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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > April > 10
Thursday, April 10, 2008
In Atlanta, Hawks best at losing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You probably weren’t aware of it, but the Hawks made history this week. With their loss in Indianapolis on Tuesday, they assured themselves of a ninth consecutive losing season. In the not-exactly-auspicious annals of Atlanta professional sports, no franchise has ever had such a futile run.
The Hawks’ last winning season came last millennium — in 1998-99. They’ve since worked under four coaches (Wilkens, Kruger, Stotts and Woodson), two general managers (Babcock and Knight), two presidents (Kasten and the guy from Liverpool) and two sets of owners (Time Warner and Atlanta Spirit) without generating even a 42-40 regular season. Even by tepid local standards, this is atrocious.
The expansion Thrashers had five losing seasons before nuzzling above .500. The Braves went seven years (from 1984 through 1990) without finishing with a winning record, at which point they hired John Schuerholz and forgot how to lose. The previous gold standard — or, to be more precise, the lead balloon — among Atlanta losers were the Falcons of 1983 through 1990, the inglorious era of Dan Henning and Marion Campbell (second tour), a eight-year skein of infamy snapped only by the huckster Jerry Glanville in 1991.
And now the Hawks have trumped, so to speak, all that. Informed of his club’s feckless feat, Michael Gearon Jr. was less than enthused. “It’s unfair to judge us on the condition of the franchise prior to our involvement,” said Gearon, one of the many men who took ownership from Time Warner in 2004. “The better question would be: ‘How do I feel about the team and the future?’ I would say this is certainly the best basketball team we’ve had since the demolition of the old Omni [in 1997].”
Of those nine losing seasons, this is by far the best. (That’s an odd sentence to type, but when writing about the organization that has seen owners sue another and end of games replayed you get used to such things.) With four regular-season games remaining, the Hawks almost certainly will make the playoffs for the first time since 1998-99. That would, as you know, snap the NBA’s longest ongoing run of postseason absence.
But even Gearon won’t try to sell one probable No. 8 seed as a breakthrough in and of itself. “More than making the playoffs, I want to see us getting to the point where we can win consistently and compete as one of the top teams in the East,” he said Thursday, speaking from Hong Kong (where technically it was almost Friday). “Over the past 15 games, we’ve played some pretty darn good basketball. What I want to know is, are we beating good teams and are we in position to compete on a regular basis?”
The Hawks have won 10 of 14, with four of those victories coming against teams at or above .500. Counting the scoreless-but-winning 51.9-second replay of the Miami game, they’re 15-14 since Mike Bibby arrived. Said Gearon: “Do we have a very good team and some very good pieces? Absolutely. … And how many Atlanta teams have had the player of the month [Joe Johnson] and the rookie of the month [Al Horford] this late in a season? Those are good trends.”
The greater trend, alas, is this: Nine consecutive losing seasons, something no Atlanta club had ever (mis)managed. Even the giddiness that will come with making the playoffs — surely even these Hawks can’t blow that — shouldn’t obscure the bigger picture, which is:
The Hawks have changed ownership and management and coaches and have had seven lottery picks over those nine seasons and have finally swung a trade for their long-sought point guard, and still they’re south of mediocrity. They’ve made progress, yes, but does progress get any more glacial than this?
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