HAWKS 110, RAPTORS 92: Believe it: 4-0 start silences doubters

Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a basketball team. This will be a difficult notion for some among us to accept, seeing as how we’ve spent the past decade lampooning the Hawks, but here it is November 2008 and change has come.

We have ourselves a team, and we know this because the team is unbeaten against four opponents that figured to be better than these Hawks. In the span of 10 days they’ve taken on Dwight Howard and Elton Brand and Chris Paul and Chris Bosh and have run the star-spangled table.

They’re 4-0, having dominated three of the games, and in the fourth they overrode a 23-point deficit. They’re 4-0, and they’ve won 12 of the 16 quarters. They’ve assembled a really good starting five, which we knew already, and their second unit has also become something to behold, which absolutely nobody other than Rick Sund would have guessed.

A confession: From force of habit, I keep expecting to see J.R. Rider slumping on the baseline or Jason Terry throwing the ball away or Billy Knight drafting somebody else named Williams. I keep expecting to wake up and find that these Hawks are a real dream team, as in utterly imaginary. But then I watch another game and see the Hawks flex another set of muscles and I tell myself, “This is really happening.”

On Wednesday, the Hawks went to New Orleans and whipped a team that hadn’t lost, and on Friday they undressed the Raptors, who arrived at Philips Arena a robust 3-1. The Hawks led Toronto 10-2 after 3 1/2 minutes, and in a sport built for comebacks, the visitors never stirred.

The Hawks kept raining treys and blocking shots and running the floor, and even with Josh Smith absent for the final three quarters (high ankle sprain) and Al Horford and Zaza Pachulia in foul trouble, the lead only grew. Solomon Jones and Randolph Morris provided worthwhile minutes against Bosh and Jermaine O’Neal, and when it was done, the Hawks had won breezing.

Every night brings a mini-revelation. Pachulia was splendid in the first two games, and the newcomer Flip Murray has been a shining asset from the first. And the Hawks’ defense has grown a new set of teeth —- four years on, we’re seeing why Mike Woodson was considered a defensive coach —- and the offense continues to develop in the nicest ways.

To wit: Mike Bibby made five 3-pointers in the first half Friday, and four came off feeds from Joe Johnson. “If [defenders] stay at home, Joe can hurt you,” Woodson said. “And if you double him, he knows our other guys can all make shots.”

Said Bibby: “We’re playing off Joe. We help each other.”

When you play the way the Hawks have, basketball can look easy. Past seasons have been squandered because simplicity yielded to ostentation, but this one won’t be. The Hawks are going to lose some games —- even the greatest team in NBA history lost 10 times —- but they aren’t going to fall on their face. They’re too well-rounded, too tough-minded.

Yes, we’re talking about the Hawks. Yes, really. “We’re trying to play for something here,” Woodson said before Friday’s game, and it shows.

Too many times we Atlantans have been built up to be let down. Michael Vick wins a playoff game at Lambeau Field but breaks his leg in August. The Thrashers win their division but start the next season 0-6. We had no way of knowing how these Hawks would handle their first taste of success, but now we see. They liked it. They liked it so much they want more, more, more.

mbradley@ajc.com

> SUNDAY’S GAME: at Thunder, 7 p.m., SportSouth, 790 AM