At its very best, the Atlanta Hawks franchise is scrappy. Never great, never legitimately contending for a title, but scrappy. This year, the Hawks were scrappier than I’ve ever seen them, scrappier even than the 2014-15 team that won 60 games and had 4 All-Stars in its lineup. Thanks in part to a confluence of unlikely circumstances, the scrappiness of this year’s Atlanta Hawks team brought them within sight of an NBA Finals trophy. They ran through the Knicks, stepped on the 76ers, and then came the Bucks…
Here’s the thing, Jeff Teague was at the helm of that historic 60 win team of 6 years ago and even though he’s currently a Buck, he’ll always be, ontologically, a Hawk. So if the Bucks end up holding that Larry O’Brien gold, it’ll be as if the Atlanta Hawks have won an adjacent NBA title, which justifies, to me, hoisting some kind of banner to sit up there in those rafters next to Mutumbo’s 55 and Pistol Pete’s 44.
Maybe that’s why, when a stadium chants, “Lets go Bucks” it almost sounds like, “Lets go Hawks”…
Cheers.
