Second Quote of the Day -- May 11, 2012

Kevin Garnett:

"First off, I want to say ‘Thank you’ to their owner for giving me some extra gas tonight. My only advice to him is next time he opens his mouth, actually know what he’s talking about, Xs and Os versus checkbooks and bottom lines. . . . We’re not dirty. We’re firm, we’re aggressive. We’re not dirty. You have to understand the word ‘dirty’ in this game is very defined. Going under guys, trying to hurt guys, ill intent–is not they way we play basketball. . . . We play with a lot of passion, play with force. It’s the playoffs but I’m not trying to hurt anybody, nor has my teammates. I just found that comment to be a little rude and a little out of hand and I wanted to address it. Just because you got a bunch of money don’t mean you can open your mouth."

Kevin Garnett, being either very polite or brutally sarcastic in his description of ownership.

Quote of the Day -- May 11, 2012

Larry Drew:

"That [Josh Smith's missed corner two with nine seconds left] wasn’t [the play]. We were in our wrong spots. We did not execute what we had drawn up in the huddle. We can’t have that type of mental breakdown at the end of a game. You just can’t have it. That play is not designed to be at the elbow shooting a jump shot. We did not execute it."

The Hawks sorted it out in their final huddle of the game, a collaborative masterpiece:

Quote of the Day -- May 3, 2012

Larry Drew:

"I want to make sure if I can get guys proper amount of rest. I do want to ride my starters but I don’t want to wear them out. It’s going to be a long series. I could probably stagger them a little bit more but I have to make sure I don’t wear guys down and run them in the ground. I have all the confidence in the world in my bench. They’ve been good for us all season and I’m not going to give up on them now."

Could. Probably.

Rest your hope on those two words.

Quote of the Day -- April 30. 2012

Larry Drew:

"We knew we had to win the energy game. We had to win the hustle game. I think we did that."

And so it was.

Quote of the Day -- March 20, 2012

Kevin Garnett, when asked if Jeff Teague’s dunk on Ray Allen and subsequent taunting in the third quarter angered the Celtics:

“I don’t even know who you are talking about. That guy’s a nobody.’’

No Hawk was assessed a technical foul for excessive celebration after Teague closed out the home loss with an air ball on a three-point attempt.

Quote of the Day -- February 19, 2012

Tracy McGrady on the subject of his playing time:

"I’m tired of this [bleep]. You can put that in the paper, I don’t give a [bleep]."

What a wonderful stretch of the season this is.

Quote of the Day -- February 13, 2012

Willie Green:

"Any time a team is able to get that many fast-break points -- and we let those guys penetrate, get to the basket, get to the free-throw line – you are in for a long night. We have to do a better job with our effort on the defensive end of the court. We have to be better in order for us to be an elite type of team. Right now we’ve got to look in the mirror and do a better job than we did tonight."

With the road trip coming up, it'll be more than 48 hours between the end of last night's debacle and the next Hawks game. It's best to go ahead and get it all out of your system. Don't hold it in and let it eat at you from the inside. In that spirit, when Willie Green* is the voice of reason, the institution of the Atlanta Hawks rather fundamentally fails to inspire confidence.

*Another nice game, by the way. Not especially effective in terms of helping the team win, nor indicative of him needing more minutes, but the Hawks are getting all they could reasonably hope for from Willie Green and he deserves credit for that.

With the Hawks visiting three teams with winning records and two that will try and pick-and-roll them to death, the opportunity exists for them to improve the mood as they improve their record. Or, they'll just make clear that the number one priority for the rest of the season will be getting under the salary cap.

Quote of the Day -- January 15, 2012

Ivan Johnson:

"My thing is, I don’t really watch basketball so I don’t know who anybody is. So when I match up against them, they are a regular player. I know the major players like LeBron, Kobe, Wade but all the extra ones I don’t know. Even if I did know them, I’m not going to be afraid. We are playing basketball."

Doesn't really watch basketball? Doesn't know who anybody is? No wonder 'Nique likes him so much.

