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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > November > 13
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A loss on the scoreboard, a win everywhere else
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“This is very impressive.”
“In some ways this is more impressive than any of those six wins.”
“This is a completely different team from the one that went to Game 7.”
“This game won’t go away, and these Hawks won’t go away.”
That wasn’t me talking to myself last night, though it could well have been. Those were the comments — respectful bordering on gushing — of the Celtics’ radio crew during the fourth quarter of the greatest regular-season loss in Atlanta Hawks history.
There’s nothing snootier than the Boston media, but there was nothing snooty about Sean Grande and Cedric Maxwell. They kept giving reasons why the Hawks shouldn’t even be close — Josh Smith didn’t play and Zaza Pachulia hurt his shoulder; Al Horford and Solomon Jones were in foul trouble, and above all the team was working the second night of a back-to-back — and the longer the game stayed tight the more they lauded the visitors.
I listened on XM Radio because I wanted to hear if an outsider’s take jibed with mine, and it absolutely did. The Hawks met fire with fire. (“The NBA at its highest level,” as Mike Woodson told reporters afterward.) They pushed a champion to its limit on the famous parquet. They lost not because they did anything wrong but because Paul Pierce did one last thing right.
I’m not a believer in moral victories in professional sports, but how could this have been anything else? Three victories over Boston at Philips Arena lit the fuse for this rousing 6-0 start, and now a one-point loss on a contested shot with 0.5 seconds left has supplied the validation. Borrowing Maxwell’s admiring line, the Hawks wouldn’t go away Wednesday night, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
I wrote it the other night, but here it is again: Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a basketball team. And that rumble you hear is the sound of a bandwagon cranking up.
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