By John Manasso
FOXSportsSouth.com
March 7, 2011
br>
With his team having lost eight out of its last 12 games, coach Larry Drew felt something was amiss with the Hawks' offense.
He went back and examined a number of statistics: assists, fast-break points, free throw attempts and turnovers, to name a few.
"What they tell me," he said, "is on offense we're lacking something."
That something, he believes, is fast-break points. He feels the Hawks are walking the ball up or jogging into their offense, not exploiting fast-break opportunities and failing to attack opponents. When the Hawks don't press the attack, he said, it turns them into a half-court offense.
"And that's not the team we want to be," he said.
They especially don't want to be that on Tuesday when the two-time defending league champion Los Angeles Lakers, with their imposing trio of seven-footers, comes to Philips Arena on Tuesday. The Hawks need to fix their offense fast or their current two-game losing streak will be a three-game losing streak and the New York Knicks, who defeated the Hawks 92-79 on Sunday, are breathing down their necks for fifth place in the Eastern Conference.
Drew said his message to the team after Sunday's loss was that "it's no time to panic." Nonetheless, in his office after Monday's practice, he was searching for answers. He estimated that he thinks the offense began stagnating 15 or 16 games ago. But to average their field goal percentage for each of the last 12 games, they have shot 44.0 percent, a dip from their season average of 46.0 percent.
Only once during that span have they shot 50 percent or better. In the seven games before that