Quote of the Day -- January 12, 2012

Larry Drew:

"[I]n that third quarter, we just couldn’t do anything right."

Gameflow

Shot Chart

Quotes of the Day -- January 6, 2012

If you had six games into the season in your "When will the Hawks give a performance accompanied by post-game rhetoric that makes you consider giving up all otherwise reasonable hope for the team?" pool, I think you won.

Al Horford on Chris Bosh's three-pointer that sent the game to overtime:

"That’s a miscommunication there. That went on all game. Guys were not on the same page and we weren’t switching. We were having some problems with the coverages. Jeff, you can’t fault him, he expects it to be done the right way every time."

Jeff Teague's inexperience is apparently manifesting itself through expectations that his teammates will fulfill their assignments.

Josh Smith provides a different perspective:

"I don’t know how much louder I can scream for whoever it is that a man is coming up and setting a screen. . . . We were giving up too many straight-line drives to the basket and dribble-drive layups. It’s disappointing to see that when somebody makes a play, as teammates we have to come up and help them."

I don't know how much louder I can scream when someone is taking a shot that has about a 30% chance of going in. We were giving up too many possessions on low-percentage shots. It's disappointing to see that when somebody settles for a bad shot, his teammates have to come up and fight for the offensive rebound and help him.

Quote of the Day -- January 3, 2012

Al Horford on the dichotomy of a great team defensive performance (76 points allowed on 93 possessions) for the game as a whole and giving up 34 points on 23 possessions in the fourth quarter:

"We dominated them for most of the game. Just Derrick Rose happened."

Luol Deng and missed free throws played key roles, as well. The gameflow isn't pretty.

Quote of the Day -- January 2, 2012

Tracy McGrady takes us back to our youth:

"My legs feel fresh. Everything just feels good. It feels right. That’s a good sign. I haven’t felt this good in a long time, probably since the beginning of my knee injury."

Quote of the Day -- December 29, 2011

John Wall:

"Get him out of the game!"

Context:

The Hawks scored the first 11 points of the game and led 19-4 before John Wall decided to send a charge into his team by scoring eight consecutive points for the team. But his frustration was apparent early on, as he looked at Coach Flip Saunders and shouted about one the Wizards’ starters, "Get him out of the game!"

Puts waiting for Kirk Hinrich to come back and replace Pargo and Green in perspective.

HT: Bullets Forever

Quote of the Day -- December 28, 2011

Tracy McGrady:

"I’m a gamer, man. That’s what I am. I just get bored with preseason. I know that sounds crazy but I really do. The anticipation builds up for the offseason, especially being healthy and get out there and play. I’m like, let’s get this real thing going on."

Crazy? Or the sanest thing you've ever heard?

Did Larry Drew Learn Anything From the Game 2 Loss?

He's not admitting so publicly. As reported by Michael Cunningham, Larry Drew has no regrets about sitting his best player for 21 minutes of the first half to stave of future foul trouble that never materialized, sitting his specialist starting center for eight-and-a-half minutes, and sitting his competent backup center for more than eleven-and-a-half minutes:

"When he picked up the early two fouls it put it us in a bit of a bind. You don’t anticipate your starters picking up two early fouls like that. When he went to the bench, had we hit a bad stretch at the start of the second quarter to the middle of second quarter, I would have put him back in. We actually had a really good stretch in the middle of second quarter, three minutes hit a bump in the road and jeopardize him picking up his third when we were going good."

There's no tangible value in Drew making a public confession regarding his incompetence, he just can't play his worst players at the expense of his best player and better players for long stretches of the game.

Will he resist the mystifying temptation? I don't know. Given that he largely moved away from the Horford Treatment and gave Josh Powell a non-playing role commensurate with his abilities as the season progressed, one could fairly concentrate real hard on Drew's ability to do so again while ignoring the incomprehensible (given the stakes) backsliding Tuesday night.

