Welcome to Atlanta in November, or misery central. It’s the only city in America where a sports fan can transition from a baseball team with a $75 million center fielder hitting .198 to a football team losing its fifth consecutive game by blowing a 21-0 lead against an opponent missing its best receiver, its best running back and three tight ends.
The Falcons are dead. The Braves met them at the door to the afterlife. Georgia took a potential playoff berth and ran that sucker over on I-95. Georgia Tech lost everybody’s attention after going 0-for-North Carolina, which wouldn’t be so bad if the ball was round and not oblong. Georgia State: 1-8, but at least meeting expectations.
On election day in Atlanta, I polled sports fans about six of the teams’ coaches, from here to Athens. The question about each: Keep or fire? Consider it a modern-day version of Roman gladiators seeking a thumbs-up or thumbs-down sign from the crowd, except in this case the Colosseum is wired for Wi-Fi.
Predictably, Falcons coach Mike Smith and Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez did not fare well in the poll. If their approval rating was any lower, they would be a former Atlanta Public Schools administrator. Approximately 76 percent of more than 10,000 respondents as of early evening Tuesday supported Smith’s firing.
The landslide winner in this unscientific election: Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer. The “Keeps” were carrying the day with 77 percent of the vote.
Budenholzer’s team is only 1-1. He’s in his second season. But he has the advantage of being the coach of the Hawks, and therefore the sympathetic figure in an organization where an outgoing owner (Bruce Levenson) and a general manager on indefinite leave (Danny Ferry) are still stomping out the embers on their resume.
It probably also helps that if you asked 10 people on the street who Mike Budenholzer was, I’m guessing at least a few would respond, “Vanderbilt’s special-teams coach?”
But Budenholzer will take it.
“A second political race for the Budenholzers!” he cracked.
Come again?
“My mom was the mayor of the little town I grew up in: Holbrook, Ariz. About 5,000 people. One stop light. I went around putting flyers on people’s screen doors on my bike with my buddies.”
Asked what the biggest issue was in Holbrook that Libby Budenholzer had to face, the Hawks’ coach responded, “My biggest issue was that I was going to get a frozen dinner the night of city council meetings.”
Fallen Atlanta sports fans: The Hawks are here for you.
How strange does that sound?
The Hawks, a national punchline in September for Levenson’s warped view of the Atlanta market and Ferry’s bizarre scouting report on Luol Deng — both of which played to racial stereotypes and inflamed a market in the birthplace of the civil-rights movement — probably are in better shape on their playing surface than any other team.
Only two games into an 82-game season, going into Wednesday’s game at San Antonio, they also have the advantage of not having blown any goal to pieces yet.
Jeff Teague is playing like one of the NBA’s top point guards. Al Horford, the Hawks’ best player, is back from injury (again) and feels like he’s coming around. The Hawks have more depth than last season, when they made the playoffs in the weak Eastern Conference despite being undersized and losing Horford and several other bodies to injuries, only to nearly upset No. 1-seeded Indiana in the first round.
Look around the East. Who’s going to be great? Too many assumptions are being made about Cleveland’s immediate greatness with LeBron James. Chicago will be strong if Derrick Rose can stay healthy, which is a 190-pound “if.”
“I think it’s wide open,” Teague said.
Horford likes the Hawks’ potential and depth. But, he said, “I feel like we have a lot to prove. As of now there’s no (reason to project) us near the top. We need to work to get to that position.”
With ownership and the front office in flux, Budenholzer and the players deserve credit for minimizing distractions.
“It’s still early, but I feel like we’ve been able to focus on basketball,” Budenholzer said. “How much we get asked about it, only (media) can dictate that. Fortunately our guys are pretty mature. I don’t want to be naive. It’s not like we’re in a vacuum. But I really feel like there’s been a high level of focus and a low level of distractions.”
Pro athletes operate in their own little world. But the Hawks aren’t oblivious to what has happened around them. They don’t take joy it, but, as Horford said, smiling, “We welcome all fans.”
Actually, Horford takes some joy in the misery. He played at Florida and certainly isn’t oblivious to the events of last week. He also predicted the Gators’ upset of Georgia on a sports talk show.
“Everybody mocked me,” he said. “Bulldog Nation had their chance. They were playing South Carolina, the Gators, they could be sitting in the driver’s seat right now.”
OK, that probably wasn’t the best marketing decision.
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