Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Hawks - Jackets - the difference

Last year when Isma'il dunked on Maryland (I think), Brad Doherty (again I think) said - "Get the women and childern off the baseline"....... For the Hawks, it's "Hide the Women and Children" per this article.

The Hawks are a special kind of bad. They play a sort of ABA, each-possession-is-less-important-than-the-last brand of basketball. They play like their last paycheck bounced. Close your eyes and you can imagine these same guys in Dallas Chaparrals uniforms getting dunked on by Julius Erving and Darnell Hillman.

They have four centers and the best of the bunch is 42 years old. Ancient Kevin Willis splits time in the pivot with starter Jason Collier and subs Predrag Drobnjak and Jelani McCoy.

Collier has everything you'd want in a starting center, except scoring (6.6 ppg), rebounding (3.4) and shot-blocking (0.3).

Speaking of point guards, the Hawks have one of the best point guards in the NBA. Unfortunately he resides in two separate bodies. Kenny Anderson sees the floor and is a great distributor but is so limited with his jumper that teams can pack it in against him and clog up those passing lanes he so unselfishly explores. Tony Delk can shoot, sadly he can't do anything else that might be expected of a point guard. If Anderson had Delk's jumper, or Delk had Anderson's passing skills, well, maybe Walker and Harrington wouldn't be the team's only options. (Which would be bad news for me.)

At shooting guard, Atlanta rotates Frenchman Boris Diaw and Jon Barry, the third Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket on the squad.


All I can say is OUCH!!