New Height

Well, it's the Hawks against the Heat in the first round of the playoffs, and the Hawks will have home court advantage. I am not going to say I saw this coming before the season started, but I absolutely expected improvement from last year's 37-45 record and 8 seed in the playoffs. The Hawks were hurt by the loss of Josh Childress, but they absorbed that loss with Maurice Evans and Flip Murray. Due to that and the fact that the Hawks are a young team, I expected the Hawks to improve slightly and was looking for more of a 41-41 record and whatever seed this got the team. I figured that this record would give them the 7 seed and maybe if things fell just right the 6 seed. The experts were much more pessimistic than I was. I did not read one preview that had the Hawks making the playoffs. This leads to an interesting question, what exactly caused the Hawks to improve their record by ten games and move up in the pecking order of the Eastern Conference without any major personnel moves. Of course one can point to the young players playing together another year and maturing, but that would lead one to expect a more gradual improvement. One of the biggest changes was the addition of a legitimate three point shot to Marvin Williams' game. Which allowed him to really help stretch out the defense and open the floor for Joe Johnson to drive and Al Horford and Josh Smith to work down low. This certainly helped on the offensive end. The additions of Evans and Murray helped extend the bench allowing Coach Woodson to play 8 guys as opposed to the 7 he played last year. Anytime you can have a deeper rotation will be a good thing as foul trouble becomes less of an issue as well as injuries and cold shooting nights. The top 8 for the Hawks are very solid and should be able to compete on a consistent basis. This team as expected was very strong at home. However, the Hawks were once again not very successful on the road. The Hawks are young and will have a pronounced difference in the road/home performance. I am very pleased with the improvement the Hawks have shown and fully expect them to win their first round series against the Heat. However, this Hawks team has not lived up their full potential. This team should never lose back to back games to the New Jersey Nets, a lottery team, as they did this season. This team should never trail a division rival by 50 points in a game, as this team did to Orlando this season. There is a theme here, it seems to come down to effort and determination. I realize that players like Josh Smith are enigmas that may never be figured out by me or anyone else, so I expect some effort issues from him. The thing that concerns me here is that the Hawks seem to follow Mike Woodson. He rarely stands during a game and when he does he typically looks more confused than anything else, which does not inspire confidence. He is not an overly vocal coach, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, this team's captain, Joe Johnson, is also quiet as a mouse on the court. While his workmanlike mentality is often something to admire, he also does not inspire his teammates to give more effort the way a number of NBA stars do. The Hawks do not have to fear the wrath of Johnson after they make a defensive error or take a bad shot. Mike Woodson also does not seem to have any counter to when his players do not show effort or make bad decisions, which leads to the question, "Who holds the Hawks accountable for their effort and decision making?" Someone must, but it is not clear who. From my view, Al Horford seems to be the most natural leader on the Hawks roster, but he is a second year player and while he can certainly lead by example and even be vocal from time to time, he does not carry the same weight that the coach or a team veteran has. If this team made better decisions and played with maximum effort every night, they may not improve their playoff seed, but they would absolutely have made their 50 win goal. In which case this team, might be viewed as more of a real threat in the Eastern Conference and then be able to attract more free agents. This team needs a vocal leader in order to take the next step, someone who will hold the team accountable for their effort and decision making and taking plays off to complain to the officials, which Josh Smith is famous for. I do not see anyone on the Hawks roster as it is currently constructed being able to really take a hold of that role since the most likely candidate will likely not be taken as seriously as would be necessary. In that case it seems that this accountability would need to come from the top, meaning the head coach. Woodson has had years to take that role, but has failed to do so. Due to Woodson refusal to take this role I believe that even though the Hawks improved their record significantly, they must let Woodson go and find a coach who will be able to get more out of these players as they certainly have it in them. Perhaps a coach like Avery Johnson would be able to do this as he is know to be a hard driving disciplinarian. Now, I know you may be saying that the Hawks would likely not react well to this, but as it always seems to go teams must rotate from strict coach to player's coach and it seems that Woodson runs this team as more of a player's coach. It is in fact time for a change at the top on the Hawks sideline. I do not see this happening unfortunately, since it will be somewhat difficult to fire Woodson after he has improved the record every year he has been with the Hawks.