Who would have thunk it?
When the Atlanta Hawks started this lockout-shortened season with the starting 5 of Jeff, Joe, Marvin, Josh, and Al, very few critics and analysts had them as a top 4 team in the Eastern Conference. Even fewer people would have guessed that 10 of their 15 players would miss a combined 111 games as a result of injury, and finally NO ONE guessed that in those circumstances the Hawks would still improve collectively yet again!
After sustaining a season-ending injury to the two-time all-star and top-shooting big man Al Horford, 2nd year head coach Larry Drew leaned more heavily on team captain and longest-tenured Hawks forward Josh Smith, with backup duties regulated to Zaza Pachulia and breakout undrafted rookie Ivan Johnson. There was an open public opinion that the Hawks would struggle to make the playoffs without Horford, but Josh, Zaza, and Ivan stepped out their games tremendously.
Josh Smith is the most oppressed multi-talented players in the league, this season was the first time Josh led the team in scoring and reboundng with a career-high 18.8 ppg and 9.6 rpg. It is an absolutely FELONY that he was not selected to make the all-star team! He got more touches and increased his efficiency while maintaining a dominant defensive presence.
But none of that matters now as the Atlanta Hawks are set to open up the 2012 NBA Playoffs with home-court advantage over the Boston Celtics. As we have seen previous post-seasons, the "ESPN experts" are so pigeon-holed into this pre-concieved stigmatizm of the Atlanta Hawks being an "average" team that reached their ceiling (a theory the Hawks disprove every season), they do not give the Hawks a fighting chance against any quality team in the playoffs (11/12 "ESPN Experts" picked the Celtics to win this series). Even the Hawks blog legend of pessimism himself Bret LeGree of Hoopinionblog.com predicted the Celtics win in 6. We've seen his pessimistic predictions bite him back before though (Magic in 5 LMAO), and I don't see any reason why he wont be just as wrong in this series prediction. Bret's reasoning for the pessimistic prediction is as follows:
With a healthy Zaza Pachulia, this series would be, from Atlanta's perspective, at worst a toss up. I'm not confident Pachulia can have a positive impact on the series.
If he can't, that puts tremendous pressure on the undersized Ivan Johnson, the oversized Jason Collins, the physically inconsistent Tracy McGrady and Vladimir Radmanovic, and the thoroughly inconsistent Marvin Williams to be as productive in doing the dirty work as Pachulia managed in Al Horford's absence.
Umm.. first of all, how could a fully healthy Zaza NOT make a positive impact on the series (for the Hawks)? 7 ppg 7 rpg is a pretty good season for a back-up/starting center, but the bigger question is this. If Zaza isn't able to go, why is there such little confidence in the bench's ability to pick up the production? No matter how inconsistent you call Marvin Williams, he can manage 7 pts 7 rbs. Our April Rookie of the Month, Ivan Johnson can handle 7 pts 7 rbs. Even the extremely overweight Dwight-stopper Jason Collins has made a field goal or two and grabbed a rebound or two this season! It stops there though because we haven't seen any good games out of Vladimir Radmonivic, but I believe the Hawks personnel has the skill to win.
There are a few Celtics players the defense needs to NOT-ignore in order to be competitive; Avery Bradley and Brandon Bass. We know Paul, Kevin, and Rajon are going to score, but keeping the other guys out of double figures and out of the 20s is imperative.
The deciding factor on who wins the series will be who can commit less turnovers, rebound, get FT attempts and make them, and of course crunch-time decision making. And of course Joe Johnson has been a virtuoso this season in the clutch, people can talk about Joe's contract all day, they just use that as an excuse not to focus on his skill and the fact that he is the 3rd best shooting guard in the entire NBA (Kobe, Wade,..). This post-season is the ultimate test for every team, but especially for these Hawks, they are ready to "Shock the World" once again.
Hawks in 6
