<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Los Angeles — From a strategic standpoint, nothing has changed for the Hawks from December to January. That's what makes the Hawks' recent struggles — they're 18-23 at the midway point of the season — so perplexing for coach Mike Woodson and his team. They know something isn't right, but putting a "finger on it" isn't nearly as simple as it sounds. So the real quandary now becomes figuring out what the Hawks can do to reverse their fortunes in time to save their playoff hopes — and despite their losing ways, the Hawks haven't faded nearly as fast as it seems. "You can look at trades and all that," said Woodson, whose team carried a 1-3 mark into Wednesday's finale of a five-game Western Conference road trip against the Los Angeles Clippers at Staples Center. "But until something is done, we have to weather the storm and just keep playing. It's not like we're playing bad basketball. Unfortunately, we've had some tough road games, and it's not easy winning road games no matter how you cut it. "But the only thing I see in jump-starting this team is if you look to pull the trigger on making some trades. Again, I'm the coach, but I think from a management standpoint we've seen enough in terms of what we need, so now it becomes a question of are those people out there?" As pressing as the need is for some sort of spark, Woodson believes change simply for the sake of change could be more harmful than anything. That's why he spent much of his time before Wednesday's game reminding anyone willing to listen that the Hawks should not be ready to push the panic button on the season. "One thing you don't want to do is make the wrong move and set yourself back," Woodson said. "We're not that far away. I don't want anybody to be in a panic stage. In my mind, we're five games out of the [Southeast] division lead. "I don't want our players to be in a desperate mode because we're still in the hunt. We've just got to get back to how we were playing early and win some of these games. I think if we had won the Portland game, nobody would really be pressing the issue, even though we've struggled a bit since the start of the month." It's not clear right now how damaging Monday's loss in Portland really was, though Wednesday's inept performance in a blowout loss to Phoenix has to be some indication. The Hawks lost a 19-point lead and then lost 94-93 in the final two minutes against the Trail Blazers. The Suns pounded them from the start; the Hawks trailed by as many as 37 before losing 125-92. "We've got to figure out what we want to do as a team," Hawks captain Joe Johnson said. "Sometimes we come out and we look like we want to play, and sometimes we don't. "But we can talk about all the trades and other stuff until we're blue in the face. We can fix all this stuff on the floor, though. We have to figure out some way. If you look at how ugly everything is right now, we're still in the playoff picture. So we just have to stay positive and dig down and play harder." Johnson's sentiments were echoed by several of his teammates. Josh Childress went so far as to say that the Hawks have to find a way to stop worrying about the big picture and refocus on the little things. "I think more than anything, everybody has to really commit himself to making the next guy better," he said. "We sit here and lose a lot of these games on little stuff, help defense or a missed coverage. If somebody's talking or somebody's communicating, that doesn't happen. "If I step over and make that next help or make that next pass happen, little stuff like that, everything changes. As a team, if we make that a priority, we can turn this thing back around."</div> Source: AJC
