Hawks Aim for 30 Win Season

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Co-captains Al Harrington and Joe Johnson stopped short of making a dreaded playoff guarantee Thursday, although the Hawks are 8 1/2 games out of a playoff spot. Getting to 30 wins is more likely.

"I can easily see us winning 30-some games," Harrington said. "With 23 [games] left and the way we're playing, 30-plus is my conservative estimate. But I tend to be an extremely positive type of guy."

Johnson, without prompting, said the same thing.

"Twelve or 13 more wins is what I'm thinking," he said. "As long as we keep playing the way we've been playing, I don't see how that doesn't happen."

Tuesday night's win over Golden State pushed the Hawks' season record to 20-39, after a 2-16 start. Confidence is high heading into Saturday night's game against Chicago at Philips Arena.

"There's no question that at the start of every season a team goes in with the goal of making the playoffs," Hawks coach Mike Woodson said before joining his team in a Read to Achieve event in Decatur. "And that's the next step for us. I realize we still have a lot of work to do. But anything can happen between now and the end of the regular season, so these guys shouldn't rule out the possibilities."

The Hawks can't help but replay their season, thinking about all the games they led or seemed to have under control, only to lose.

"We worked just as hard early in the year as we are working now," Woodson said. "We just didn't see the results then that we are now. Based on everything that's happened this year, and these guys have been through a lot, it's nice to see the way we've responded. But we're far from done. We have plenty of basketball left to play and we have to keep working hard and make sure we don't get too happy with ourselves."

They don't have to worry about that. Not when Hawks fans the past few seasons have turned their attention to the draft this time of year. It's a ritual for all struggling teams by March, when attention shifts from the pain of another sub-.500 season to dreaming wistfully about the future help that's on the way.

But that's not the case with the Hawks.

"That's the dumbest thing anybody could do," Harrington said of draft daydreaming. "There's nobody out there in this draft that can help us right away. There are no impact players in this draft that I see.

"None of that is guaranteed anyway. What we can control is going out there for the next 23 nights and making sure we leave the floor on the right side of that scoreboard. That's something you can build on."

Johnson was even more emphatic about the draft talk being unnecessary for a team playing as well as the Hawks have of late. They're 8-8 in their past 16 games. </div>

Source

The Hawks need 10 wins in their remaining 23 games.