Cover Story: The Atlanta Hawks have become a dream team

The odds facing the Atlanta Hawks seemed insurmountable. At the start of the season, the team’s controlling owner had bowed out and a top executive had been sidelined because of racially charged comments. The coach, Mike Budenholzer, had only one year of NBA head-coaching experience. And the team had been left without a superstar in a league built on them. But the Hawks, stepchild of Atlanta sports, are proving to be the most interesting story of this year’s NBA season.

At the start of the Hawks’ Jan. 7 game against the Memphis Grizzlies, there were empty seats throughout the arena. It seemed like anodther depressing night in Atlanta sports. But by the end of the game, after the Hawks turned a two-point squeaker into a 10-point romp, the crowd was going mad. With less than a minute left, a chant of “A-T-L, A-T-L, A-T-L” erupted. Set against the backdrop of turmoil that had enveloped this franchise four months earlier, the feeling of oneness during that chant was almost enough to bring you to tears.

Chances of a Hawks championship at the season’s start were 100 to 1. A 5-5 record after 10 games seemed to signal another bummer season for a franchise that has never won a title in Atlanta and a city that hasn’t crowned a sports champion since 1995. But a Jan. 13 road victory in Philadelphia, in which two starters didn’t play, was the team’s 23rd win of its last 25 games. The last two teams to achieve that feat both won NBA titles. The Hawks finished last season with a losing record of 38-44. So far this year, the team is 37-8 — at press time, the most victories of any NBA team.

But the story of this year’s season started before it began. In early September, Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson announced he was selling the team after admitting to sending a racist email in 2012. In it he partially attributed poor home-game attendance to black cheerleaders, hip-hop music, and his theory “that the black crowd scared away the whites.” Days later, a transcript of a conference call was released in which Hawks General Manager Danny Ferry paraphrased a scouting report to characterize free agent and Sudanese player Luol Deng, as “a good guy overall,” but one with “some African in him. ... Like, he has storefront out front that’s beautiful and great, but he may be selling some counterfeit stuff behind you.” Ferry voluntarily took an indefinite leave, and the Hawks began searching for the league’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

All over sports media, racism was being discussed. And why not? Sports often provide a forum to have the profound cultural conversations that the country seems incapable of in other arenas, from the Ray Rice incident shining a light on domestic violence to NFL draft pick Michael Sam bringing attention to the prejudice gay people face in the workplace.

Then the dialogue began to shift. Attendance shot up. Halfway through the current season, the team had already sold out more home games than in its entire previous season. The team’s appraised value has almost doubled to $825 million, according to Forbes. With all the success, the critical discourse seems to have been pushed into the background. Still, the subtexts of race and class persist in Atlanta’s professional sports landscape. In the past year, the Braves announced plans to move from the low-income Summerhill community near Downtown to a richer, whiter suburb north of the city. Atlanta’s oldest, most storied African-American church was demolished to make way for a newer, shinier Falcons stadium with a retractable roof.

But people have always unified around sports, especially when the home team is on a roll.

“I think the people of Atlanta have embraced the team,” Hawks CEO Steve Koonin said during a down-to-earth conversation in which he acknowledged the mistakes of the past and reflected on the future. “I think they have forgiven. I think we’ve been rewarded in being transparent and honest. ... I think our values are resonating and I think we fixed what was the problem in the past.”

Before the Hawks played the Detroit Pistons on MLK Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech blared over the loudspeakers. A black gospel choir gave the greatest player intro ever. A projection of King pictures filled the court, partially overlapping the Hawks logo. Electronic signs flashed throughout Philips Arena, heralding MLK Day while subtly pushing corporate ads. I realized the chant that had moved me so much weeks earlier turned out to be something that happened at the same time every game. And the fans who started the chant had to try out to get their free seats. The Hawks went on to defeat the Detroit Pistons 93-82, and a team that had racist comments blemish the season’s start celebrated on MLK Day. Yet it was hard, in that moment, for the cynic in me to buy into the idealism. Even the most sincere corporate marketing hardly seems like a fix for our complex problems.

But maybe, just maybe the Hawks will go all the way, and finally bring Atlanta a championship. Maybe their story will become the platform from which we can address the issues that divide us. Maybe this team will bring us together the way only sports can.

We can dream, right?

Hawks cheerleaders dance during a break in the action.

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A ball flies into the good seats during a game against the Indiana Pacers.

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Coach Mike Budenholzer during a news conference after a recent game against the Detroit Pistons. The second-year head coach is credited with much of the team’s success. Before coming to Atlanta he spent the previous 19 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs, for which he was an assistant coach for 17 years and earned four NBA championship rings. He was just named the coach of the Eastern Conference All-Stars at this year’s NBA All-Star Game.

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Atlanta Hawks forward Mike Scott leave the court after scoring 20 points off the bench against the Detroit Pistons.

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Hawks players circle up before taking the court on MLK Day.

Next: Read CL’s interviews with Hawks special advisor Dominique Wilkins and CEO Steve Koonin.