The Atlanta Hawks are an American professional basketball team based in Atlanta. The Hawks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference. The team plays its home games at State Farm Arena.
The team's origins can be traced to the establishment of the Buffalo Bisons in 1946 in Buffalo, New York, a member of the National Basketball League (NBL) owned by Ben Kerner and Leo Ferris.[8] After 38 days in Buffalo, the team moved to Moline, Illinois, where they were renamed the Tri-Cities Blackhawks.[9] In 1949, they joined the NBA as part of the merger between the NBL and the Basketball Association of America (BAA), and briefly had Red Auerbach as coach. In 1951, Kerner moved the team to Milwaukee, where they changed their name to the Milwaukee Hawks. Kerner and the team moved again in 1955 to St. Louis, where they won their first (and thus far only) NBA Championship in 1958 and qualified to play in the NBA Finals in 1957, 1960 and 1961. The Hawks played the Boston Celtics in all four of their trips to the NBA Finals. The St. Louis Hawks moved to Atlanta on May 3, 1968, when Kerner sold the franchise to Thomas Cousins and former Georgia Governor Carl Sanders.[10][11]
The Hawks currently own the second-longest drought (behind the Sacramento Kings) of not winning an NBA championship at 64 seasons. The franchise's lone NBA championship, as well as all four NBA Finals appearances, occurred when the team was based in St. Louis. Meanwhile, they went 48 years without advancing past the second round of the playoffs in any format, until finally breaking through in 2015. However, the Hawks are one of only four NBA teams that have qualified to play in the NBA playoffs in 10 consecutive seasons in the 21st century. They achieved this feat between 2008 and 2017.
In the 2024 NBA draft, the Atlanta Hawks selected Zaccharie Risacher with the first overall pick, their first since 1975.
The origins of the Atlanta Hawks can be traced back to the Buffalo Bisons franchise, which was founded in 1946. The Bisons were a member of the National Basketball League, and played their games at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. The club was organized by Leo Ferris and the Erie County American Legion and was coached by Nat Hickey.[12] Their first game – a 50–39 victory over the Syracuse Nationals – was played on November 8, 1946. On the team was William "Pop" Gates, who, along with William "Dolly" King, was one of the first two African-American players in the NBL.[13] The team, which needed to draw 3,600 fans per game to break even, struggled to draw 1,000 fans per game to the Auditorium. The franchise lasted only 38 days (13 games) in Buffalo when, on December 25, 1946, Leo Ferris, the team's general manager and co-owner, announced that the team would be moving to Moline, Illinois, which at that time was part of an area then known as the "Tri-Cities": Moline, Illinois, Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa.[8]
Upon relocation to Moline, the team was renamed the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and played their home games at Wharton Field House, a 6,000-seat arena in Moline.[14] The team featured guard/forward and coach Deanglo King, and was owned by Leo Ferris and Ben Kerner.[9] Pop Gates remained on the Blackhawks roster, and finished second on the team in scoring behind future 1949 NBL MVP Don Otten. A Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member, Gates helped to integrate the league and later became the first African-American coach in a major sports league, coaching Dayton in 1948.[15][16]
In 1949, the Blackhawks became one of the National Basketball Association's 17 original teams after a merger of the 12-year-old NBL and the three-year-old Basketball Association of America (BAA). They reached the playoffs in the NBA's inaugural year under the leadership of coach Red Auerbach. The following season, they drafted three-time All-American Bob Cousy, but they were unable to reach a deal and traded him to the Chicago Stags (who would later surrender him in a dispersal draft to the Boston Celtics when the Stags folded). The Blackhawks finished last in the Western Division and missed the playoffs. By then, it was obvious that the Tri-Cities area was too small to support an NBA team. After the season, the franchise relocated to Milwaukee, and became the Milwaukee Hawks.
In 1954, the Hawks drafted Bob Pettit, a future NBA MVP. Despite this, the Hawks were one of the league's worst teams, and in 1955 the Hawks moved, this time to St. Louis, Missouri, Milwaukee's rival in the beer industry, and became the St. Louis Hawks.
