The Hawks lose on a night when losing seemed impossible
Mike Woodson and Jason Kidd after the bizarre bumping. (AP photo by Gregory Smith)
I kept asking the question, and nobody really had an answer. How do you lose this game? How do you lose on a night when you led by 13 points with 5 1/2 minutes left? How do you lose on the night you had played some of your best basketball in two months if not 20 years?
Said Al Horford: “We were at home. All the factors were lined up. I don’t think we’re the kind of team that blows a lead, even though we blew one at Golden State [on Sunday].”
They blew this 13-point lead even worse than they blew that 18-point lead. They blew this one as bad as a good team ever blows a game. They blew this because Dallas coach Rick Carlisle waited until the end to throw up a zone defense, and the Hawks’ coach waited until the final two minutes of regulation to get called for a personal foul.
OK, so technically it was a technical foul, but it involved a collision with a player. Mike Woodson bumped Jason Kidd while the Dallas guard was dribbling down the left sideline with the Hawks leading by two points. Kidd stuck out his elbow to draw contact, but there was no question Woodson was in the wrong.
Said Mike Bibby, who had answered two of Kidd’s three fourth-quarter treys with 3-pointers of his own: “[Woodson] was on the court.”
Said Woodson: “[Kidd] made a heck of a play. I’m not going to get into a [spitting] match with him … He did what he had to do, and it didn’t favor our team. I’ve got to take the hit for it.”
Instructive choice of words: Take the hit.
Horford again: “It was tough. Jason Kidd really changed things for them.”
Kidd is 36, a half-dozen years past his prime, but he willed his team to this victory in a way reminiscent of a young Earvin Johnson. Kidd’s line: 19 points, 17 assists, 16 rebounds. He shrugged off a wretched third quarter — he took eight shots, missing seven — and over the final five minutes of regulation had nine points, three assists and four rebounds.
And where were the Hawks? Missing their shots, missing their composure, missing in action. Over the game’s final 10 1/2 minutes (counting overtime) they scored 13 points. The Mavs dusted off their zone — Jamal Crawford: “They saved it for the end; that was smart on their part” — and the Hawks could do nothing against it.
Horford: “They couldn’t guard us one-on-one.”
But that’s the point. The Mavs overrode their weakness. As Woodson noted, the Hawks “controlled the game until the six- or seven-minute mark.” Then they threw it away.
Let’s not sugarcoat it. This was a bad, bad loss. Aired on ESPN, it offered the Hawks a chance to prove their bona fides against one of the best teams from the West, and they played really well up until the point where they fell flat.
“We’ve been blowing some leads,” Woodson said, and the inability for a basketball team to close out a game is as crushing as a baseball club that hands the ball to its closer and watches him blow the save.
“We’re a team that can handle adversity,” Crawford said. “We’ll bounce back.”
As bold as those words were, they rang hollow this night. A really good team doesn’t lose games like this, and that’s what the Hawks aspire to become and, for tantalizing stretches, seem to be. But how do you lose on a night when a technical foul against your coach for brushing the opposing point guard is the difference between winning in regulation and walking off with various manifestations of egg — scrambled, poached, everything except sunny-side-up — on your face.
Said Josh Smith: “You can’t lose a game like that.”
No, you can’t. But they did.
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222 comments Add your comment
IREPATL
February 27th, 2010
3:46 pm
BOSTON JUST LOST TO NEW JERSEY!!!! LOOOOOOOOOOOL
sam'l
February 27th, 2010
4:20 pm
Mark: We must have watched different games. Woodson didn’t “brush” Kidd. Kidd purposely ran toward Woodson and stuck his elbow out in effect, attacking Woodson. The, Kidd pretended on screen that he was the injured party…This happened it was obvious (at least to the commentators)that the coach had signaled for a timeout. The Hawks should protest this game. The rule obviously was formulated for the case in which a player is clipped or hampered by someone off the court. This didn’t happen. Kidd ran out of his way to jab an older man. . In general, I don’t like the way Woodson has coached this team. Quite frankly, his lack of creativity has hurt this team. But in this case, Woodson would have been justified by decking Kidd…and I would feel the same way if Bibby had crashed into Del Harris or Phil Jackson……
Against Golden State, we lost because the refs decided to let the Warriors shove Crawford out of bounds and he stuck up for himself. .He was shoved a la Rudy Tomjanovich (sp?) with one Warrior rushing full speed at him with outstretched arms.
