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Saturday, February 2, 2008
Fire Billy Knight first
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This should not be taken as an endorsement of Mike Woodson, because it’s generally not wise to endorse a coach with a career record of 88-201, unless, like, your name is Mrs. Woodson.
But in light of the relative deathwatch that’s hovering over the Hawks’ coach, a question: Has everybody lost sight of the bigger picture?
The NBA trade deadline is Feb. 21. Notwithstanding Saturday’s 104-92 win over the seemingly comatose New Jersey Nets, the Hawks are in need of a new plan and a makeover. The last plan and makeover by the all-knowing (just ask him) general manager, Billy Knight, has gotten them to 19-24. Now, you might believe that 19-24 represents significant underachievement for this roster. But I’m inclined to think Woodson probably was on the mark when he said before the game, “I thought we’d be at about .500 right now.” (That should pump up second-half ticket sales.)
So ask yourself this: With the trade deadline approaching, what would better serve the Hawks’ future: 1) Firing the coach; or, 2) Firing the general manager? (I know. You want the obvious third option. I want world peace. Don’t get greedy.)
If only because of timing: Fire Billy Knight first.
Let his replacement analyze this mismatched roster. Let his replacement orchestrate moves before the deadline. Let his replacement make the call on Woodson, whether that’s on his first day before lunch, or next week, or following the season.
When you build a new house and things start falling apart in three months, you don’t phone the plumber, or the electrician, or the sheetrock guy. You phone the builder who handed you the blueprint, then hired the plumber, the electrician and the sheetrock guy.
It works the same in basketball. How do you dump the coach before you dump the general manager who not only hired him, but also passed up Chris Paul and Brandon Roy in consecutive drafts? I realize the whole point guard thing has been beaten to death. But Paul and Roy both were named to the All-Star Game last week. So the two being ignored by Knight in consecutive drafts is sort of timely.
A new coach might help you in the short term. But Knight shouldn’t be given that hammer.
Yes, Woodson’s record in three and a half seasons is a cartoon-like 88-201 (.304). But it’s not as if he has been a drag on Knight’s career. Knight’s cumulative record in four and a half seasons: 116-255 (.313). Woodson would have to win another 26 in a row just to surpass the winning percentage of Lon Kruger (69-122, .361). But Knight is making Pete Babcock — who made the playoffs eight of 13 seasons — look like a visionary.
The fortunate upside to the Hawks’ record is they play in the Eastern Conference. They’re not dropping out of the playoff race any time soon. But this is when serious teams with serious general managers make moves. Los Angeles just completed a deal for Pau Gasol. Other teams are circling the Nets for Jason Kidd (who drifted through Saturday’s game like his head was elsewhere).
If you’re an Atlanta Spirit partner, do you going to trust Billy Knight to make a move?
Asked before Saturday’s game if a trade could send the right message to players in the locker room, Woodson said: “It could. We’ve kind of sat intact with this team for the last four years, when you talk about Josh Smith and [Josh] Childress and [Tyronn] Lue. There’s never really been a major trade since I’ve been here. I’m not saying that’s the answer. All I’m saying is, if something makes sense that can better your team, you have to do it.”
Woodson’s lifeline is remarkable. This same ownership group trusted Don Waddell to fire Bob Hartley because they were convinced the Thrashers’ coach had lost the team six games after a playoff season. Given Woodson is still employed, we have to assume he is somehow held in higher regard after over 200 losses.
But since they have waited this long, they might as well make the move that makes more sense. Fire the builder, not the plumber.
Permalink | Comments (119) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Jeff Schultz
Earlier losses leave Tech no wiggle room
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Georgia Tech isn’t the team it was a month ago, but what happened back then still counts. The Jackets have left themselves much ground to cover and only so many games to get there.
“What we’d done the last two weeks was nothing more than small steps,” Paul Hewitt said Saturday, his team having fallen to Maryland. “It’s disappointing to lose a chance to build on what we’d done.”
At the rate Tech is traveling, it could be a pretty tough out come March. But the Jackets lost so many in November and December that they’d put themselves in the distressing position of having to take every remaining home game just to get to 15 victories. On curious cue, they responded to their first three-game winning streak of the season by …
Losing at home.
If it wasn’t a bad loss in and of itself — Maryland has a nice team and a coach who has won an NCAA title — it was, in the grand scheme, a crusher. Here it is February, and the Jackets again have more losses any other ACC team. Their not-bad RPI (No. 54 as of Monday) will avail them nothing if their actual record doesn’t support it.
Saturday offered an opportunity to consolidate recent gains, to nose two games above .500 for the first time all season, to rise to 4-3 in ACC play. Saturday brought the chance to show that Tech, for all its early failings, has become one of the five best teams in the nation’s proudest conference. Instead it reverted to distressing habit. It simply failed to guard anybody.
