Welcome to the exorcism.
There has been so much misery that a Hawks fan hasn’t had the luxury of separating the good memories from the bad as much as rating the annual levels of disappointment.
Remember 1988? A win in Boston Garden in Game 5. A 3-2 series lead. Then a loss, then Game 7. Nique over Bird 47-34, but the Celtics over the Hawks 118-116.
But after hitting the second-round wall so many times, after failing to follow through on expectations, the Hawks can finally experience what an Eastern Conference finals feels like. They defeated the Washington Wizards — barely — 94-91 Friday night to clinch the Eastern Conference semifinals four games to two.
The game was decided on a replay. Paul Pierce — of course — seemingly made a 3-point shot to tie the score at the buzzer. But replays showed the ball was still in his hands when time expired. So it was that the Hawks celebrated while standing at the bench, looking up at the video board and then waiting for a ruling.
“All of a sudden he’s shooting a 3 again,” Korver said of Pierce, who had beaten the Hawks with a 3 in Game 3 and nearly beat them with one in Game 5. “I tried to contest it and not foul … and it went in. It was like: You have got to be kidding me. That did not just happen.”
It did. But it didn’t. The shot was nullified. No overtime. Washington was done.
“Series,” as Pierce would say — sometimes incorrectly.
The Hawks will take it. After so much misery, they’ll absolutely take it.
Remember 1994? A 57-win regular season. A No. 1 playoff seed. Then the dreaded miscalculation before the trade deadline — that Danny Manning gave them a better chance to get over the top than Dominique Wilkins. Out in the second round to Indiana.
They hadn’t won two rounds of a playoff series since 1958, when they were the St. Louis Hawks and won the league championship in a four-team playoff. They hadn’t played in a conference final since 1970, when they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference finals (then, the second round).
But they’re going back. They clinched this series on the road in a Game 6, just as they clinched their first-round series in Game 6 at Brooklyn. Now they’ll come back home and prepare to meet LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, beginning Wednesday night at Philips Arena.
Goodbye to misery.
Remember 2009 and 2010? Winning first-round series over Miami and Milwaukee in seven games each, only to get smacked down in the second round by Cleveland and Orlando — eight losses by an average deficit of 21.6 points.
The Hawks led 45-39 at halftime after a fairly miserable half of basketball by both teams. But they came out flying in the third quarter, moving the ball better, certainly shooting better. They built a 15-point lead, saw the Wizards chip away and then take the lead 88-87 on a Bradley Beal jumper with 3:50 left.
The Hawks went over five minutes without a field goal, during which they were outscored 9-0, until Paul Millsap made a jumper with 1:47 left to give his team the lead again.
“A lot of stuff was happening, fluky stuff,” Millsap said. “And we hit a dry spell.”
The Hawks clung to the edge of the cliff. But Teague took charge in the fourth quarter. He twice set up the slashing Carroll inside for layups, the second coming with 30 seconds left to make the score 93-89.
“In the end we stuck to our system,” Millsap said.
The system, the one coach Mike Budenholzer brought with him from San Antonio, paid off. So did the Hawks’ cool down the stretch. As much as anything, that enabled them to finally punch through the second-round wall.
This is only Korver’s third season with the Hawks, but he has a sense for franchise history.
“I’ve only been around for a short period of time, but it’s been interesting as the season has unfolded,” he said. “We’ve felt the city a little bit more. We kind of felt some of their hopes and frustrations. We’re definitely proud to do this for Atlanta. You want to come through for them. You want to keep on going and keep on getting better.
“When I re-signed here a couple of years ago, this was the hope — that we would be competing for championships. We were going to bring in the right pieces and bring in the right people and bring in character guys and compete at the highest levels. It happened a little quicker than maybe we thought it might.”
“Quicker” in terms of this group’s tenure. Not quick in the big picture. It was decades in the making.
