Hawks emerge from Dark Ages of Rider, Stotts
Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 9:57 am
Yes, mistakes were made. Solid players were sacrificed for soiled ones. Draft nights were about as festive as Arbor Day. Three words say it all: Terry Stotts Era.
But now, 42 minutes of Rasheed Wallace and one bogus playoff guarantee later, the Hawks are back in the postseason. Nine years after the team was blown up like one of those old Las Vegas Strip hotels, it finally has rebuilt enough to earn the last spot on a depleted Eastern Conference dance card.
At 37-43 entering Tuesday's penultimate regular season game, the Hawks are assured of facing top seed Boston with a record well south of .500. As many as three Western Conference teams could have better records than the Hawks and still miss the playoffs.
But consider that just last week Forbes Magazine dubbed Atlanta "The Most Miserable Sports City in America." And remember that the Hawks only this week ended the NBA's longest running streak of seasons without a playoff payoff.
In such a setting, any whiff of hope tends to be deeply inhaled.
That's why 22-year-old Josh Smith sounds like a weary veteran in his fourth Hawks season. The team won only 13 of 82 games his rookie year.
"The feeling is overwhelming being [in the playoffs]," he said. "There were a lot of years when we weren't playing for anything in the second half of the season, and now we're playing for something for a change. I've been waiting for this moment, and finally it's here."
All agree that it has been too long since the Hawks' last playoff game.
"It's been a horrible road back," said Steve Holman, the radio voice of every Hawks game since 1989. "I don't want to ever go through nine years like this again to get to the playoffs."
Consider the past nine years the price of starting over. Or just call it Rider's Revenge.
We take you back to the last time the Hawks made the playoffs, 1999. Hard as it is to believe now, the Hawks made seven straight appearances from 1993-99. It was staying there that was problematic. Not once did they make it past the second round.
Running into that same wall in '99, beating Detroit but getting swept by New York, the Hawks and their fan base grew weary. The big breakup was imminent.
The team traded guard Mookie Blaylock to Golden State, then dealt Steve Smith and Ed Gray to Portland for Isaiah Rider. It was the scorched earth policy many in the stands and press row advocated.
It amounted to trading one of the league's best citizens (Smith) for a player who to this day is a symbol of the wayward athlete (Rider just last month was arrested for investigation of auto theft).
It was the mistake that kept on giving.
"If we had to do it over again, we never should have broken the team up after the lockout [1998-99] season," said Pete Babcock, the Hawks GM who had his hand on the plunger at the time.
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