Initial feedback: A completely subjective and immediate response to the events of tonight's game, featuring a comment and rating, the latter on a scale of 1 to 10, on every player who saw the floor and the head coach, along with ephemera and miscellany as the author deems necessary.
Your ratings and commentary, dear reader, are welcomed in the comments to this post.
Boxscore
Players
Jeff Teague: He and the team are suffering from the prior reluctance to play Jeff Teague. Watching him try to figure stuff out now is sub-optimal in the moment but will pay off should he succeed before the playoffs start. 4/10
Joe Johnson: A terribly inefficient scoring game (20 points on 23 shots, 2 free throw attempts) in a vacuum but, when compared to what Indiana mustered or weighed against his six rebounds and eight assists, it's not so damaging. 7/10
Marvin Williams: Seven rebounds in less than 23 minutes. Good defense on Granger, as well. I'll say he should play more until he makes me change my mind, probably sometime in the first half in Orlando on Friday. 5/10
Josh Smith: If he's going to shoot jump shots (my guess is that he will), then they might as well be those that count for an extra point every time they go in the basket. His two third quarter three-pointers were huge. The rest of his performance -- 28 points, 12 rebounds, 5 steals, 3 assists, and 3 blocks -- may have been more likely than both those shots going in from beyond the arc but was no less important. 10/10
Zaza Pachulia: Gave all he had but couldn't put away a couple of transition opportunities in the fourth quarter. He played way too few minutes the past couple seasons but 38 in one game is clearly too many. 5/10
Kirk Hinrich: I think Jannero Pargo should play more minutes. 7/10
Tracy McGrady: When he's got it, he's still got it and even in the games when he's got it, he saves the best for the fourth quarter. 7/10
Willie Green: You have to enjoy the nights Willie Green plays well because history tells us there will be plenty of nights like tonight, where he made Dahntay Jones look good. 2/10
Ivan Johnson: There are a lot of similarities between Ivan Johnson's game and Zaza Pachulia's. 2/10
Vladimir Radmanovic: I would have guess he played for less than 119 seconds. 1/10
The head coach
I think it's abundantly clear that the Hawks will rely on their defense to win both because stops can turn into transition opportunities an because the Hawks can't score consistently enough to control the game that way. I also think it's abundantly clear that the Hawks have seven quality rotation players with a handful of wild cards behind them. Minutes should be allotted along those lines. 6/10
A thought regarding the opposition
The Pacers aren't a good offensive team even at full strength but they really missed George Hill's efficiency and Jeff Foster's offensive rebounding tonight.
2 comments:
I had a previous comment about our old bench. One solution is to maximize the minutes of our starters (44 minutes for Joe, 46 for Josh, 38 for Zaza). It's clear we cannot exhaust those players like we did tonight, so spreading it around 7 competent players (hopefully an eighth if we pick up a backup center) seems like a more sensible plan until playoff time.
I think LD figured out that putting Vlad out there to let the other team go on runs was not the best way to keep his job.
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