Well, here we are at the last game of the month of November. I don't know how I feel about the team's start, to be honest. Given the list of opponents we've played, 6-8 is certainly respectable. If you told me before the season started we'd be 6-8 going into tonight's game, I'd probably have taken it and felt pretty good about it.

Yet at the same time, I feel somewhat unsatisfied. Maybe starting the season with huge wins over Dallas and Phoenix raised our expectations too high. Our CEO, Bernie Mullin, always says you're never as good as you look when you win, and you are never as bad as you look when you lose.

So maybe we aren't world beaters, like we looked against the Suns and Mavs. But we also aren't nearly as bad as we looked in losses to Chicago and Seattle.

Which begs the question - where are we?

Certainly injuries (once again) have affected us. I don't know what we did to the gods of point guard karma that we are unable to keep any of them healthy, but it has hurt us. At present, we don't have a guard with a drive-and-dish game healthy enough to play, and in my opinion we would benefit from that more than anything else right now (offensively, anyway).

Truthfully, so far we have seen the team fall prey to the same issues that plagued them last year - a vacillation (nice word eh?) of play from night to night, playing to the level of competition for better or worse.

I don't mean to sound like a downer. In truth, despite the team's struggles, they are still very much in the thick of it. There is no doubt this team is by far the most talented of the Mike Woodson era, and is absolutely a threat to make the playoffs.

In the first month, Al Horford has been outstanding, and looks to be a major competitor for Rookie of the Year honors. Marvin Williams has taken his game to a higher level, and has proven himself capable of being a legitimate second perimeter option to Joe Johnson. Josh Childress continues to do all the little things that make him one of the most valuable bench players in the NBA. Joe Johnson is the world class player we all know he is.

Tonight's game against New Orleans will be a great test for the Hawks. Win, and the team finishes November with a 7-8 record, having finished with a 4-1 stretch, with a manageable schedule coming in December. The Hornets are a good team, but they are slumping of late (losers of four of their last five). Typically this season, the Hawks have been the team to get back on track against (see Washington, Seattle, Chicago).

The Hawks need to come out tonight and play with desperation and intensity, or else the Hornets are going to win this game. That to me is the one thing that has to change more than anything else going forward - they've got to treat every game like an elimination game, or they are going to continue to see teams reach up and bite them.

Come out to Philips tonight to root the team on and give them the kind of home-court advantage that was so instrumental in the big early season wins. All it takes is a couple wins, and all of a sudden everything will seem rosy again.