And so today, hell freezes over. This is not an April Fools Day joke. The Atlanta Hawks are on the cover of SLAM magazine.
A few months ago, when the Atlanta Hawks were off to their best start in over a decade, there was a 48 hour period when I got calls from three different people pitching the Hawks as a possible SLAM cover. I told all three of those people the same things:
1) Yes the Hawks are playing well, but let’s see if they can keep this up.
2) Believe me, you don’t have to pitch me to put the Hawks on a SLAM cover. You’ve got the biggest possible Hawks advocate already here at SLAM, working from the inside. If anyone here needs to be reminded that the Hawks could be a viable cover, it’s not me.
But I can understand why people may not trust me, may not believe me when I say that we here at SLAM do realize that the Hawks exist. This is because in the entire 16 year history of SLAM magazine, we have never, ever, never ever ever, not even once, had an Atlanta Hawk on the cover.
It hasn’t been for a lack of trying, at least on my part. Every story meeting, I’m the one saying, “Well, we could do something on the Hawks…” Problem is the Hawks haven’t been very good. Since moving to Atlanta from St. Louis in 1968, the Atlanta Hawks have not won an NBA championship. In fact, since moving to the Eastern Conference in 1970, the Hawks haven’t even made it to the Conference Finals. Between 1977 and 1999, the Hawks qualified for the Playoffs 18 times, and lost in either the first or second round all 18 times they made the Playoffs. And between 2000 and 2007, the Hawks didn’t even make the Playoffs.
But now the Hawks are balling. They may not be at that level with Cleveland or L.A., but the Hawks are currently one win away from their first 50 win season in over a decade. And as we were brainstorming who should be on the cover of this issue set to drop when the Playoffs start, our publisher actually came up with the idea for us to feature younger teams that could make some noise.
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