Made You Look!

Game Two was a performance that we had seen many times before, and it's safe to say that we were disappointed to see it given the stakes. Well--disappointed and a little angry----OK---very angry.

Throughout the season you get to know when a team has it and when they don't. For the Hawks, these games are painfully obvious from the outset. It may have been a bit petulant on our part, but with 4:57 left in the first quarter when Josh Smith did a pirouette and lost the basketball, we knew. By the time that Jermaine O'Neal came swooping through the lane and the Hawks watched Dwyane Wade casually offer the ball to the suddenly vibrant center and watch him slam it home over the gawking hosts several seconds later, we were sure.

On those nights, on offense, the Hawks pretend to play motion offense, meaning whoever ends up with the hot potato on the third pass now will halt the flow of the basketball completely and attempt to break his man down one-on-one. When the Hawks best offense early in the game was Miami's Defensive 3-Second Violations, that was a bad sign.

Defensively, whereas when they win they look like they have a plan; when they are shuffling around, doubling the wrong players and leaving shooters open, they are on their way to losing.

In these games they treat the game and each possession as if all they have to do is announce their talent and that will do the work for them--or that they can flip some switch to get serious if they need to.

We found ourselves launching words like "unbelievable", "geez", and "wake up"---alas, our expert advise and sage words never made an impact. They often never do.

True, it is fair to say that, being one of the bottom ten three point shooting teams in the league means that Miami won't be hitting 15-26 from there every night, but hey, we are assuming the Hawks will stay at home better than they did in Game Two and actually work together to ensure such an occurrence has a slim chance of ever recurring.

The Hawks obviously believed everything they read in the HHB about sweeps, dominance, and talent--because they floated onto the court on our good vibes and little else. That their biggest lead of the night was a lousy single point and that occurred even before we declared it one of "those" games highlights the level of stink the team filled their arena with.

Hey, How 'Bout that Local Sports Franchise?

The Hawks had a good gameplan around "building a wall" for Wade to shoot over in Game One, but who knew that in Game Two the wall needed to be 24 feet from the rim?

That Daequan Cook fellow shoots awfully nice---seems like he could win one of those 3-pt shooting contes---wha-what? He did? Might need to cover that one, eh?

The abacus may be broken, but we're pretty sure nights that Joe Johnson has (0) assists and (4) turnovers are nights that end in recaps like this one.

We always like to say, all things good start on defense---in Game Two it all ended with the Hawks effort on that end.

We could make the obvious observation (and then the obvious observation about declaring it the obvious observation--and so on like mirrors) about Spirit the Hawk blowing it and delaying the game for while until The Falconer could get it back into the cage by cleverly tricking it with the phony "treat". What we thought was real funny was the ref giving the handler the business about why it took so long and then his sheepish reply. Hey, these are the highlights, folks.


When Others Reach for the Stars, We Cover Our Wallets

The Hawks tried moving the ball offensively and playing good man-up defense Sunday night, and they succeeded---They tried "Showtime" tonight---and failed.

We are betting for a more workmanlike effort in Game Three and getting this one back--We still believe that they are capable every night of playing as they did in Game One, whereas we aren't convinced that the Heat can duplicate the amazing shooting every night as they did in Game Two.


The HHB has had their beliefs crushed before---like when it was told that the XFL was no more---sniff---it still hurts---Flowers and Kleenex can be left in the Comments Area.