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Saturday, November 18, 2006
One good sign for Hawks even in a loss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The night began as one of those clip-and-save moments. The reigning NBA champs arrived at Philips Arena trailing the Hawks — yes, the Hawks — by 1 1/2 games in the NBA’s Southeast Division. Somebody snap a picture of those standings and hang it on the barren wall!
As we know, the Hawks haven’t finished above many teams this millennium, but early returns hold out the possibility that change might be in the wind. These Hawks won four consecutive games without a contribution from Marvin Williams, who’s hurt; without much of one from pricey import Speedy Claxton, who’s hurting, and without an offensive outpouring (seven games, 26 points) from Shelden Williams, the latest in the line of lottery picks.
That seemed to suggest the Hawks’ winning record, a modest 4-3 though it was, might not be an utter mirage. Not everything had gone right for this team — indeed, much had gone wrong — and still it was above .500. And a faceoff against the mighty Miami Heat and the massive Shaquille O’Neal could go a ways toward affirming this apparent progress. One thing, though:
Shaq didn’t show.
He was diagnosed with a knee injury Friday and will miss at least a month. You’d expect the Hawks would have been cheered by the news — without O’Neal, the Heat lost to the wretched Knicks by 24 points Friday — but the man who would have bumped bodies with Shaq declared himself saddened by his absence. Said Zaza Pachulia, speaking before tipoff: “I’d like to play as much as possible against the biggest and toughest player in the world.”
Putting aside his personal sorrow, Pachulia then addressed the larger matter. “This,” he said, “is a big game for us.” Who was the last Hawks player who could utter those words with a straight face? Dikembe Mutombo? Dominque Wilkins? Bob Pettit?
It should come as no shock that, even without O’Neal, the team that knows something about big games overcame the team that has glimpsed them only on flat-panel TVs. The Heat won in overtime, winning because they had Dwyane Wade — 37 points, nine assists — and the Hawks didn’t. (It hardly seems fair that, with all those lottery picks, the Hawks have been unable to pluck a Wade of their own.)
Wade notwithstanding, the Hawks had their opportunities. They led by five points in the fourth quarter but wasted a slew of chances to put the tiring visitors away. (Most egregiously, Josh Smith failed to score on back-to-back fast breaks.) They even took a three-point lead in OT, whereupon Wade hit a step-back trey to tie it and fed Jason Williams in the corner for a lasting lead.
Same old story, right? Champs make plays and lottery teams don’t, right? Well, sort of. Coach Mike Woodson took that approach, saying, “They outworked us down the stretch. … We made plays in the first five games, and now we’ve got to get back to making plays.”
And yet … and yet …
A 72-second stand at the end of regulation dropped the hint that this moribund franchise might at last be stirring.
With the game tied, the Hawks had to survive four Heat misses linked by three offensive rebounds. We can fault the Hawks for not rebounding — Woodson surely did — but we should praise them for keeping their defensive shape over that excruciating span, for preventing the wondrous Wade from getting to the rim, for forcing all those shots — one by Wade, three by Antoine Walker — to be jump shots.
Even if this game was lost and even if the Hawks are no longer above .500, those 72 seconds constituted progress for the team that has miles to go. The Hawks didn’t get the rebound they needed, but they got four stops on one possession by the NBA champs. The Hawks of old might have managed one.
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A Southern classic no more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Some things are just not like they used to be.
Times change, but things don’t change with them. Take the Georgia Tech-Duke football series, which just happens to be a matter of the moment. These two have been butting skulls since the V-8 Ford and the repeal of prohibition. For a long time, it was a Southern classic. The stakes were high, for back when a bowl game was a bowl game, that was what they played for.
One year, Georgia Tech knocked Duke out of a trip to the Rose Bowl. That’s how big it was.
Then things began to unravel. Somebody let the air out of football at Duke and the Cameron Crazies took over. The campground outside that old stone basketball museum draws a bigger crowd in season than a game in Wallace Wade Stadium. On the other hand, take the game at old Grant Field, now sharing its name with Bobby Dodd, Saturday afternoon.
Duke was in town. Played in Durham, it would have drawn between 15,000-20,000, about the average for a football crowd at Duke these days. Here in Atlanta, it drew 46,768, which wasn’t a full house, but it did verify that football still lives and has a good pulse at Georgia Tech. It wasn’t the game, it was the habit. Saturday afternoons in the fall are to be spent in Bobby Dodd Stadium, when the Yellow Jackets are in full buzz.
Since 1983, Duke has been able to beat Georgia Tech only five times, only twice in the past 15 years. The game goes on. It’s a tradition, though wearing down to the tread. So it wasn’t the match that drew the crowd, it was the prosperity football is enjoying on The Flats this season. You get the idea when you realize that at the end not a lot more than the 768 part of the crowd was still in place. Actually, what they were getting was more a preview of coming attractions than a football game.
The Blue Devils were ahead one time during the day. They won the coin toss, then dang if they didn’t decide to give the ball to Tech. They got it right back when Reggie Ball tried to pass to Calvin Johnson. The ball was tipped and Duke’s sport-model defensive back, John Talley, intercepted.
So much for that hot streak, though. Tech would dedicate the first half to the talents of Johnson, who caught five passes, was interfered with on another (no call), and retired with 78 yards and two touchdowns on his scroll. You got the usual out of the rest of the Tech offense: 118 rushing yards from Tashard Choice, seven completions and three touchdowns from Ball and a booming 48-yard average punting performance out of Durant Brooks, who has come on like a secret weapon.
Without any trace of tomfoolery, Chan Gailey turned the second half over to a bunch of guys you won’t be seeing in Athens next week, but a lot of next season. The Tech coach turned the offense over to Taylor Bennett in the second half, and should have been moderately pleased with how the left-hander came through. Six out of 12 completions, two for touchdowns, and one quick-witted saving reaction on a fumble that aroused the thinning crowd to applause. The two touchdowns were shagged by Greg Smith, a redshirt freshman out of Douglass High. Hm-m-m, a star is born?
It was that kind of second half, names and numbers sounding out over the public address system that were strange to the gallery. Another of note was Jamaal Evans, a real live freshman out of Texas, who got in enough action to bank 89 yards, and promises to give Choice some special support down the road.
The score, 49-21, was immaterial, about what was to be expected. Surely nothing like that game in Durham three years ago, when the Blue Devils blew the Yellow Jackets off the map, one of those unfathomable upsets. Just another day in the office of Chan Gailey, on this season of rehabilitation. No matter what happens in Athens next Saturday, this team will play for the conference championship in Jacksonville, and they can’t take that away from them.
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