Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Chicago Bulls 114 Atlanta Hawks 81

Boxscore

My thoughts on the game are over at the Daily Dime. Regular readers will be ahead of the game.

Derrick Rose was amazing. The Atlanta Hawks were not. Save for Jeff Teague, who ably showed up the head coach in garbage time and Josh Smith who did the same, in a less positive sense, during the relatively brief competitive portion of the game.

The Hawks didn't make a basket in the paint over the final 27:34 of the game, though Marvin Williams (in the third quarter) and Jeff Teague (in the fourth quarter) each made a jumper inside of 15 feet during that portion of the game.

The Hawks didn't make a basket in the paint over the final 27:34 of the game despite trailing by at least 20 points for the entire time. Defense is about talent more than it's about effort but a culture of accountability has its place as well.

4 comments:

Adam Malka said...

“I am going to keep trying," Drew said. “Right now I think the most important thing with our team has nothing to do with Xs and Os. It’s got to do with just our whole mental state. Coming out and playing hard and sustaining that and being able to play hard for four quarters. I am going to continue to try to preach that message. Hopefully it will get through as we wind down this regular season.”

I would say the most important thing is the Hawks' complete inability or unwillingness to go inside, which kind of is an Xs and Os thing. Well, it's probably an Xs and Os thing combined with an accountability thing--Drew doesn't hold Johnson, Crawford, and especially Smith accountable for bad shot selection. The team may well lack heart and "toughness," but even with said intangibles it wouldn't be much good without the three players who have the highest usage rate being held accountable for their failings. Which brings us to...

"L.D. said he told Zaza he didn’t like the jump shot he attempted on the previous possession: “You don’t go on your own, you don’t start trying to do things you aren’t capable of doing. You don’t deviate from what the team is expecting. You continue to play the right way. That was either a shot where he saw he was about to come out of the game or just a bad shot.”

Well, then.

jrauch said...

Larry Drew. In completely over his head, holding no one accountable.

This is the price of getting a coach on the cheap and never really giving him any authority. The inmates run the asylum.

Unknown said...

Defense is about talent? No, defense is 100% about effort.

Unknown said...

That statement is crazy. Defense is not an easily measurable statistic so people just say effort and intensity.

People rarely say, player x is lacking in effort and intensity on offense b/c they don't have to. They can say, player x (bosh) is 1-18. He is not shooting well. Mike Bibby is a great example. I believe he sometimes try's (effort) on defense but does not have adequete skills to defend.