In 1956, Bob Pettit captured the league's first official Most Valuable Player award, and the St. Louis Hawks drafted legendary Bill Russell in the first round (second overall pick). They immediately traded Russell to the Boston Celtics for Cliff Hagan and Ed Macauley, both Hall of Fame members.[17][18][19]
In 1957, the Hawks finished four games under .500. However, the Western Division was extremely weak that year; no team in the division had a winning record. They won the division title and a bye to the division finals after defeating the Minneapolis Lakers and Fort Wayne Pistons in one-game tiebreakers. They then defeated the Lakers in the division finals to advance to the Finals, losing to the Boston Celtics in a double-overtime thriller in game seven. In 1958, after tallying their first winning record, they again advanced to the Finals, where they avenged their defeat against the Celtics from the previous year, winning the series 4–2 and giving the Hawks their first and only NBA Championship. Bob Pettit scored 50 points in the final game of the series. The following season Bob Pettit led the Hawks to a Western Division-best 49–23 record, helping him capture his second MVP award.[20]
The Hawks remained one of the NBA's premier teams for the next decade. In 1960, under coach Ed Macauley, the team advanced to the Finals, but lost to the Celtics in another game seven thriller. The following year, with the acquisition of rookie Lenny Wilkens, the Hawks repeated their success, but met the Celtics in the 1961 NBA Finals again and lost in five games. They would remain contenders for most of the 1960s, advancing deep into the playoffs and also capturing several division titles.
Despite the success, Kerner became weary of the Hawks' longtime home, Kiel Auditorium. The 33-year-old arena seated only 10,000 and was starting to show its age. The Hawks occasionally played at the larger St. Louis Arena, mostly against popular opponents, but Kerner was not willing to move the team there full-time because it had not been well-maintained since the 1940s. Even though it was being heavily renovated to accommodate the arrival of the National Hockey League's (NHL) St. Louis Blues in 1967, Kerner was still not willing to move to the St. Louis Arena. He wanted a new arena to increase revenue. However, Kerner was rebuffed by the city on several occasions. In early 1967, Kerner briefly put the Hawks up for sale.[21] One of the bidders was a New Orleans group led by future talk show host Morton Downey Jr., but the deal collapsed and Kerner temporarily took his team off the market.[22][23]
Unable to resolve the arena situation, Kerner sold the Hawks to Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders, who moved the team to Atlanta in 1968.[24] While a new arena was being constructed, the team spent its first four seasons playing at Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the campus of Georgia Tech, winning their first Division title in the 1969–70 season with a 48–34 (.585) record in the Western Division. Cousins' firm soon developed the Omni Coliseum, a 16,500-seat, state-of-the-art downtown Atlanta arena, for the Hawks and the expansion Atlanta Flames ice hockey franchise, which opened in 1972 as the first phase of a massive sports, office, hotel, and retail complex, most of which is now the CNN Center. Also in 1972, the Hawks debuted a new logo and new colors, trading the green and blue color scheme that the team had used for two years, in favor of white, gold, and red, the same colors the Flames used. The hawk head silhouette inside a circle remained as the team's logo, albeit simplified.
The years after the move showcased a talented Hawks team, including Pete Maravich and Lou Hudson. However, after this period of success, the team experienced some years of rebuilding. Despite appearing to be moving in the right direction when they ended up with the first and third picks overall in the 1975 NBA draft, the players drafted with those two picks, David Thompson of North Carolina State and Marvin Webster of Morgan State, both signed with the Denver Nuggets of the American Basketball Association (ABA) and never played for the Hawks.
Cable network entrepreneur and Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner bought the team in 1977 and hired Hubie Brown to become head coach.[25] The Hawks were the only NBA team in the Deep South, just as the Atlanta Braves were the only Major League Baseball team in the region for many years to come. Turner's ownership was instrumental in keeping both teams in the region. Coach Brown won coach of the year in 1978. In the 1979–80 season, the Hawks finished with a 50–32 record and won the Central Division. It was their first division title in the Central Division and second in the city of Atlanta. The next season, the Hawks got off to a 4–0 start, then lost 13 of the next 14 games and with 3 games left in the season, the Hawks fired head coach Hubie Brown en route to the team's 31–51 record.
In 1982, the franchise acquired superstar Dominique Wilkins (a University of Georgia alumnus) and promoted Mike Fratello to head coach a year later.[26] Due to sagging attendance, 12 home games during the 1984–85 season were played at the Lakefront Arena in New Orleans, Louisiana. The New Orleans games were paid for by Barry Mendelson for $1.2 million with the Hawks going 6–6 in Louisiana. Wilkins won the Slam Dunk Contest in 1985 and 1990, engaging in an iconic rivalry with Michael Jordan. Spud Webb won the Slam Dunk Contest and Fratello won the Coach of the Year Award in 1986.
From 1985 to 1989, the Hawks were among the league's elite, winning 50 games or more each season. They won a division title in 1986–87 going 57–25 which was a franchise record that would last until the 2014–15 season. However, the team could not advance past the semifinals of the Eastern Conference playoffs, losing to the eventual Ea