Atlanta has one of the best and youngest starting line-ups in basketball, but have failed to make any noise in the playoffs the last few years. In 2010, the Hawks finished in 3rd-place for the Southeast Division and lost to the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

After a disappointing 44-38 campaign in 2010, coming off their 53-win 2009 season, Atlanta was looking for leaders. Johnson is unquestionably the leader by example, but the Hawks hope they have their floor general in the form of Jeff Teague. The former Wake Forest star will now take over as the starting point guard after the departure of Mike Bibby and Jamal Crawford. Teague does a little bit of everything, and will be a good candidate to surprise some people this season.

Al Horford and Josh Smith are the constants for the Atlanta franchise. J-Smooth went off last season, averaging 17 points per game, alongside eight rebounds, 3 assists and nearly 2 blocks a contest. At just 26-years old, Smith is not close to done improving. His game is so explosive, but the Hawks may begin to worry with all the young players on their team, how can they afford to sign Smith moving forward? That may be a different problem for a different day, as the Hawks window could be smaller than most had imagined. Horford is a force in the paint, as he nearly averaged a double-double with 15 ppg, 9 rpg and 3 apg last season. He will look to do more of the same in 2011 with Smith once again alongside….for the time being.

Health will be huge for a few Hawks this season, namely the much maligned Tracy McGrady, as he makes his Atlanta debut in 2011. Last year’s starting point guard Kirk Hinrich is injured and will not be able to play for some time. Therefore, McGrady will have to pick up the slack in a bigger role than he has been used to the last few seasons.

Will this finally be the year Marvin Williams explodes onto the scene? Most likely not, but it is always nice to be optimistic. Williams will be vying for time on the floor amidst all the young studs the Hawks posses, and of course T-Mac. He may actually have a solid season with less pressure, coming off the bench as a possible sixth man.

The Hawks will open their 66-game season on Dec. 27 against the downtrodden New Jersey Nets. Look for this young group to really flourish during the condensed scheduled season, as their bodies won’t need nearly the same amount of time to recover like the older, veteran teams. I can see Atlanta winning 35-40 games and taking the Southeast Division outright if the Magic falter. However, if Orlando lives up to expectations, expect the Hawks to stay comfortably in second place. They will make a bid for the Eastern Conference Finals, but in the end, they must prove their worth in the playoffs, just as they have done in the regular season. I visualize another semifinal exit for the Atlanta Hawks in 2011-12.

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“He is learning, and that is part of the growing pains as a coach you have to live with. Someone read a stat about his percentage on stand-still shooting, he ranks high in the league.”

Cunningham notes (as has been noted in this space previously) that Smith ranks 158th in the league in points per possession as a spot-up shooter. Drew’s confusion on this point does nothing to encourage one with regard to the team’s use of advanced stats.

Drew:

“It’s something he has worked on. I can see his stroke has changed. It looks different than the past. I’ve always said if a guy works on his game, works on taking a shot, if he has the ability to make it and shows he can make it, you have got to let him shoot it. With him, his whole thing is when he shoots it. There are times I don’t want that shot, and he knows that. It’s something as a coach I have to keep working on him with it. He wants to know if it’s a good shot. Sometimes we will butt heads and sometimes we won’t.”

Clearly, at this point, the obligation Drew feels to let Smith demonstrate his improvement as a shooter outweighs any adverse impact that improvement has had on the player and the team.

It’s a narrow difference and the possibility surely exists that there are reasonable man-management gains that do not show up specifically in Smith’s individual offensive numbers which, again, are down from last year.

Drew on Jeff Teague:

“I want to see more production. I want to see more consistency, and that has not been the case. He has shown flashes of being a consistent player but for whatever reason I haven’t gotten the consistency from him.”

On this, unless Drew is talking about Teague’s practice or off-court performance, I call shenanigans. Teague was tremendous in Boston on December 16th. He scored 18 points on 11 shots, earned 3 assists, and grabbed 4 rebounds in 25 minutes. He wasn’t perfect–he committed 4 turnovers–but it was a very, very good performance off the bench, Teague’s best of the season.

The next night against Charlotte, Teague scored 5 points, earned 4 assists (against just 2 turnovers), and blocked 2 shots in 15 minutes. Another fine performance. Nowhere near as productive as against the Celtics but perfectly solid.

Two days later, against the Nets, Teague plays seven minutes, scores 2 points and earns no assists. The next night, against Orlando, he gets eight minutes, scores 2 points, earns no assists, and commits two turnovers.

Neither of those are good performances, but they’re very, very brief as well. Mike Bibby and Jamal Crawford are allowed to play through poor seven or eight minutes stretches (often in fourth quarters, sometimes simultaneously) about once a week.

Next game, in New Orleans, Teague gets a DNP-CD.

Next game, in Milwaukee, Teague plays 18 minutes, gets 7 points on 4 shots and earns 4 assists.

Over the next seven games, he plays 31-and-a-half minutes, never more than 9:20 in a single game.

Call it subterranean second-half blues.

They led the Hawks by 16 points in the second quarter, let the lead drop to 11 at the half and gave it up for good with six minutes remaining.

The Hawks wound up winning, 107-98, Sunday afternoon at Staples Center, with Joe Johnson and Josh Smith combining for 51 points and Jamal Crawford scoring 24 off the bench.

Griffin had game highs of 31 points and 15 rebounds for his 21st consecutive double-double, and his 10th straight game with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds. Eric Gordon was well off his season average of 23.8 points, scoring just 10. DeAndre Jordan had 12 rebounds and six blocked shots.

But the Clippers (10-24) unraveled with 19 turnovers, and have lost back-to-back games for the first time in more than two weeks.

