This has been a crazy playoff run for the Hawks so far. Hell, it’s been a crazy NBA playoffs period. Here we are one game into the 2nd round, and we’re still wondering what to make of these Hawks. The question that a lot of folks from the area might be asking is “should we buy in?” My answer, as always, is to defer to somebody else, because by nature I simply don’t have a choice: I’m always pretty much all in. I don’t mean that I always think we’ll win or even believe we’ll win, what I mean is that I’m always emotionally invested.
Some of you are sitting there saying “Well, I mean I just don’t want to start thinking that this year might be different, and then what if we get killed the next four games?” To these folks I say, “Who fucking cares?” At any point from game 4 of the second round last season to the last game of this year’s regular season did you ever think we would be up a game in the 2nd round of the playoffs? So we’ve already gotten more than we expected. Let’s see how far this goes.
The Weight of History
The Hawks have a fairly long—if not too storied—history of failing in the playoffs. If basketball was the preferred sport in these parts, the fact that the Hawks “have never reached the conference finals” would be as well known as that now vanquished albatross “the Falcons have never had consecutive winning seasons.”
That factoid about the Atlanta Hawks never reaching the conference finals is both true and not quite as bad as it sounds. Yes, it is technically the case that the Hawks have never reached the Eastern Conference Finals during their time in Atlanta. However, it would be much more accurate to say that the Hawks have never gotten past the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs during their time in Atlanta. In their first two years in Atlanta, the Hawks made back to back Western Division Finals, losing both times to the Los Angeles Lakers. The winner of that series went on to the NBA Finals, so at the time, the Division Finals were the equivalent of the conference finals. This is basically semantics, but it should be noted that the Hawks have indeed been one series away from the NBA Finals during their time in Atlanta, which I’m sure most Hawks fans don’t even realize.
The more important point is that no amount of historical data or use of past playoff formats can change the fact that the Atlanta Hawks, despite reaching the playoffs 26 times prior to this season, have never won 2 playoff series in the same season. They’ve never gotten past the 2nd round of the postseason, regardless of how many rounds there were or how many games a team needed to advance.
A few years ago when the Hawks were going up against the Heat in the first round of the playoffs, it was pointed out that the Hawks hadn’t won a best-of-7 series since 1970. Well, at least we ended that embarrassing factoid. It will no doubt be harder to vanquish the “never reached the conference finals” tagline. But finally erasing it would also be much more gratifying.
What if the Bulls were the Hawks?
Despite finishing with the NBA’s best record, there were some who doubted whether the Bulls could even be considered favorites to get out of the East, with giants like the Celtics and Heat looming in the conference finals. However, they were certainly given top seed respect in the first round, and almost no one was picking Chicago to fall prior to the conference finals. Surely their great record, the defensive mindset instilled by Tom Thibodeau, and presumptive MVP Derek Rose had something to do with this. But I wonder if the fact that this team hailed from Chicago and was the same franchise for which Michael Jordan won 6 NBA Championships wasn’t just as important.
Just for a moment, let’s pretend that the Atlanta Hawks were led by Thibodeau and Rose and had just won more games than any team in the NBA. How many more doubters would there be? How much stronger would that doubt have been?
Recall that the Chicago Bulls of Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, and Derek Rose have done little more in the playoffs than the Hawks of Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, and Al Horford. Actually, they’ve done less. Their first round win over the Pacers was their first series win after losing in the first round in each of the two previous years. Strange as it may seem, although the Hawks of Johnson-Smith-Horford have only just now won their first game in the second round, they still have more second round wins then the Bulls of Noah-Deng-Rose.
My point is that we don’t know yet whether these Bulls are contenders or pretenders. If they were from Atlanta and the franchise of Dominique, rather than Chicago and the franchise of MJ, they might be just as disrespected as any of Atlanta’s best regular season teams have been.
Mentality, Effort, and Belief
You can be sure that Atlanta’s surprising game 1 win will be chalked up to the Bulls not taking the Hawks seriously—or in other words, that the Bulls didn’t try. I must admit that I felt the Bulls came out playing back on their heels as the Hawks built a 9-0 lead. But I’m not sure it can all be boiled down to the Bulls just not having enough energy.
The Magic were surely confident heading into their first round series with the Hawks, having crushed Atlanta during a 4-game sweep in the 2nd round of the previous year’s playoffs. They may not have viewed the Hawks as a threat early on, but don’t you think they did after game 3? And yet the Hawks won 2 of the 3 games after that.
The Bulls may not have viewed the Pacers as a threat early in their first round series, and perhaps they never did. They allowed the Pacers to hang around until late in the 3rd quarter of the final game of that series. The Pacers won one game, should have won two, and could easily have pulled out another one. Maybe the Bulls knew they were in control and could finish off the Pacers at any time. If they feel that way about the Hawks, they could be right, or they could be wrong, because the Hawks are a better team than Indiana. Then again, maybe they weren’t just playing around on Monday night. I guess we’ll find out.
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