On a distinctly Atlanta night, Hawks tell us something about themselves
On Monday night, a packed State Farm Arena witnessed an event that will take its unique place in Atlanta sports history.
The throngs gathered for what almost happened and what actually did take place. A night that initially gained notoriety as a marketing ploy to celebrate the city’s most famous strip club — which still subtly went on despite the NBA putting its foot down — ended up as a statement game for a Hawks team that looks like it is truly on the rise.
On a singularly Atlanta night:
Hawks 124, Magic 112.
Lemon pepper wings consumed: Thousands.
The Hawks won their 10th consecutive game, the team’s longest streak since the 2014-15 season. They pounded the rival Magic with 16 3-pointers, moved the ball unselfishly and didn’t back down from the visiting team’s physical style.
“I’m proud of this group,” All-Star forward Jalen Johnson, who crafted his 13th triple-double of the season, said. “We’ve got a long ways to go, but we’re going to stack wins one game at a time, just keep focusing on that.”
After winning the first nine in a row against a series of tomato cans that opened to debate the worthiness of the streak, the Hawks dispatched an Orlando team that came into the game having won seven in a row and was fighting as hard to stay out of the Play-In Tournament as the Hawks have been to escape it.
The Hawks seized the game with the same transition offense and ball movement that had spurred them in the first nine wins of the streak, only this time against a Magic defense that came into the game ranked 10th in the NBA in defensive efficiency.
They led by 13 at the end of the first quarter, by 17 at the half and by as many as 29 in the second half. Guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker dumped a career-high 41 points on Orlando, another milestone in a career season in his first year with the Hawks.
He tossed in nine 3-pointers, one shy of the club’s single-game record. His eighth bomb with 5:58 left in the fourth quarter quelled a Magic run that had cut the Hawks’ lead to 109-95; he gave his team and the arena the palms-down “stay cool” gesture after knocking it down.
The Hawks are now 37-31; they were 20-25 in mid-January. The win on Monday night moved them up into eighth place in the East.
And, after the 68th game of the season, anticipation for what this team might do in the postseason is the highest it has been since the 2020-21 season, when the Hawks advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals in what proved to be the outlier season of star guard Trae Young’s 7½ years in a Hawks uniform.
With 14 regular-season games remaining, the Hawks ended the night a game behind seventh-place Miami and a game and a half behind the fifth- and sixth-place teams, that placement representing the breakout from the play-in.
The Hawks’ postseason entry point for the past four years, the play-in has represented the team’s ceiling and symbolized its gravitational pull toward mediocrity. The Hawks’ streak and its play within it have lent increasing hope that this mix assembled by general manager Onsi Saleh, led by Johnson, can finally be more than average.
“It was a real test against a playoff team,” Alexander-Walker said. “And I think, the talk kind of being around, well, we beat nobody and da da da da da, at the end of the day, it’s NBA players, it’s NBA teams. … I think it was just, we continue to handle our business.”
Wings and things
But the game was only part of the draw Monday night, as the Hawks — as can only happen in Atlanta — intended to celebrate Magic City and its place in the city’s cultural fabric before the NBA stepped in.
Fans had taken places in the standing-room-only sections an hour before tipoff. A few wore the prized hoodies that the team had sold as part of the planned Magic City promotion before the NBA kiboshed the event.
“It usually doesn’t look like this until halftime,” an usher said.
Concession stands sold the strip club’s famed lemon pepper wings, lining up 30 deep and more to get a taste.
Two members of the team’s 404 Crew cheering section, Rick Law and Latrece Evans, sampled an order together. Law was initially unimpressed with the meal’s presentation, but “they’re not as bad as I thought,” he said.
Evans pronounced the wings small but moist.
“OK, not bad,” she said. “They’re small, though. That lets you know they’re not pumped up with steroids.”
Around the rim of the arena, Jose Uriegas was dressed in the No. 6 jersey of former Hawk guard Lou Williams, who in 2020 gained his spot in NBA and Atlanta lore by visiting Magic City after the NBA permitted him to step outside the league’s COVID-19 bubble for a family funeral and ordering the establishment’s famous lemon pepper wings.
Uriegas’ nephew Mike wore a custom T-shirt that read “NBA Hates Lemon Pepper Wings.”
A Hawks fan since the late 1990s who gave up his season tickets after this past season, Jose Uriegas had to be here for the Magic City promotion.
“It’s part of Atlanta culture,” he said. “It’s a weird thing to say, but if you’re not from Atlanta, you don’t know.”
But the streaking Hawks made it eventful, too.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a game like this,” he said.
It looks like more are on the way.
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About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
