Atlanta’s most embarrassing sports moments: How the Hawks’ debacle fits in

So here’s the thing.

The Hawks lost Thursday night’s Game 6 against the Knicks by 51 points. The 83-36 deficit at halftime? An NBA playoff record.

It was, by every metric imaginable, an embarrassment. An abomination, really.

Buuuut, it was also the first round. With a Hawks team that hit a late-season heater but, solid assembly of talent aside, carried no realistic expectations of postseason greatness — too many holes, too little experience.

And this is Atlanta, folks.

Our fanatical little hearts are calloused from far more harrowing fates.

Consider, if you will, the only Super Bowl in history that does not require a reference to Roman numerals — or a year, or the competitors, or the final score — for folks to know exactly what you’re talking about.

Even Aunt Marilyn knows what it means when someone mutters, “28-3.”

And she’s never watched a football game in her life.

Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan after losing the Super Bowl. (Curtis Compton/AJC)

That, frankly, was way worse than any first-round meltdown.

• So, too, was Atlanta’s only other Super Bowl appearance (a blowout preceded by a prostitution arrest).
• And the top-seeded Falcons getting dismantled by the Green Bay Packers during the 2011 playoffs.
• And, if we’re branching out beyond game results, the whole “quarterback goes to prison for dogfighting” and “Bobby Petrino flees in the middle of the night” things.

It ain’t just the Falcons who’ve prepared us to endure this moment, either.

There are so many possible examples that one must carefully separate the embarrassing from the merely heartbreaking.

• In back-to-back years, the local baseball team gave us both “allow 10 runs in the first inning of an elimination game” and “allow 11 runs in the first inning of an NLCS game.”
• The infield-fly rule game and that blown 3-1 lead over the Yankees in the 1996 World Series sting plenty, too (curse you, Leyritz).
• Does umpire Eric Gregg embarrassing himself in Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS count?

Mike Foltynewicz stands alone in the dugout following his implosion in Game 5 of the 2018 NLDS. (Curtis Compton/AJC)

The college kids aren’t immune either.

Just a few months ago, Georgia Tech football showed up with a chance to make an ACC Championship Game … and quickly spotted Pittsburgh four scores. The Jackets lost their last two games of 2021 (to Notre Dame and UGA) by a cumulative score of 100-0.

Georgia basketball, meanwhile, has been run out of the gym in two straight NCAA Tournaments.

• The football team’s relative struggles against Alabama aren’t embarrassing, per se — but starting Faton Bauta against Florida was.
• Same goes for Steve Spurrier hanging “half a hundred” on the Bulldogs in Sanford Stadium in 1995.
• And remember 2008, when Urban Meyer used all of his timeouts in the final minute of a 49-10 drubbing in Jacksonville?

We could go on forever.

Once upon a time, the Atlanta Dream made it to the WNBA Finals three times in four seasons — and got swept all three times. NHL hockey left town, not once but twice.