I am ON the Atlanta Hawks bandwagon and I am proud to admit it.  I have watched more Hawks basketball in the past three days than I have in the past, oh, decade. I grew up playing tons of hoops and enjoyed watching the greats in college and the pros throughout my youth.  I was blessed to have seen Magic, Larry, Dr. J, Dominique, Michael and my favorite NBA player of all time, Charlie Barkley.  I got to see the Duke teams of the early 90’s that were amazing enough to beat a UNLV team that boasted the best starting 5 I had ever seen.  As I grew older and the Hawks more sucky, I drifted away from the NBA.  Every so often I would attempt to watch a game but was a little distracted by all the tatts and attitude.  I had become an old timer right before my very eyes!

Saturday I played a little golf while the fam was out of town and one of my foursome was attending the Hawks/Celtics game at Phillips that night.  I made a snide comment about the lameness that is the Atlanta Hawks and he said he had tickets and was looking forward to going.  Later that night, I sat on the couch with nothing on TV except the Hawks/Celtics game.  In HD.  I thought, why not?  I’ll watch for a minute and watch the Hawks get spanked like Colt Brennan vs. Marcus Howard in the Sugar Bowl (I know I used this exact synonym in the previous post, but dangit, it WORKS).  Before I knew it, I was DEEPLY involved in this game.  The Celtics tore through the regular season like a team that only had to show up to win the championship.  The Hawks went through the regular season with al kinds of problems.  But they made the playoffs for the first time in 8 years.  Guys, you have to seriously suck to not make the playoffs in the NBA.  EVERYBODY gets in.  But somehow the Squawks couldn’t make it.  For 8 years.  Let me put it this way…there has never been a playoff game in Phillips Arena.  Wow.

As the game wore on, I was flooded with memories of what I love about basketball:  the amazing athletes.  The beautiful arc of a jump shot falling through the net.  The emotion.  The momentum swings.  The fact that when I thought everything was lost, the Hawks took the mighty Celtics best shot and came back and beat them.  It was amazing.  I was yelling and hollering and talking trash to the Celtic players.  I typically talk trash to my kids while playing the Wii, so I was practiced up.  The words flowed like honey.  It was sweet.

The Hawks took that game and then the next one last night to tie up the series 2-2.  They head back to Boston tomorrow night for game 5 in a best of 7 series.  The next game will be in Atlanta Friday night.

This city is dying for a winner.  College football is king here, but if the Hawks or Falcons were to become strong franchises again, they would have Atlanta eating out of the palm of their hands.  It would be sweet.

The game will be on TNT tomorrow night at 8:30.  Check them out!