Against Cleveland, we lost because the refs decided to let us have 10 seconds instead of 24 and we didn’t know what to do about it and nobody cared anyway because it was the Hawks.. .
As for the zone debacle, the obvious thing to do is chant Fire Woody, Fire Woody, but the smart thing to do would be to study that zone to see why it was effective and see if somewhere within there is a key to beating Orlando.,
doc
February 27th, 2010
4:26 pm
blog dropped a few comments today.
nique
February 27th, 2010
4:28 pm
would be nice to have a coach that could make an in-game adjustment to the opposing team’s strategy. woody is worthless.
lewis halp
February 27th, 2010
4:29 pm
Mike Woodson is a complete and total bust. The people on this forum, even those with nothing new to contribute, know more about what needs to happen for the Hawks to win than Woodson. Constantly I find myself wanting to write long rants about why and how Hawks aren’t living up to their potential, but it seems useless. Re-signing Bibby, Zaza and Williams is pretty much like vomiting all over your fanbase. I used to be a Hawks fan in the mid 90’s and gave up until I recently jumped on the bandwagon once again. I live in Cleveland now, and the way they love Lebron makes me jealous, wanting to get more behind my own team. The potential that Josh Smith and Al Horford possess is exciting to watch, but without coaching, a former star big man like Patrick Ewing is to Dwight Howard, they will never live up to it. Joe Johnson is an excellent player, but he lacks the confidence of a real superstar. Blah blah blah, repeat everything everyone else has said, etc,
i just want to emphasize this point once more:
Bibby is 31 years old. He’s slow, can’t play defense, does not come up with creative plays, and simply isn’t athletic enough to run with his own team. I could care less about the few three pointers he makes each game. He’s a bore to watch, and when down by 10 points, with him moving down the court like molasses, you know we have no chance. He doesn’t have the energy. Watching Jason Kidd at 36 play 28 times better than Bibby in his entire career with the hawks was difficult to watch. When your 31 year old point guard can’t do shit against a 36 year old Kidd, you sit his ass down on the bench and let someone who can keep up (teague) give it a shot. Teague doing nothing is better than Bibby bouncing up and down the court doing that stupid little move he does to compensate for lacking speed.
That said, go Hawks, even though we know exactly why you will fail in the second round of the playoffs, I will watch anyway.
Josh Smith and Al Horford are the only ones who seem to show any signs of life, and that’s not saying much. Without a coach to help direct that energy, the Hawks will once again lose in the first or second round of the playoffs.
Chas
February 27th, 2010
5:26 pm
The Mavs were also short handed.
NBA'er
February 27th, 2010
5:29 pm
Jacovny, nice retort. The only problem with your explanation is that Woody wasn’t on the floor when Kidd got to him. He jumped off and then Kidd hit him with the forearm. Or are you too blind to see what was shown over and over on the tube last night?
Chas
February 27th, 2010
5:31 pm
Also, how do you lose to a short-handed team when they’re on the road?
tp
February 27th, 2010
5:34 pm
Hire Avery Johnson, sign Chris Bosh, Raymond Felton and draft Xavier Henry to replace JJ.
Jo
February 27th, 2010
6:08 pm
Look at the replay, woody didnt bump Kidd, he went OUT of his wat to hit him and wody was OUT of bounds when that happened (look careful). Not to sugarcoat woody for bing on thr court but that 1 point was the difference in the score…
E43
February 27th, 2010
6:11 pm
i put 16 loss instead of 16 win season earlier.
theres not many solutions being presented that fix the hawks problems.