“I told them that an 11-point deficit is nothing in the NBA,” Hawks Coach Larry Drew said. “Teams come back from even bigger deficits.”

Clearly, the man has been watching Clippers games.

Unlike Wednesday’s loss to Utah, in which the Clippers essentially dropped off a cliff in the third quarter, this one was more a steady drip, drip, drip of mistakes, turnovers and missed shots. It didn’t all happen at once.

“We just didn’t respond the right way,” Griffin said. “They were down at half obviously so they came out and they were ready to play and we didn’t match that.

“Not to say we didn’t play hard. They just came down and chipped into our lead, piece by piece by piece.”

Said Clippers Coach Vinny Del Negro: “The game came easy to us in the first half. Once they locked up a little defensively, [they] got a little more physical. We have to learn to take our game to the next level in terms of the intensity. And we haven’t done that yet — consistently.”

They led by seven points with less than nine minutes left and couldn’t close, as the Hawks went on a 15-2 run to take a 91-85 lead. The Clippers pulled to within two points but Baron Davis, who had 15 points and five assists, missed a layup with 2:25 remaining and they never got closer than that.

Johnson had 29 points and scored 11 of them in the fourth quarter. Crawford and Smith each had nine in the fourth, as the Hawks outscored the Clippers, 37-24, in the period.

“We missed a couple of easy baskets. We turned the ball over a little bit,” Gordon said. “It was a mixture of everything where we just let down a little bit defensively.

“. . . We’ve been making progress and it seems like they really wanted us to go to the big men and then force the bigs to shoot the ball instead of all the guards. That’s why you didn’t see too many outside shots being hit.”

Gordon, who got into foul trouble in the first quarter, was three for 14 from the field and missed all five of his three-point attempts.

“They really didn’t want me to get in the paint tonight,” said Gordon, whose season low of nine points came in Game 3 against Dallas on Oct. 31. “They really keyed in. I really didn’t get too many open looks. That’s why I was looking for open guys. They seemed like they wanted those guys to shoot.”

Words were exchanged afterward between Atlanta’s Josh Smith and anyone on the OKC sideline who was willing to listen following the Thunder’s 103-94 victory inside Oklahoma City Arena on Friday night. 

The Hawks offense was a big problem in the beginning of the game. Al Horford wasn’t going quick enough against the slower Ilgauskas, and the Hawks didn’t take care of the ball. The Hawks committed 4 turnovers in the first 6 minutes of the game. All of the shots (1st quarter) they took and even all the shots they made were all low percentage shots. The offensive struggle limited the Hawks to 15 points in the 1st.

A WILKINS is once again wearing a Hawks uniform. Damien Wilkins was great. It’s only been one game, but I’m sold! He provided energy and defense (on the perimeter!). Something Hawks fans hasn’t seen in years. Wilkins looks bigger, quicker, and longer than Mo Evans. His offense is still in question however.

LeBron, Bosh, and Wade just dominated from start to finish. They combined for 23 points in the 1st quarter, 19 points in the second quarter, 9 points (out of the Heat’s 13 points) in the third quarter, and 22 points in the 4th quarter. There aren’t a lot (if any) of teams that can win a game when all 3 players of the Miami Thrice have a good game.

Essentially the fourth quarter saw the Hawks roll back to the way they looked in the first half. It was hard to tell what they were trying to accomplish on offense particularly with Horford out of the lineup. Once Al did get back in he only was able to get up one shot of which he of course made. The fourth broke down into long jump shots and turnovers for Atlanta and led to them ultimately falling by a final of 89-77.

November 17, 2010 – Coach Drew gave the Hawks players and coaches a day off from practice on Wednesday, but everyone on the team still had some work to do off the court. The players traded in their jerseys for aprons and chef’s hats to serve a special Thanksgiving dinner at City of Refuge’s Eden Village located in downtown Atlanta.

Eden Village is a United Way Community partner that exists to restore lives, redeem women and return families home. The first full year of operation for Eden Village I helped 146 women and 290 children have a safe and protected place to live, receive three meals a day, develop an individualized service plan that was supervised by a licensed case worker, and attend life skill and personal finance budget classes.

The players were joined by coaches and front office staff that included team President Bob Williams to serve an elaborate meal provided by Levy Restaurants. Mike Bibby greeted one section of the serving line with plates, silverware and a smile, while Joe Johnson and Al Horford finished off the main course by manning the ham and turkey stations. Assistant coach Lester Connor made sure everyone got desert with the help of Jeff Teague and Marvin Williams, and Player Development Instructor Nick Van Exel showed why he was called “Nick the Quick” in his playing days by delivering drinks to tables throughout the dining area. The rest of the Hawks players and staff all made sure everyone was happy and full by serving various dishes.

Smith set the tone early with his passing and the Hawks recorded 24 assists on 37 made baskets. This game, like yesterday’s game against the Knicks, shows how efficient Atlanta can be offensively when they are sharing and moving the basketball.

The Hawks clamped down defensively in the third quarter outscoring the Raptors 25-11.

While Josh Smith was outstanding, Marvin Williams turned in one of his best performance of the season with 17 points and 12 rebounds. Williams looks much more comfortable on that sore knee that he injured earlier in the season and had his second highlight dunk in as many days this time leaping high to corral a rebound while stuffing in through Dominique style.

he Hawks are 7-2 away from home, the best road record in the Eastern Conference.

Atlanta finished 8 for 18 from 3-point range, while the Raptors made just 1 of 12.

Toronto left to boos after being held to a season-low point total and losing its second straight after a season-high four-game winning streak ended Friday at Boston.

Raptors coach Jay Triano complained that all five of his starters had been outplayed by their Atlanta counterparts.

Hawk next game is

Atlanta vs Memphis

Wed Dec 1, 2010, 7:00 pm EST