Sometimes All You Need Is....

Young legs.

Last night I watched the Atlanta Hawks shock some people. If they didn't shock the world, at least they shocked Boston. And in the end that was enough. You know it really is cool to watch a franchise grow like this. And it also says a lot about what a slight shift in personnel can make for an organization. Especially if you can be honest about the capability of the talent your team currently has, acknowledge its strength, and then set out to address its weaknesses.

Basically what you have here is a team that has just one player on their roster who has ever been in the playoffs. That would be Mike Bibby from when he was with the Sacramento Kings playing with the likes of Peja Stojakovic. His addition to the King lineup has definitely had the desired effect by allowing Joe Johnson to play off the ball more and provide an actual starting point guard with a decent enough basketball IQ on the floor versus the slew of backup guards Atlanta was using previously.

The Hawks also have something a lot of people in the basketball "know" forget to consider, or choose to ignore. The Hawks have young legs. At 30 Mike Bibby also happens to be the oldest player on the roster. That is huge. Especially in a series that has been taken to 7 games. And it showed in game 6. The Hawks got to just about every loose ball there was on the evening. In the third and fourth quarter they got defensive stops just because they were able to beat the Celtics to spots on the floor and get position. The Hawks also didn't settle for jump shots. You see this a lot in games. When players get tired (or sometimes lazy), or "old," they settle for jumpshots instead of driving to the basket in an attempt to create more offensive options. When you take a jumpshot from outside, typically everything sort of stops. People start standing around to see if it goes in. But by driving to the basket everyone has to react. There is the potential for an assist, a better (closer) shot, or a foul. Possession after possession saw Atlanta driving to the basket and forcing the Celtics to react. This accounted for the discrepancy in freethrow attempts between the teams with the Hawks shooting 47 on the night and the Celtics shooting 25.

Honestly, given what I saw on Friday night, the only way I see the Celtics beating Atlanta is if the NBA decides to help them. I don't think this is far outside the realm of possibility. I have no problem contending the NBA decided from a marketing and "We can't stand Mark Cuban," standpoints the Miami Heat was "assisted" to their title in 2006. But barring referee intervention, it is highly possible the Celtic's Big Three whose legs have an average of 11 years on them will be sent packing by a younger, faster, talented and hungrier team who could just be coming into their own at just the right time.