Friday, March 30, 2012

Initial Feedback: Personally, I'm On Speaking Terms With Hardly Anybody

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: There are few things more entertaining in a battle between middle-class teams than a point guard blocking three shots. Thoroughly outplayed the Knicks' second- through fourth-string point guards. Mike Woodson might not have expected that. 7/10

Kirk Hinrich: Eeesh. 2/10

Joe Johnson: Super Willie Green. His shot-making and New York's inability to convert beating him off the dribble into points were the differences in the game. 8/10

Josh Smith: 23 points on 13 shots in the paint. 0 points on 6 shots outside of the paint. Seven turnovers make it difficult for the former to make up for the latter. On the other end, Carmelo Anthony is a terrible matchup for Josh Smith. Smith struggles to defend at the point of attack. Anthony is all point of attack. By making Smith defend the ball, New York really limited his impact on the defensive glass, just four defensive rebounds in 38 minutes for a guy pulling down a quarter of opponents' misses this season. 7/10

Zaza Pachulia: Will never have the defensive impact of Tyson Chandler but attacked the glass and scored one handful of points to make a play for a a draw. 5/10

Marvin Williams: If you only watch the ball when the offensive team has it, Willie Green was the unquestioned star off the bench. If you watch the entire basketball game, Marvin Williams was his equal. 6/10

Willie Green: If he makes every shot, Willie Green is a good basketball player. Even then, he's also a poor defender. Baron Davis beat him off the dribble in the fourth quarter but couldn't finish at the rim. The inability of the Knicks to guard Green in the fourth was as telling as their inability to exploit him offensively. 7/10

Ivan Johnson: Ivan Johnson is not going to get regular minutes. 2/10

Jerry Stackhouse: Marked present. Incomplete

Jason Collins: A new scoreless game streak begins. Incomplete

The head coach
Simply by virtue of standing on the Atlanta sideline for the better part of two seasons while Mike Woodson has been a head coach for 10 games, Larry Drew won whatever power struggle may or may not have gone down between the two. Drew also works for the better organization as the Hawks without Al Horford were clearly superior to the Knicks without Amare Stoudemire. But the Hawks rarely look bad when they make half (48.6 eFG% from 15 feet and beyond) their jump shots. 6/10

1 comment:

Buddy Grizzard said...

Agree that Teague outplayed Davis and Bibby, although I'm not prepared to award him a medal for that. But in the first half he had some god-awful turnovers.