Tag: Atlanta Hawks
Highlights

Breakfast Special: Even the Spurs Can’t Lose to Memphis

- by Fox Doucette

The San Antonio Spurs bandwagon has been sliding around out of control like a Seattle driver in last Saturday’s snow traffic ever since the team left for the Rodeo Road Trip. The Spurs, before they beat Memphis 108-107 in the House That 24-Second Violations Built, had lost four in a row. But when the Grizzlies are running out the likes of Avery Bradley to start at guard (even though Bradley did have 33 points), Mike Conley is a DNP-CD, and Marc Gasol is in Toronto, even the Spurs, crashing back to earth as their antiquated style of basketball and your …

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Highlights

Breakfast Special: P Is For Powerless

- by Fox Doucette

Some days, you watch basketball and wonder if perhaps your time wouldn’t be better taken up by just changing hobbies. Like becoming a grizzly bear wrangler. Or an “experience collector” in North Korean labor camps. OK, so life isn’t THAT bad for Pacers fans, not when if you really want to experience the frozen wastes of Jotunheim in this mortal life, you need only step outside in Indianapolis this morning. But without Victor Oladipo, and with Myles Turner still not quite wholly sure how to be the focal point of an offense while maintaining his defensive intensity, and with Tyreke …

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Highlights

Breakfast Special: January Blowout Sale!

- by Fox Doucette

The Golden State Warriors won an NBA basketball game by 31 points on a night where only six games were played league-wide. The Warriors posted just the fourth-best victory margin among the winning teams, as three of the top four East squads won by more than that. But the losing team in the Dubs’ game is why they’re leading the show, because they beat the Denver Nuggets, 142-111, in Denver. Golden State scored 51 points in the first. That’s first quarter, not first half. And they hit 10 threes in the frame, a franchise record. The 51 points? Also a …

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Highlights

Breakfast Special: Losing by a RAZR-Thin Margin

- by Fox Doucette

Every single problem the Indiana Pacers have—every weakness, every lapse in execution, every failure in design—came together in a Motorola-sponsored garbage fire that culminated in a 92-91 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. In fact, the last sequence of the game, with Indiana up 91-90 and Victor Oladipo on the free throw line, was all of the above in about 20 seconds. Oladipo missed not one but two free throws, turning “for the tie” into “for the win” at the other end, and it seems like every time any team in the NBA leaves the door open like that, they lose. …

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Highlights

Breakfast Special: When Bad Teams Go Good

- by Fox Doucette

Riddle me this, Batman. When an NBA team becomes my ultimate idee fixe, how many times are they going to have to bear out my points about them before it literally drives me insane? Because I think I’m actually barking mad, and I have the Atlanta Hawks to blame. The Hawks beat Charlotte by one point, 124-123, snapping a 10-game losing streak, and I am leading my freaking column with it because the 9-10 Hornets have a +4.5 point differential, the kind of figure that should have them on pace for 53 wins. I don’t believe in stuff like “learning …

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Highlights

Breakfast Special: Ragnarok, NBA Style

- by Fox Doucette

Sunday was a terror show worthy of the kinds of movies that come out in October and then quickly disappear from theaters on All Saints’ Day. The Golden State Warriors lost to the Denver Nuggets, the Houston Rockets fell short against the better-than-you-think Los Angeles Clippers, and the Oklahoma City Thunder got whacked at home by the Sacramento Kings. Oh, and Atlanta beat Cleveland because the league said they had to play a game whether people wanted to watch it or not. Let’s get to the highlights and then you all can skewer me on Twitter (@RealFoxD) for not doing …

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2019 Preview

Are the 2018-19 Atlanta Hawks Good?

- by Fox Doucette

And the award for “Dumbest Headline” goes to…Pace and Space! You like me! You really, really…wonder why I picked that little Google-friendly…never mind. The Hawks suck. That’s…not actually the question we’re trying to answer here, though. The question is not “are the Hawks good”, but “are they good enough to win 24 games again and clear the low bar of their 23.5 over/under. Or, put another way, “are the Hawks somehow even worse than last year?” Well, they replaced Dennis Schroder with Trae Young, who showed in Summer League that he’s either Stephen Curry Evolved…or about as accurate as setting …

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Is He Any Good

Dennis Schroder: Is He Any Good?

- by Fox Doucette

The Atlanta Hawks are genuinely terrible. After getting the royal smackdown from King James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, they’re now 4-17. The roster is a combination of castoffs, injuries, and injured castoffs, coach Mike Budenholzer is out there like “what, you gave me a G-League team, did you want playoffs?”, and the question of whether the players are any good almost seems a wasted question since, well, they’re 4-17. But the question must be asked, if only because it becomes a referendum on the guys Atlanta tried to keep in their great roster purge and subsequent tank job. So we’ll …

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Analysis

How Good NBA Teams Lose And Bad Teams Win

- by Fox Doucette

There are, at present, three NBA teams that are indisputably good in the sense that they win at least 75 percent of the time, the bar a team needs to clear to go 62-20 or better; the Boston Celtics (18-3), Houston Rockets (15-4), and Golden State Warriors (15-5). There are also three teams in the Association that are so utterly putrid that they are on pace to win 20 games or fewer over an 82-game season; the 3-14 Chicago Bulls, 4-16 Atlanta Hawks, and 5-15 Dallas Mavericks. But if the best teams always won and the worst teams always lost, …

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2018 Preview

Is This 2018 NBA Team Any Good?: Atlanta Hawks

- by Fox Doucette - Leave a Comment

by Fox Doucette Our journey through the Southeast Division continues, and the best team nobody watched in 2015 just because the worst team nobody’s going to watch in 2018. The Hawks, like most Atlanta sports teams, couldn’t draw flies if you covered them in honey, finished 26th out of 30 in attendance last season, a playoff year, and were in the bottom half even when they went 60-22 (and finished 17th in attendance.) The last time Atlanta was in the top ten in attendance? 1987-88. They were 8th, with Dominique Wilkins dazzling fans…and there were only 23 teams in the …

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