On the other hand, Drew quite clearly was far more interested in addressing the possibility of three of his players committing three first half fouls than how a Hawks lineup of Jason Collins, Josh Powell, Josh Smith, Joe Johnson, and Kirk Hinrich is going to get a rebound three minutes into a playoff game.

Other reactions to Drew's coaching job in Game 2...

John Hollinger (Insider):

[S]tudies have shown there may be some benefit to sitting a player in more dire foul trouble -- with more fouls than the quarter of the game, basically (i.e., two fouls in the first quarter, three in the second, four in the third) -- because such players will slack off on defense if they stay on the court.

Even by this logic, however, Horford should have been back on the court to begin the second quarter. Or, at worst, come back in with 8:44 left in the quarter after Jason Collins picked up his second foul.

Oh, did I leave that part out? Yes, the Hawks did the same thing with Collins, too -- their most valuable player this series because of his defense on Dwight Howard. Wanting to preserve Collins for the fourth quarter -- one he ended up not playing a minute in, because the Hawks were behind and Collins can't score -- Drew also sat Collins for the final 8:44 of the half with two fouls.

And Zaza Pachulia, the backup to those two players? Yes, really. Him too. He picked up his second foul with 11:22 left in the half and immediately hit the pine for the rest of the period. Can't be having players getting a third foul in the second quarter, after all, because if they get three more, they'll be forced to sit out. And there's nothing worse than having a player forced to sit out. Which is why Drew sat them out. My brain hurts.

Up 'til that point the Hawks had the game under control, with a 10-point lead. Soon things would change dramatically.

First, Josh Powell came in, after he mystifyingly was left activated while Etan Thomas didn't dress. (True story: I was talking to two NBA front-office types before a game this month and we were trying to come up with the worst player in the league. Without any prodding from me, both of them nominated Powell.)

Then came Hilton Armstrong, who managed to commit three fouls in his 5:20 stint but somehow stayed on the floor. Apparently the two-foul rule is waived for fifth-string centers.

Nonetheless, the damage was done. Orlando outscored the Hawks 26-10 over the final 8:44 of the second quarter, with Howard erupting for 17 points against Atlanta's scrubs.

There is no way to sugarcoat it: This is the most indefensible coaching decision I've seen this season. Horford played the entire second half and finished the game with -- you guessed it -- two fouls. This didn't come as a surprise to anyone who watched the Hawks this season. Horford has one of the lowest foul rates in the league at his position -- just 2.85 fouls per 40 minutes -- so even if he had stayed in the game with the two fouls he was at virtually no risk of fouling out.

Overall, when a real center was on the court the Hawks won Game 2 by 10 points. Unfortunately, Drew's personnel choices sabotaged them so badly in the second quarter that they missed a golden opportunity to grab this series by the throat.

Zach Lowe:

Stat-heads have been going nuts for years about coaches overreacting to foul trouble, to the point that a consensus was almost forming. So folks took notice at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in March, when three researchers steeped in heavy math backgrounds presented a paper essentially arguing that coaches are right to take out starters in foul trouble early in games. After analyzing several years worth of play-by-play data, the researchers found that teams fared a bit worse when coaches asked guys to play through foul trouble in the first two or three quarters. No one is quite sure why, but the group behind the paper speculated that guys play too tentatively while in foul trouble, and that only the very worst bench players would play worse than a foul-plagued starter.

But here’s the thing: Even the thrust of this research goes against the kind of caution Drew showed Tuesday. The researchers defined “foul trouble” as any scenario in which a player’s foul total is greater than the number of the quarter at a particular time in a game. A player with, say, three fouls in the second quarter would qualify as “in foul trouble,” but the researchers took him out of the “foul trouble” category if he still had three fouls during the third quarter.

By this definition, Horford was in foul trouble with two fouls in the first quarter but would have been safe to re-enter in the second quarter — and stay in the game until he picked up his third foul. And critics at the conference considered even this definition of “foul trouble” a bit too conservative.

