In the coming weeks, I'm going to try (emphasis on try) and analyze our competitors in the Southeast Division and take a look at what makes them dangerous in the coming season, and what helps us sleep easier at night.  This is kind of like the community projections except that:

A) No predictions on records will be made.

B) This series will be conducted in bullet point form as opposed to paragraph form.

C) These only pertain to the Southeast Division.

D) These will generally be much more poorly written than the Community Projections.

But other than that, they're kind of the same...but not really.

Why I'm scared:

• The Hawks six top players (Bibby, Johnson, Smith, Horford, Williams, and Pachulia) are all under the age of 30 (EDIT: except Bibby, who is exactly 30), and I don't see any of them dropping off this season.
• Josh Smith.  He's pretty good.
  
• I mentioned this in the competition discussion, but I'm going to repeat it again, don't count out Acie Law in your calculation on this team.  He didn't do a whole lot last season, but with some more time in the system, I think he'll be able to do a lot more this time around.
• If this doesn't give you nightmares, nothing will:

Why I'm not scared:

• As well as they played last year, they still finished 8 games under .500.  If you think that will get a playoff spot this year, raise your hand.
• I like Mo Evans a lot, but if the Hawks think he'll be able to replicate what they lost in Josh Childress, they're going to be sorely disappointed.
• You have to think that at some point within the next year or so the Hawks will have to find a way to orchestrate the alpha-dog transition from Joe Johnson to Josh Smith.  Maybe it won't hurt team chemistry at all, but it very well could.
  
• Mike Woodson's career winning percentage: .323%
• Salim Stoudamire had the second best points per 36 average on the squad last season.  His FG%? .361.  Understandably, it doesn't look like he'll be back next season.
  

Atlanta is the real wild card in the East in my opinion.  I could see them putting it all together and angling for a 5-6 seed if Smith, Horford, Law, and Williams all take the next step.  On the other hand, they may have put expectations a little too high after their series with Boston last year and I could very well see them missing the playoffs entirely if Josh Smith and Mike Woodson start to have problems again, or if Bibby starts squabbling with someone, or a host of other problems that could come up as they try to live up to those expectations.  Right now, I've got them in the 8-10 range in the East, but a lot of that hinges on how much better Josh Smith gets now that he has that new contract.

I was listening to the Nationals-Diamondbacks game on Saturday night and somehow or another the broadcast team got to talking about Fatburger, which led to this inevitable exchange, which to the best of my recollection, went something like this:

Charlie Slowes: You know you who I saw in a Fatburger once?

Dave Jageler: No, who?

Charlie Slowes: John Williams, of the old Washington Bullets.

(Nervous giggling as they both try to avoid laughing out loud about a fat joke.)

That little exchange got me thinking about Washington's favorite overweight power forward with exceptional passing skills, so I went over to The Vault and I found this passage about Hotplate's ideal team:

A feeder turned eater, Hot Plate played just 51 games over the last three seasons before the Washington Bullets gave up on him, dispatching him to the Clippers in an October trade. He had exceeded the Bullets' expectations only in weight, and he missed the entire 1991-92 season because he was carrying too many extra pounds. Hot Plate has created a mythical team he calls the Williamsburg Williamses, a team composed entirely of his namesakes. He rattles off a mock play-by-play: "Williams dribbles down the floor and flips it to Williams, who pulls up and fires. The shot is short and grabbed by Williams, who alley-oops to Williams for the basket...."

How can you tell which Williams is which?

"It doesn't matter, as long as we win."

I could go on about where you have to be as person to imagine having a team where everyone has the same last name, but I'd rather not dwell on that.  Instead, I'm going to put together a modern day version of his sick and twisted idea.

The Williamsburg Williamses

PG: Deron Williams

SG: Louis Williams  (Defensively, you'd probably want to switch them around for the best result)

SF: Marvin Williams

PF: Shawne Williams

C: Sean Williams

Bench: Jason Williams, Mo Williams, Marcus Williams (both of them), Shelden Williams, Aaron Williams

In many ways, the team would be a lot like John Williams: lots of passing, impressive in some areas, and extremely underwhelming in others.  At least we know that Williamsburg would have an awesome slogan.

If you've been checking out Bullets Forever lately, you've probably noticed that we've been using the FanShot feature a lot.  The FanShot is basically a quick hit post to a link, picture, video, etc. and it works out great for us because a lot of times there's news that's worth relaying but doesn't really constitute an entire post. The only drawback is that if you only read Bullets Forever through your RSS reader, than you're not getting these FanShots in your reader.  So in order to catch you up on any news that you might have missed, here's a round up of all the FanShots FanPosts from the past few weeks

If you want to subscribe to the FanShots you can do that by clicking here, although we have to throw out the disclaimer that anyone can post a FanShot, so you can't say you weren't warned beforehand.  Also, you can now also subscribe to the FanPosts (formerly the diaries), with the same disclaimer in effect.

Let's start this with some links from the links from the playoff series (which already seems like it was a month ago):

• First, Eddie Jordan's thoughts on the final play of Game 4:  "[Gilbert's] our guy. And look, he made a terrific shot (on the previous possession). Who else do we have that can make that kind of shot? In the end, maybe he could have been used as a decoy. I always say that sometimes a threat is as dangerous as the action. Maybe we could have spotted him up and let Antawn or Caron get in on the last play. I thought about that as the ball was inbouded but it was too late by then."
• An example of a "flagrant, malicious, dirty, thuggish, uncalled for foul" from Jason Kidd.  Somewhere Marvin Williams is saying "Hey!  What about me?"
• Here's the quote from Brendan Haywood that prompted the now infamous Crybaby 23 T-Shirts.  The blowback from the shirt was so bad that now Papa John's is offering 23 cent pizzas on Thursday in the Cleveland area.  Will Jay-Z sell his next album for two cents in the District as an apology for Blow the Whistle?  Don't forget the boycott on Love is still in effect until he does.
• Don't take fashion tips from DeShawn.
• TruthAboutIt and WaitingForNextYear had a great back and forth Q&A. Check it out.
• Jason wonders why the Wizards didn't try to make LeBron go left more.
• Wilbon had a great write-up on Game 5 with an interesting look into Antawn's role as a leader.  (HT: cuppetcj)
  
• After Songaila's suspension for Game 6, And One gathered responses from all sides on the issue.
• Speaking of weird rulings, Vanilla Gorilla wants to know why DeShawn's throat slash was being used in promos for game 5 if it netted him a $25,000 fine.
• Finally, Asian Zero's highlight reel of the series is a must see:

Now let's check out some links as we head into the off-season:

• Some people are calling for coaching changes.  KDP wants to see Mike D'Antoni, mamemimo wants to see Avery Johnson.  For what it's worth, Ivan Carter doesn't think a change will be made.
• Gilbert on who's crazier between DeShawn and himself:  "No, he's crazier than me. I'm already broken. I learned early. He's not filtered. I think about stuff. Mine goes through the filter first."
• The last word belongs to Caron Butler who had this to say about the chances of Gilbert and Antawn coming back this season:

I look forward to both of them coming back. Obviously, I don't have that much input but publicly, I'm saying what I'm saying right now. I would love to have them back. I think that will be the case and I'm almost positive that will be the case.

I just have a hunch, a reliable source.