Posts by Charles Bethea
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Playoff Exit Interview: Josh Smith Talks Shot Selection and Finding a Home in Houston
Just before Houston’s season-ending loss to Golden State in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals, the talented and perplexing 29-year-old spoke about shooting 3s and finally feeling liberated with the Rockets.
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TD and Me: Biking Around Atlanta With Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff
After a 17-mile bike ride, Dimitroff sat down to talk about the importance of bicycles in his life, riding with Lance Armstrong, and making the NFL more bike-friendly.
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Q&A With Atlanta’s Kent Bazemore: On Playing With Kobe, Pranking With Whoopee Cushions, and Nailing a Bench Celebration
Since January, Kent Bazemore, the dude widely acknowledged as the happiest on the Hawks bench, which is not a somber place, has been averaging almost 22 minutes per game, filling highlight reels with dunks, blocks, steals, and smiles.
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Q&A With Atlanta’s Mike Scott: On Winning 16 in a Row, Becoming an Astronaut, and Reigning As the Emoji King
After a recent practice, before the Hawks tied their franchise record for consecutive wins, Mike Scott spoke with Grantland. Speaking quietly, he let his emoji tattoos do most of the emoting.
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Q&A With Dennis ‘Baby Rondo’ Schröder: Atlanta’s Ascendant PG on Skateboarding and the Utility of Mayonnaise
There haven’t been many umlauts in the NBA. (Hanno Möttölä and Martin Müürsepp, anyone?) But there have been fewer still with blond-striped coiffures. Last year, the Atlanta Hawks used their 17th pick on Dennis Schröder, a feisty point guard from Germany who is at the intersection of this particular Venn diagram.
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Pero Antic and the Biggest Macedonian NBA Fan in the World
Alexander the Great is easily the most famous Macedonian — OK, some say he was Greek, but let’s sidestep that ancient argument — of all time. A bit further down the list is Pero Antic, a center on the Atlanta Hawks and the first Macedonian to play in the NBA.
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Breaking Balls With Bobby Cox
A scrum of reporters jammed into Bobby Cox’s small, plain office at his last spring training, in 2010, not far from Disney World. I had a spot on the floor. Looking around, the room betrayed little. There were no pictures of Otis’s over-the-wall catch or Sid’s nearly-knee-shattering slide or even Cox’s favorite North Georgia fishing […]
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Kyle Korver’s Big Night, and the Day on the Ocean That Made It Possible
ACT 1: LAST FRIDAY, AMONG THE KORVERS I’m sitting third row at the Hawks-Cavs game, flanked by two large, handsome Midwesterners. To my right is the 6-foot-5 pastor of the Third Reformed Church in Pella, Iowa, who has a full head of gray hair and is wearing a tracksuit and glasses. The woman to my […]
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Q&A: Al Horford on Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Doing Yoga With Ivan Johnson, and James Harden’s Beard
Al Horford walks into the Hawks clubhouse, rounding the Ping-Pong table and the flat screen television, minutes after wrapping up a segment for The Jim Rome Show. He doesn’t look big enough to guard Dwight Howard, or brave enough to share the shower with Ivan Johnson. But he was just named Eastern Conference Player of […]
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Q&A: Hawks GM Danny Ferry on Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, Basketball Analytics, and Sam Presti’s Wikipedia Page
Last Thursday was a big one for new Hawks GM Danny Ferry: His five kids and wife finally arrived in Atlanta, from San Antonio. Then the Orlando Magic traded Dwight Howard. Not to the Hawks, Howard’s hometown team, but to the Lakers. Ferry had gotten 31-year-old Joe Johnson’s albatross of a contract off the Hawks’ […]