ATLANTA -- He is a basketball prototype, a
6-foot-9, 240-pound blend of size, skill and
abnormal athletic ability capable of, as
teammate Jamal Crawford put it, "lifting a
team on his shoulders." There aren't many
players in the NBA as talented as Josh
Smith. There aren't many as maddening,
either.
No one understands Smith's duplicity
better than Atlanta, the only NBA city Smith
has ever known. At his best -- which Smith
was in the Hawks' 100-88 win over Chicago
on Sunday -- Smith is virtually peerless,
capable of finishing acrobatic shots at the
rim on one end and erasing teammates'
mistakes on the other. In the fourth
quarter of this critical Game 4, Smith
scored 11 points, pulled down five
rebounds and dished out two assists,
completing a stat stuffing 23-point, 16-
rebound, eight-assist, two-block night.
"I tell him all the time, when he plays
where he is flying around, showing that
energy, he just makes our team totally
different," said Hawks coach Larry Drew.
"We don't have anyone else on our team
like that."
Indeed, Smith is unique. He also requires a
lot of work. After practice on Monday,
Smith will wander into Drew's office and
player and coach will watch film, a routine
Drew established after most of Smith's
notable nights. Its purpose is to show
Smith what kind of player he can be when
he doesn't wander out beyond the three-
point line, when he doesn't let his raw
emotion get the better of him.
Because occasionally they still do. No,
Smith is not the same player who once
waged a very public war with Mike
Woodson, who jacked up 152 three-
pointers in the 2006-2007 season (making
just 38 of them), whose sometimes
boorish behavior threatened to define him.
In those days, Drew said he wasn't sure
Smith would ever reach his full potential.
"Honestly, yeah I did think that," said
Drew, an assistant under Woodson from
2004-2010. "But we have been able to
maintain open lines of communication so
that when I do correct him, we are OK. The
thing about Josh is he is his worst critic. I
get on him and he'll jar back but I don't
mind that. That tells me his heart is
pumping. For the most part, he respects
me. When I get on him and I chastise him,
he may not like it but at the end of the day
he will come back and say 'Coach, you were
right.' And I believe in him."
Of course, Smith doesn't always make it
easy. Old habits like to resurface. He was a
combined 7-for-25 in the first two games
of this series (including 0-for-3 from three-
point range) and confessed to reporters
after Game 2 that he was "searching" for
his game. He drew the ire of the home
crowd in Game 3 when jumper after
jumper clanked off the rim in a 17-point
loss.
It wasn't a question of adjustments in
Game 4, of reading defenses or recognizing
coverages. When Smith saw cracks in the
defense, he attacked. When his man left to
double team, Smith flashed in the paint. "I
did a good job of not settling," Smith said
after the game. For him, that's more than
half the battle.
The Hawks will need more of this Smith as
the series shifts back to Chicago. The Bulls
have become startling one-dimensional in
the fourth quarter. Derrick Rose took 12
shots in the final 12 minutes of Game 4; no
other teammate took more than two. Rose
continues to make getting to the rim look
effortless, making Smith's long arms and
springboard legs critical to Atlanta's
success.
Drew believes they will get that Smith in
Game 5. Smith's teammates do, too. They
were there for him while he struggled early
in the series, offering positive
reinforcement when he hung his head.
Smith "can do everything," Crawford said,"
the kind of player the Hawks know they
need if they are to pull off this upset.
"There are some things about him I'm just
going to have to live with and hope he gets
better," Drew said. "He's not going to be
perfect out there with his decisions. But he
has matured. He is a unique talent. He's
special."
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