1)if we fire woody then who will replace him? there are teams with actual coaching issues to adress.
2)marvin bibby and zaza are all under contract. the hawks are one of the healthiest teams in the east. loosing any of these guys means loosing depth somewhere wich wont hurt unless someone gets injured.
3)jamal crawford saw double teams a few games back and he played just horrible
4)if joe is in the top five guards and kobe obvously wont come to atlanta then i highly doubt that theres an upgrade that can help the hawks.
5) the only upgrades that are possible for the hawks in the offseason is either drafting a 1st round center or a G-F to replace maurice evans cause i dont think the hawks can put up the $ to keep him nor will he want to return given his minutes to perform.
for a 35 loss team last season,the hawks are just fine. they just need a small tweak here and there to work things out.
Now I'm in for it: John Smoltz, United States Congressman? | Mark Bradley
February 27th, 2010
7:43 pm
[...] AJC’s political insider Jim Galloway is reporting that some Republicans are interested in drafting my favorite pitcher to run for the House seat John Linder announced Saturday he’ll be leaving. I don’t live [...]
rusty
February 27th, 2010
8:05 pm
how could we bring back woody,everyone knows he is being out coached every game. he is also so
damm stubborn.he brings nothing to this team.also jj has to go he is soft offensively & d
efensively,the team will never have a ball movement offense.with him here.he is not a clutch player.
i think he is really vastly overated even tho he has talent. i am so tired of him running away from players going to the basket. what the heck was he doing throwing deliberate elbows.
cdog
February 27th, 2010
11:34 pm
i still say mike woodson should be the coach of the hawks for a long time.he just need to re evaluate himself and his players in different situation. i believe he is the man for the job.
bakerman
February 28th, 2010
8:31 am
Woody again prooved he is an idiot.
RulesBook
February 28th, 2010
11:03 am
>wody was OUT of bounds when that happened (look careful)
It doesn’t matter if he was out of bounds when the contact happend. He was on the court and that’s a technical. The contact was made by Kidd to force a ruling by the refs. The fact that Woodson was on the court is a T.
nique
February 28th, 2010
12:02 pm
to focus on woody getting hit or not by kidd is missing the point. hawks lost the game because woody couldn’t draw up a strategy that they could execute to stop the bleeding with a 13 point cushion in the fourth at home. that’s what cost us the game.
BeetleBailey
March 1st, 2010
1:22 pm
I DONT CARE WHAT ANYONE HAS SAID ABOUT THE HAWKS UP UNTIL THIS POINT. I UNDERSTAND THE NBA GAME AS WELL AS ANYONE. THE HAWKS HAVE SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL GOING ON RIGHT NOW. MOST LOCAL FANS UNDER VALUE THE HAWKS AND UNDER APPRECIATE THEM. I KNOW THAT ON A NATIONAL SCALE, THE HAWKS THIS SEASON ARE CONSIDERED AMONG THE NBA’S ELITE AND THEIR RECORD SHOWS THEY ARE THERE. OUT OF THIRTEEN TEAMS IN THE CONFERENCE THE HAWKS ARE IN THE TOP 4 ALONG WITH (CLEVELAND, ORLANDO AND BOSTON). The Hawks are currently third in the conference behind Cleveland-1st, Orlando-2nd, Hawks-3rd and Boston-4th. Folks the Hawks are currently AHEAD of the Boston Celtics in the conference standings. Over the weekend, the Celtics lost to the lowly new jersey nets. At least when Dallas beat us the other night, Dallas had just beaten the Lakers. I think the fans take the losses too hard and they shouldnt. The Hawks are a legitimate threat this season to either a) finish in the Eastern Conference finals or b) represent the East in the Finals. The Hawks can make it to either of those spots. If the Hawks represent the East in the Finals, they will have a chance to win the championship. This is how good the Hawks are playing this season, but people are treating the Hawks as if they are the new jersey nets. Come on people, get your playoff tickets now and rally behind the Hawks. The Hawks have their best team since the Hubie Brown/Mike Fratello days. These are the glory days again to be a Hawks fan so enjoy it while you can.
northcyde
March 1st, 2010
11:23 pm
Beetle . . the local fans SUCK. They proved that Sunday night, when about 3,000 of them walked out of the arena when JJ missed the game winning shot. The game goes to overtime, but I guess those 3,000 fans didn’t want to see the ending, so they left.