“Today we played very poor defense,” said Hewitt, sugarcoating nothing. Maryland made 64.3 percent of its first-half shots, which wasn’t that difficult given that 13 of its 18 baskets were dunks or layups.
In a game they needed in the worst way, the Jackets began in the worst way. They fell behind five seconds in. They trailed by 10 points after four minutes. “The game’s 40 minutes,” Maryland coach Gary Williams would say, “but sometimes you can win them in the first half.”
Knowing what was happening, Hewitt called two timeouts in the first eight minutes and kept jerking guys in and out — only one starter, the singularly tenacious D’Andre Bell, played more than half the first half — but nothing clicked until the game was all but gone. Tech made run after impassioned run in the second half, same as against Kansas and Florida State and North Carolina on this floor, but the end was also the same. That’s five homecourt losses on the season, the four most recent by an aggregate 10 points.
“If we’d won,” Hewitt said, “it would have been nothing but luck.”
And that, pending a bold and sustained reversal, would seem to be the story of this odd team. Tech has left too much to chance, too much undone. It’s chasing the season in the same way it has chased too many games. It keeps dropping hints that it has enough resources to be better, but it has also dropped 10 of its first 20 games.
Credit Hewitt for not allowing this season to spiral beyond all hope of rescue. Over the three-game run, Tech moved the ball in its sets better than at any time since this coach arrived from Siena, and it finally started to defend to Hewitt specifications. But when you win three straight and you’re still only 10-9, your problem isn’t so much the future as the past. You’re trying to outrun what you’ve done. Or, more to the point, what you’ve failed to do.
A case can be made that a 10-10 team doesn’t even belong in any rational NCAA discussion, but there’s a counterargument: Namely, that the Jackets have shown enough against a strong schedule to suggest that this should be one of the 65 best squads in the land. There’s still a chance they could play themselves into the Big Dance, but that chance took a major hit Saturday.
Ten regular-season games remain, six on the road. Tech surely needs to win seven of those 10. A team that represents a school steeped in mathematics must know how cold those numbers look.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Tradition says Giants, but Patriots too good
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This begins with a confession. I’m an underdog guy. Never pick the favorite. Tiger Woods, Duke basketball, Yankees baseball, the Celtics when Red Auerbach was in the chair, or Jack Nicklaus in his prime. That’s going for the soft landing.
So I sat down to pick the winner of this Super Bowl, and there was no doubt. The Giants. I don’t like picking against the Mannings, anyway. Good family. Fine parents. Solid upbringing. No other family has ever sent three quarterbacks to the NFL, from Archie to Eli. So it was a foregone conclusion, the Giants.
I’d had some luck along this line a long time ago. I was one of five guys who picked the Jets to beat Baltimore in Super Bowl III. It’s registered in the Hall of Fame at Canton. Had nothing to do with football wisdom. Another underdog, just to be different. Not three cheers for Joe Namath.
This time, doing my usual inventory, studying the two quarterbacks, everything kept coming back to Tom Brady. Sixth-round draft choice. Not the same kind of hot-rock as Namath. More I read, more I checked, there was no getting away from Brady, or Bill Belichick. Say what you will, no Belichick, no Patriots in the Super Bowl.
Belichick was bred to coaching. His daddy, Steve, was an assistant at Vanderbilt to Bill Edwards, who became the victim of a war between two sports editors in Nashville. That’s where the baby Belichick was born. Steve eventually landed at the Naval Academy, and young Bill grew up studying football over Steve’s shoulder — scouting, offense, defense, every trick of the trade. As a player, he wasn’t much, a center and tight end at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Flash forward: The more I read and heard from these broadcast cats who played it, know it, and babble ceaselessly about the game, you became immersed in Tom Brady-isms. “An off-field extension of Belichick,” I read.
“Brady is playing the quarterback position right now better than anybody I’ve ever seen.” John Madden said that, big blusterer that he is, and it isn’t easy to brush it off.
Something I read of Brady himself caught my eye as well: “I remember sitting up 10 rows from the top of Candlestick Park looking down with binoculars at Joe Montana and Steve Young. I was this kid with a dream, and now, all of a sudden, I’m the one on the field.”
I read on and on until I was overwhelmed about all that supporting cast he has been provided with. Wes Welker, for instance, not 6 feet tall, out of Texas Tech, not known for producing catchers, makes 112 receptions, a “possession” guy, I guess you’d say. Vital to the offense, makes the catch while the defense double-covers Randy Moss. Jabar Gaffney, out of Florida; Kyle, the other Brady, a tight end; Ben Watson, out of Georgia; and as usual, the overlooked fullback, Heath Evans. He came up from Auburn.
