By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, filed originally January 6, 2015
With the Atlanta Hawks suddenly ranked the top team in the NBA by ESPN, it's time to revisit a bet Matt Chernoff and Chuck Oliver made facetiously before the season began.
If the Hawks win an NBA championship - something the team has never done since it came to Atlanta in 1968 - they said they would go to prison for life. If not, they'd get to spend a free weekend in Vegas, courtesy of one of their sponsors.
The top-rated sports talk show team in Atlanta, heard from 3 to 7 p.m. on 680/The Fan (93.7 on the FM side), figured this would be a joke because Las Vegas oddsmakers had placed the Hawks at 100-1 odds of winning the title. They haven't even won an Eastern Conference championship in their 47-year history. And they were coming off that Bruce Levenson e-mail controversy and the owners selling the team.
NBA Future Odds still has the Hawks at a relatively modest 25-1 odds with 11 teams given a better shot at the title.
The Hawks have the third-best record in the NBA at 26-8 and are No. 1 in the Eastern Conference. They have won 20 of the past 22 games, with an 11-5 record against teams with a better than .500 record.
"This radio bet in retrospect wasn't a good idea," Chernoff said on air today at 3:13 p.m.
But there is still a lot of basketball to go this season. So the two radio hosts shouldn't get too nervous - yet.
"We'd want to go to a white-collar prison in Pensacola," Chernoff said in an interview today before the show.
Seriously, this entire bet is pure silliness because the punishment is based on nothing in particular. While people have been imprisoned for all sorts of dopey reasons, losing a radio bet is not one of them.
Still, if the Hawks continue to play well, Chernoff said there are all sorts of marketing possibilities. They could go to games at Philips in prison outfits and do their show from a fake cell. If there's a championship parade for the victors, he could envision the Fan building a "prison" float with them inside. He is hoping someone in the government (Mayor Kasim Reed?) might be forced to "pardon" them for their lack of faith.
On the bright side, he said he has never spent any time in the clink ever - not even for a "youthful indiscretion." And he doesn't think Oliver has either.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
I suggested they prepare themselves by binge-watching HBO's series "Oz." "I'd rather watch 'Orange is the New Black,' " Chernoff cracked. "I could spend time in a women's prison. That would save the trouble of conjugal visits."
As he envisions it in his fevered mind, he would share a cell with Oliver. But he thinks he'd hold up better than Oliver in prison. "Chuck would have a lot of enemies behind bars," Chernoff theorizes. "He's an Auburn guy. I bet there are lot of Alabama and Florida fans in there."
He hopes perhaps they can get an ISDN line installed in prison so they can keep doing their show.
Chernoff does believe the Hawks are a "really good" team. "They make more nervous than I was in November," he said. And despite the bet, he said he is rooting for them, not against them, because it would be great for the city of Atlanta, which has had only one professional sports team win a national championship - the 1995 Braves.
In a brief text, Oliver wrote, "This has quickly turned into Creed vs. Drago. 'What started out as a joke has turned tragic..."
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
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