Every one of them should just stay at home then from now on. Ungrateful fans. I can’t imagine any other fan base in the NBA that would see 30% of their crowd walk out on a game, before the game was over.
Some of these Atlanta fans think they’re owed something. They’re not owed JACK. I feel sorry for you loyal Hawk fans, because the bandwagon ATL fans give all of you in metro ATL a bad name. That was pathetic to see all of those people walk out of the Milwaukee game.
******************
But now look at the Hawks.
All of a sudden, we’ve won 4 of our last 5 games. No doubt that it could very easily be a 6 game winning streak if we didn’t blow the Golden St and Dallas games. But since we’re not “elite” yet, we’re still prone to bad losses, even against bad teams.
JJ struggles shooting in Chicago, but the rest of the team stepped up for once ( even the sorry bench ), and we win going away.
I bet Bradley won’t write an article about that though.
Hawks are 17 – 9 since the bad Miami loss back on January 4th. During that same time period:
Cleveland: 19 – 5
Orlando: 17 – 11
Boston: 12 – 13
Awww . . . boo hoo if we’re not playing as good as Cleveland these days. But we’re definitely not Boston. But let these sportswriters and fans talk, we’re the team that has been 12 – 13 since January 5th.
FACT: The Hawks have only had one 3+ game losing streak all year. The stretch in which this team lost 6 out of 8 games during the Christmas/New Year holiday, is still the low point of the season. The rest of the way . . . we’ve pretty won 6.5 out of every 10 games.
Hawks still on target to win 50 – 55 games . . . and people are constantly complaining and crying like we’re a .500 ballclub.
But the fact that these sportswriters cite our record since the 19 – 6 start, as their grounds for the Hawks struggling, show that they have a negative agenda against this team and this organization as a whole. If they wanted to be positive, they could easily cite the mark where I start from, and spin the Hawks situation as being one of the real good teams in the NBA.
But they go negative . . . they always go negative. We’ve won 4 of 5, but nothing will be said about that. But wait until we blow another game that we should win. They’ll pop up with another article either bashing the Hawks, or asking a question as to “what’s wrong with the Hawks?”
I’m just glad a few people see right through these cats.
northcyde
March 1st, 2010
11:28 pm
cdog . . .if we win the division, Woody WILL win Coach of the Year.
54 wins and a division title pretty much seals Coach of the Year for Woody.
northcyde
March 1st, 2010
11:30 pm
I guess my very 1st post is being reviewed. Let’s see if they post it. Not up yet though.
SilentAssasin
March 3rd, 2010
4:31 pm
The Hawks have nothing to worry about. They will win the NBA championship this year because I have seen nobody in the league better than they are. I will explain what I mean: #1-the world champs (Lakers) got worse by getting rid of Trever Ariza. Ariza got key steals in the Denver series last year and in the finals that sealed the victories for the Lakers. Ariza should have been the MVP of the finals; so the Lakers got worse by bringing in Ron Artest. #2-Cavs got worse with Shaq being injured and losing Ilgauskas. The Hawks can beat the Cavs in the playoffs in the Cavs current state, even with the addition of Antoine Jamison. This means the Hawks may win a title. #3-Orlando got worse by getting rid of two hall of fame players in Rafer Alsten AND Heido Turkulu and compensating for those losses by bringing in the old, washed up veteran Vince Carter; a definite downgrade for the Magic. #4-Boston, The Hawks have owned them this year; undefeated against them 4-0. So the Magic, Cavs and Lakers are worse while the Hawks are considerbly better. I do believe I think this means the Hawks are now the favoite to win the NBA world championship. Hawk fans get ready for the impossible because its about to happen in the next couple of months.