You’ve heard it said of these workaholics before: First to get here, last to leave. “He’s here at 6 in the morning and sometimes he’s here until 6 or 7 at night,” Welker told a writer with the bellicose name of Jim Corbett.
I was muddled, but not as much as a writer named Nate Davis. Nate wrote a piece headlined “Why the Giants Will Win,” then on another page picked the Patriots.
You may recall that about a year or so ago, Tom Coughlin was about to get run out of New York. Too tough, a grinder, and who can remember that frostbitten face on the sideline at Green Bay, when the Giants upset Brett Favre. You’ve got to like it that he not just survived, he punched his ticket to Phoenix. This is the kind of guy you’d like to pick. Up from a count of eight, fights back and now has his chance at a knockout. Sorry, I lost my courage. My venturesome spirit has vanished. Patriots, maybe three touchdowns. Selah.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Dishonest club wrong team to make history
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Phoenix — As a JFK assassination buff, I never was an Arlen Specter fan. He concocted the “magic bullet” theory, which claimed that one rifle shot inflicted seven wounds on a president and a governor and emerged unscathed after zigging when it wasn’t zagging in midair.
Yeah, that made sense.
Now Specter is a U.S. senator instead of a member of the Warren Commission, and I like him. That’s because he finally has gotten it right after all these decades when it comes to conspiracies. It’s the revolting one surrounding the NFL and the New England Patriots. Courtesy of commissioner Roger Goodell using his version of the “magic bullet” theory to describe this ongoing Spygate mess, the Patriots are a Super Bowl victory away today at University of Phoenix Stadium from continuing as the biggest frauds in league history.
So where to start? I mean, you have nose guard Vince Wilfork’s $37,500 worth of fines this season to lead a group of cheap-shot artists on what supposedly is a disciplined team. You have the disingenuous claims of guys who say they are above responding to this and that before they tell on themselves. (For instance: They’ve whined all week about the Giants arriving for Super Bowl Week in black. “Yes, you are supposed to wear black to a funeral,” said the Patriots Randy Moss. “We’ll see who has black on after the game.”) You have those lies about Tom Brady’s supposedly bum shoulder, but despite the Patriots listing it for more than three years on the NFL’s injury list, Brady has started 126 consecutive games, the third-longest streak in NFL history.
Let’s return to Specter, though, who wants Goodell to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain why in the name of Richard Nixon the commissioner destroyed all of those tapes and notes after the Patriots were nailed earlier this season to initiate Spygate. More specifically, the Patriots were caught in their opener in the Meadowlands using video equipment to steal signs and whatever else from the Jets.
Logic would say that the Patriots and their CIA wannabe coach, Bill Belichick, had done those things and whatever else many times before. Logic would say that since Goodell’s stated mission in life is to “protect the shield,” he was obsessed with covering up the Patriots’ numerous bad deeds. After all, not only are the Patriots seeking to join the league’s all-time elite with a fourth world championship in seven years, they can finish an unprecedented 19-0 with a victory over the New York Giants.
Logic would say that Goodell wished to keep the world from discovering a grassy knoll on his watch along the way to folks declaring the Patriots as frauds.
Which the Patriots are. Among other accusations within the past few days, ESPN.com reported that former video guy Matt Walsh has evidence that Belichick was doing ugly things in the shadows during Walsh’s seven year with the Patriots’ through the 2002 season. Interestingly, that was the season after the Patriots began their streak of dominance with an upset of the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl.
“It could be zero in the loss column for them, and they could beat all of those teams for an entire season, but the reality is, people always will have thoughts of ‘What happened?’ and ‘Yeah, really,’ and ‘Tell us the real story?’ ” said Michael Irvin, the star receiver on three Super Bowl champions for the Dallas Cowboys. “All stories get greater later. So even though [the NFL and the Patriots] claim that it only happened in the first quarter in the first game of this season, it’s going to get greater later.
“Thirty years from now, we might even have them spying and stealing signals in some of those Super Bowls. When it comes to their whole season, it’s going to be tainted, and that’s just the truth.”
That’s because we’ve yet to hear the truth on the matter.
Instead, we got whatever Goodell was talking about on Friday regarding the NFL and the Patriots during his state of the league address. Questions on Spygate were asked more than a half-dozen times during Goodell’s 50 minutes before the national and international media. To paraphrase: He said he destroyed the tapes and the notes from the Patriots to make sure that if such material surfaced again, he could tell that it wasn’t leaked by the league.
He said Spygate wasn’t a big deal, because he said many teams have cheated in sports throughout history and that he disciplined the Patriots (large fines to Belichick and to the team and the stripping of a first-round draft pick) for getting caught. He said there was no evidence of the Patriots ever cheating in a Super Bowl. He said this was just a one-time thing by the Patriots.
He also said Oswald acted alone. Well, not really, but he wanted to.
Permalink | Comments (211) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
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