Horford played the entire second half. He finished the game with two fouls. That wasn’t shocking. Horford is not a foul-prone guy; he averaged just 2.6 fouls per 36 minutes this season, and he has cut his foul rate every season he’s been in the league. Add in the relatively low quality of Atlanta’s backup big men beyond Zaza Pachulia, and I’m willing to bet even the most conservative math would suggest that Horford should have been on the floor for at a chunk of the second quarter.

Horford is Atlanta’s best player. The Hawks will have trouble beating a quality team four times in seven games if their best player logs just 26 minutes for no good reason.

Zach McCann:

@ZachLowe_SI @hoopinion Well that is stupid.

Tom Ziller:

Larry Drew's mishandling of foul trouble and Horford's foul trouble in particular has been a constant lament for numerous Atlanta writers, but Tuesday's head-slapping (il)logic was just too much. Horford picked up his second foul just a shade over two minutes into the game. Drew unsurprisingly pulled him ... for the entire first half! That's right: Al Horford, the most valuable Hawk, played two minutes in the first half because Larry Drew didn't want him to be unavailable later on due to an ejection he was four fouls away from.

Horford played every second of the second half, and finished with ... two fouls. That's right -- a player who sat for 22 minutes in the first half due to foul trouble never actually sniffed foul trouble. He could have had five fouls in the first two minutes and not fouled out.

Drew has no concept of the reality that 22 minutes in the first half are just as valuable as 22 minutes in the second. It'd be hilarious if it weren't killing a playoff team as we speak.

Only Buster Bluth Rates Juice More Highly Than Does Larry Drew

As reported by Michael Cunningham, Larry Drew on the Hawks breaking their four-game losing streak:

"They seemed to have a little bit more juice. Heck, I seemed to have a little bit more juice. It’s good to break the streak. You are almost 70 games into the season. It’s been a long grind, and you just welcome those kind of moments."

Previously.

Also, previous to that.

Quotes, Notes, and Links: Hawks 112 Timberwolves 87

Gameflow

Highlights

Hoopdata Boxscore

Perusing Hoopdata's next generation* boxscore...

• Jamal Crawford attempted 16 field goals in 26:40, all of them at least 16 feet from the basket.
• Three of Al Horford's four assists set up three-point baskets.
• Kevin Love's offensive rebound rate: 26.9%. Atlanta's team offensive rebound rate: 29.5%

*I would still love to get offensive and defensive efficiency by player and unit in the boxscore. I still don't have a good suggestion for how to present such information.

Per the AP, with last night's win the Hawks tied the 1986-87 team for the best 27-game start to the season.

Mike Woodson:

"We're trying to do something special."

Kevin Love, himself something special:

"They're kind of the example of a team that got its players young. They played together. They stuck together. They grinded out wins together. They had high points. They had low points. But they stuck together. ... That's something I hope I can be a part of one day."

Mike Woodson:

"I think that's the first time we've had two bigs foul out since I've been here."

He's referring, of course, to an actual disqualification rather than a preventative, permanent removal after the fifth foul.

More from Woodson:

"Teams are going to make runs and they made a run in the third quarter, but we overcame it with our defense. Our defense was solid. We held this team to under 100 points and only 41 percent from the field. I'm pretty pleased with our defense."

The Human Highlight Blog:

The next step in Josh Smith's Incredible Basketball Maturity is to stop the crying and campaigning after every foul called on him. Heck, even when he bowled over the Wolves in the fourth quarter on the way to the hoop and was obviously charging, he seemed to have to tell himself that, yes indeed, he did foul. THHB has seen a lot of basketball and we haven't seen an instance yet where berating, scowling, swearing, or anything other negative message has won an official over. Maybe Smith believes he can pioneer the effort, but we think that in doing so he'll accumulate a Rasheed Wallace amount of technicals while testing the theory. Pretty selfish behavior there for a guy who has taken things seriously enough in the other areas to make himself potentially visible in the actual All-Star game.

Atlanta Hawks Technical Foul Leaderboard

Name	Technical Fouls
Josh Smith	5
Mike Woodson	3
Al Horford	1

Don't expect Joe Smith back until Saturday.