not going to happen.
I’m fully expecting things to get nasty in the second half (already have, 83-68 with four minutes to play in the third), Friday the 13th Part 42 nasty if Joe Johnson continues to struggle with Kenyon Martin playing him the way he is.
The Hawks have plenty of issues to resolve going forward. Plenty of them. But as someone pointed out to me earlier today, the worst they could be coming home from this disastrous Western Conference road swing is seven games OVER .500.
For a team that’s been as down as the Hawks have been the past decade or so, it’s hard to dismiss 32-25 this late in the season.
So however this night ends, and barring a rescue effort of epic proportions from Mo Evans, Flip Murray and the venerable Solomon Jones, it will be Bubba Sparxxx UGLY (shout to my man Andre Aldridge of NBA TV, who used that line on me earlier tonight), be ready for the Hawks to cut dust back to the safety net that has been Philips Arena this season (a 19-6 home record this season is the Hawks’ saving grace right now) as quickly as possible.
Because their season, for at leas the next 72 hours, hinges on the outcome of Friday’s game against Dwyane Wade and his Miami Heat and possibly Sunday’s date against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Take heart Hawks fans, there is more time to examine this team we all love to hate.
