If the Cubs can do it, dare we ask why not Hawks or Falcons?

3. Sacramento/Kansas City Kings/Cincinnati/Rochester Royals, NBA, 65 years

4. Detroit Lions, NFL, 59 years

5. Atlanta/St. Louis Hawks, NBA, 58 years

T6. Philadelphia Eagles, NFL, 56 years

T6. Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers, NFL/AFL, 56 years

T6. San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers, NFL/AFL, 56 years

T6. Texas Rangers/Washington Senators, MLB, 56 years

10. Houston Astros/Colt .45s, MLB, 54 years

Worth a mention: Cleveland Browns, NFL, 52 years. Atlanta Falcons, NFL, 50 years. Toronto Maple Leafs, NHL, 49 years.

Dwight Howard, professional big man and amateur numerologist, thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can combine both those skills and come up with an answer to the Hawks’ long dry spell.

Stay with him here, if you can:

The Cubs, before they ended their longest-in-sports drought this fall, had last won in 1908.

The Hawks won a championship in another city, in another era, 1958.

“There’s an eight on the back of both those,” he said.

And there’s an eight on his back, too, he points out. That’s his number with his latest team, his hometown team. That’s got to mean something, right? Like, perhaps, in concert with the return of the prodigal son who shares that recurring number, it’s the Hawks turn now?

Granted, that’s a biiiiiiiig streeeeeetch. This, after all, is a franchise that has held its breath, stomped its foot and stubbornly refused to win a championship — refused even to go to the NBA Finals — since moving to town in 1968. But what is life without hope?

Here we are in the aftermath of the Cubs winning a World Series, breaking the 108-year curse that Chicago wore like an indelible birthmark. The Cubs and frustration were congenital twins. Now that they have separated and even the most adorable losers of them all have a title, every possibility is on the table.

Even a victory parade down Peachtree for a couple of franchises who, with the Cubs departure, have moved up a spot on the list of the longest suffering — the Hawks and Falcons.

Their victory parade down Peachtree might not arouse the same reaction as in Chicago, where estimates that strained credulity put the number of revelers at 5 million. They claimed the Cubs’ victory parade was the seventh largest gathering in human history, behind such events as state funerals in India and Iran and a papal gathering in the Philippines.

The Braves, remember, drew almost three-quarters of a million souls downtown in 1991 for a parade after losing a World Series. The affair was more controlled and manageable when they actually won in '95, proving that there is nothing that stirs souls quite like the first taste of success after a long, unbroken fast.

How could you be a fan or a player in Atlanta and not watch what the Cubs did and put yourself either on that champion’s float or those overburdened sidewalks?

Can you even imagine?

It’s easier if you are from these parts.

“It’s something I thought about before signing — what a parade would look like here in Atlanta. I’ve had visions about it, dreamed about it. I know it would be a great feeling,” Howard said.

“Being an Atlanta guy,” Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett (Conyers) said, “it would be something special and dear to me. That was good to watch the Cubs come out on top and the emotion it brought out in people from all over the world, people wanting to see them win so badly. That’s the great thing about sports. That would be awesome here.”

Taking a census of those teams suffering the longest droughts, the Hawks of Atlanta and St. Louis find themselves in the top five. Oh-for-glory since their inception in 1966, the Falcons’ half-century without a title places them just outside that number.

Title Aversion Syndrome is not a strictly Atlanta condition. Losing the World Series this year stretched the Cleveland Indians drought to a 68th year. The football Cardinals — with homes past and present in Chicago to St. Louis to Phoenix — do the Indians one year better (or worse, really). The Sacramento Kings, their roots snaking practically from coast to coast, have thirsted for 65 years.

That’s a them problem.

Atlanta has needs of its own, that can be met only by its own. With the Falcons and Hawks winning at a combined 70 percent rate at this point of their overlapping seasons, at least there are glimmers of competitiveness these days.

The Falcons sit atop the division standings, and lead all of football in scoring. The Hawks, third in their conference and fourth in the NBA in scoring, are similarly entertaining. And they just knocked off the defending champion Cavaliers.

Let’s not start stringing the police tape and warming up the convertibles just yet. If nothing else, though, the Cubs victory stirred a “Why not us?” sentiment across the wide range of winning-deprived teams.

It reminded both player and fan of why they sometimes dream.

“Whenever you watch a parade as a professional athlete, you think about having that in your city and what it would be like to be a part of that,” the Hawks Kyle Korver said.

These epic celebrations don’t exactly come two-for-a-dollar.

Poor Falcons center Alex Mack. He has toiled for the Cleveland Browns (last title 1964) and the Falcons (last title never). He certainly never has ridden a float. “I’m saving that,” he said, wistfully.

Korver laughed and said his biggest sporting celebration probably followed a hole-in-one.

For Jarrett it was winning a state high school wrestling title at Rockdale County.

Going straight from Southwest Atlanta Christian to the NBA, Howard counts his trip to the NBA Finals with Orlando in 2009 (where the Magic lost to the Lakers) as a model for what might happen for the Hawks.

Even winning it not-quite-all would be a great adventure, he promised.

“I experienced a city really come together and come alive down in Orlando,” he said. “Those are feelings you can never forget. You remember driving around the city, everyone around the city honking their horn, saying let’s do it.”

“I’ve seen what it can do to a city, just getting to the finals,” Howard continued. “If this team was able to accomplish that right there, I just think it would bring this city so much closer as a whole.

“Thinking about what the atmosphere would be like with a team in the Eastern Conference finals — and we get over the hump and win, how big that would be? Everything about the finals is amazing — the game coverage, you got the whole world watching your team. It would be great.”

But would it be parade worthy?

Maybe not. At some point before another half century has passed, though, it would be nice to transfer such a question from the hypothetical to the real.