SSDL BLOG: “NBA Playoffs: The Atlanta Hawks”
“NBA Playoffs: The Atlanta Hawks”
July 5, 2021
“The Third of Four Profiles of the 2021 NBA Final Four”
Los Angeles, California - Good news, bad news. Good news is that the Atlanta Hawks will always own the fact that they are one of only four franchises that made the NBA playoffs in 10 consecutive seasons, between 2008 and 2017. The bad news? After they were eliminated in the sixth game of the Eastern Conference Finals Saturday, they remain the franchise with the second longest drought, failing to win an NBA championship for the last 63 seasons.
The Atlanta Hawks (est. 1946, 1958 NBA Champions):
Established in 1946, the team that is now the Atlanta Hawks have had their share of good and bad news. In 1946, the franchise got its start in the National Basketball League (NBL, the pre-cursor to the NBA) as the Buffalo Bisons.
Okay, first of all, what is it with the city of Buffalo and their fascination with Buffalos? Second, the Buffalo Bisons? Really? That’s the best they could come up with? Redundancy is an under appreciated skill, I suppose. That is like naming your team the “Los Angeles Angels”. The only thing more stupid than that would be if your team didn’t even play in the city you were being redundant about.
The Bisons lasted in Buffalo about as long as Pope Paul I wore The Ring of the Fisherman. The Bisons, however, were not sent to their death by the Free Masons like PP1. They just decided that after 38 days it would be a good idea to rebrand and move on from Buffalo and their obsessive Bison ways.
So, it was off to the Tri-Cities area and time come up with a new name, the Blackhawks. The Tri-Cities, as we all know, are made up of the “big three” of Moline and Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa. Sounds more like witness protection land than up and coming metropolis, but a Bison is going to do what a Bison is going to do.
With a charismatic and inventive owner in Leo Ferris, the “Blackhawks” signed William Penn “Pops” Gates and William “Dolly” King to play for the team a full seven months before Jackie Robinson would break the color barrier in pro baseball in 1947. Besides breaking racial boundaries together, all three have their places in history. Ferris would go on to bring the 24-second shot clock to the NBA, “Pops” would go on to coach and play for the Harlem Globetrotters and “Dolly” would excel at both pro basketball and baseball.
The same way the town of Bomont was not ready for Kevin Bacon’s type of dancing in “Footloose”, Moline and the Tri-Cities area wasn’t quite ready to support what was now an NBA team. In 1951 the franchise moved on again, and this time they landed in Milwaukee. We have already learned from “shock rocker” Alice Cooper in the first of this blog series about “mill-e-wah-que”, so let’s just say that the beer loving city of Milwaukee would do much better supporting the Bucks as a new franchise in 1968 than they would the newly dubbed “Hawks” in 1951.
The Hawks decided to move again in 1955 to the only other city ready that could stand up to Milwaukee when it came to beer production, St. Louis. In the city of the renown Anheuser-Busch Brewery, the Hawks games were broadcast on KMOX radio with the legendary Robert “Buddy” Blattner on the call. “Buddy”, a former pro baseball player who also won a world championship in table tennis in 1936, was instrumental in the appeal of the Hawks in St Louis. Buddy provided nicknames for the players and colorful descriptions of the games and the STL took the team into their hearts.
The St. Louis Hawks would make it to four NBA Finals, winning the big prize in 1958 behind MVP and all-time NBA great Bob Pettit. Pettit dropped 50 points in the game six clincher of the ’58 series, sending the Celtics back to Boston without a title despite their disproportionate advantages over the league through the lack of free agency and the regional draft.
That’s pretty much the high point of the Hawks. After a conflict over building a new home arena, the team was sold and moved to Atlanta in 1968. Atlanta was not exactly a big-time beer town, but the Milwaukee Braves baseball team was cast off from Milwaukee to the ATL with some success in 1962, so perhaps the Hawks would at least have a relation in town that could show them around.
I would be remiss not to recognize the hall of fame sensation Dominique Wilkins and his high flying theatrics in the 80’s. There certainly was some excitement generated over those Hawk teams with “The Human Highlight Film”, “Tree” Rollins, “Doc” Rivers and “Spud” Webb, but the Hawks were better in the nickname department than they were in putting together a championship run.
Mascots are always a hit and miss adventure when researching NBA teams. I must say, Harry the Hawk is more the former than the latter. Harry, who has been around since the mid 80’s, has endured multiple groin injuries and early playoffs exits, but the Hawk has hung on. In 2015, Harry the Hawk nailed an “Uptown Funk” performance that is worthy of commendation.
Maybe the bad news is that the Hawks are suffering from a 63 year drought, but let’s consider the fact that in recent history both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs were able to overcome their respective droughts to win a championship.
Perhaps good news for the Hawks is coming soon.
Denny Lennon is the host of the Video Podcast, “Sports Stories with Denny Lennon” and the “Preps To Olympians” Live Show, available on YouTube and LA36 CableTV in Los Angeles County.
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