Seeking to make lemonade from a truly rotten lemon, the Hawks asked fans to come "be part of NBA history." They even commissioned Al Horford to do a video spot, which wound up being splashed across the Internet to unintentionally hilarious effect: "An historic day for the NBA," said Horford, straight-faced, and then he revealed that the first 3,000 patrons would receive a free A-Town Dancers swimsuit calendar.

If not quite historic, Saturday night was weird beyond measure. The Hawks and Heat played twice at Philips Arena, the first "game" lasting 51.9 seconds and "starting" with the Hawks leading 114-111. That would, as fate and perhaps history would have it, be the final final score. The Hawks posted their 25th victory of the season without actually scoring a point during the "game" in question. Got that?

As Miami coach Pat Riley said, nearly two hours before the fateful 51.9 seconds: "I'm a little confused today."

For the restart of a game that had begun 80 days earlier, the NBA printed up a three-page "fact sheet." It included this pithy paragraph: "Players who will be inactive for the resumption of the Dec. 19 game, yet who will be designated as active for the regularly scheduled March 8 game, may be in uniform and are to sit in the second row behind the team benches."

Riley again: "I've read the rules, and I believe the NBA made them all up."

If not for Riley, this would have been just a single who-cares game between two teams of varying lousiness. But his what-the-heck protest of the Dec. 19 game was somehow upheld by the NBA. Much has happened to the Heat since then, none of it good, and the only thing worse than having to play on a Saturday night in March while holding the league's worst record is to have to play twice.

Over in the Hawks' locker room, Josh Childress was asked what play he expected Miami —- having had 80 days to draw up an inbounds set —- to run. "They seem to think that, because it's Riley, he'll go for the 3 immediately. But you don't know. They might have a trick play like Boise State, some 4-point play we've never seen."

The fateful 51.9 commenced with two players who were based in the Western Conference on the night of Dec. 19 taking the floor —- Mike Bibby and Shawn Marion, who had scored 23 points on Dec. 19 for Phoenix and had since been traded for Shaquille O'Neal. (That O'Neal, whose erroneous disqualification was the crux of the protest and the league's $50,000 fine against the Hawks, wasn't even in the building made the whole thing seem even sillier.)

The Heat inbounded to Dwyane Wade. He dribbled up, dribbled around, almost tried a trey but passed instead. Mark Blount shot and missed. (Boise State can breathe easy.) The Hawks rebounded. Joe Johnson drove and missed. The Heat rebounded. Bibby knocked the ball out of bounds with 8.5 of the 51.9 seconds remaining. Wade shot to tie from the deep left corner. He missed. Eighty days after it began, the game was over.

The Hawks celebrated a bit disproportionately. Mike Woodson pumped his first. Horford, who hadn't been a part of the mini-game —- matchups, you understand —- raised his arms on high. Pyrotechnics flashed above the floor. Then the teams, having toiled feverishly for 51.9 seconds, took a 15-minute break.

"A heck of a rush," Woodson would say later. "From a coaching standpoint, it was a heck of rush."

And then the Hawks went out and did it again, sort of.

Game 2 came down —- wouldn't you know it? —- to the Hawks leading by three and the Heat with the ball, and this time Daequan Cook missed from 35 feet.

Said Josh Smith: "It seemed kind of awkward. We'd kind of already played the [first] game. ... Winning the second game felt better. It was more a full game."

In sum, the Hawks played 48 minutes and 51.9 seconds Saturday against the league's worst club, and they outscored the Heat by three points and exited with two victories.

Awkward or not, it was a profitable night. Maybe even an historic one.

mbradley@ajc.com