Atlanta Hawks

• 1. Introduction

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  The Atlanta Hawks were not always from Atlanta. Their story begins on the 8th of November 1946, in Buffalo, New York. A team called the Buffalo Bisons beat the Syracuse Nationals 50-39 in their very first game. By Christmas Day of that same year, general manager Leo Ferris announced the team was already leaving. Thirty-eight days. Thirteen games. The franchise needed 3,600 fans per game to break even. It was drawing fewer than a thousand.

  What followed was one of the strangest journeys in American professional sports. The franchise lived in four different cities under four different names before finding a permanent home. They won their one and only NBA championship in 1958, not in Georgia but in Missouri. When the franchise arrived in Atlanta on the 3rd of May 1968, the players who had built that title were already gone. The franchise's all-time leading scorer would not arrive for another fourteen years.

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• 2. Four Cities

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  Upon arriving in Moline, Illinois, the team became the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. Their new home was Wharton Field House, a 6,000-seat arena. On the roster was William "Pop" Gates, one of the first two African American players in the National Basketball League. Gates finished second on the team in scoring behind Don Otten, who would win the 1949 NBL Most Valuable Player award. Gates later became the first African American head coach in a major sports league, coaching Dayton in 1948.

  In 1949, the Blackhawks joined the National Basketball Association as one of its 17 original teams. The NBA was formed by a merger of the 12-year-old NBL and the three-year-old Basketball Association of America. Red Auerbach coached the franchise in the NBA's inaugural year. The following season, the team drafted three-time All-American Bob Cousy, but the two sides could not reach a deal. Cousy was traded to the Chicago Stags. When the Stags folded, a dispersal draft sent him to the Boston Celtics.

  The Tri-Cities market proved too small for an NBA franchise. After the 1950-51 season, the team relocated to Milwaukee as the Milwaukee Hawks. Three years later, they would move again, this time to the city where the franchise would finally win a championship.

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• 3. The Championship Era

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  Bob Pettit arrived in 1954 as the franchise's first-round draft pick. Two years later, he became the first recipient of the NBA's inaugural Most Valuable Player award. In that same 1956 offseason, the franchise drafted Bill Russell with the second overall pick and immediately traded him to the Boston Celtics for Cliff Hagan and Ed Macauley. Both were later inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

  The 1956-57 Hawks finished four games under .500. No team in the entire Western Division had a winning record that year. The Hawks won their division through tiebreakers, advanced to the NBA Finals, and lost to the Celtics in game seven in double overtime.

  One year later, the franchise posted its first winning record and returned to the Finals. They beat Boston four games to two. Pettit scored 50 points in the deciding game. The following season, he led the team to a 49-23 record and won his second MVP award.

  The franchise made the Finals again in 1960 and 1961, losing both times to Boston. All four of their Finals appearances came against the same opponent. The sustained success in St. Louis could not, however, resolve one gathering problem: the aging arena at the center of a dispute that would eventually push the franchise south.

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• 4. Leaving St. Louis

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  Kiel Auditorium, the Hawks' longtime home in St. Louis, was 33 years old and held only 10,000 fans. Owner Ben Kerner occasionally staged high-profile games at the city's larger arena but refused to move there full-time. He wanted a building the franchise could own outright. City officials repeatedly declined.

  In early 1967, Kerner put the team up for sale. One bidding group, led by Morton Downey Jr., proposed moving the franchise to New Orleans. Downey would later become a nationally known television talk show host. The deal collapsed after a month.

  Kerner sold the franchise to Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders. The new owners moved the team south for the 1968-69 season. While a new arena was under construction, the Hawks played their first four Atlanta seasons at Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus. They won their first Atlanta division title in the 1969-70 season.

  The Omni Coliseum opened for the 1972-73 season as a 16,500-seat venue in downtown Atlanta. The Hawks shared it with the NHL's expansion Atlanta Flames, unifying their color palette around white, gold, and red. Much of the Omni complex would eventually become the CNN Center. The following years brought notable players to Atlanta, including Pete Maravich and Lou Hudson.

  The 1975 NBA draft raised expectations. The Hawks held both the first and third overall picks, selecting David Thompson of North Carolina State and Marvin Webster of Morgan State. Both signed instead with the Denver Nuggets of the rival American Basketball Association. Neither ever played for Atlanta.

  Cable television entrepreneur Ted Turner, who also owned the Atlanta Braves, bought the franchise in 1977 and hired Hubie Brown as head coach. Brown won the Coach of the Year award in 1978. The 1979-80 Hawks finished 50-32 to capture the Central Division title. The most lasting transformation of the era, however, was still two years away.

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• 5. Dominique Wilkins

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  In 1982, the franchise acquired Dominique Wilkins, a University of Georgia alumnus whose time in Atlanta would make him the franchise's all-time leading scorer. During the 1984-85 season, when attendance faltered, twelve home games were moved to Lakefront Arena in New Orleans. Barry Mendelson financed the arrangement for $1.2 million. The Hawks went 6-6 in Louisiana.

  Wilkins won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in 1985, beginning a rivalry with Michael Jordan for that event's top prize. He won the contest again in 1990. In 1986, teammate Spud Webb also took the Slam Dunk Contest title, while head coach Mike Fratello earned the Coach of the Year award.

  From 1985 through 1989, the Hawks won at least 50 games every season. Their 1986-87 record of 57-25 claimed a third Atlanta division title, setting a franchise standard for wins that would stand for nearly three decades. Despite that sustained excellence, the team fell short of the conference finals in each of those seasons.

  Lenny Wilkens arrived as head coach in 1993 and guided the team to 57 wins in his first full season. Atlanta claimed a fourth division title, and Wilkens won the Coach of the Year award. The season still ended in defeat: a six-game loss to the fifth-seeded Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The year also brought the trade of Dominique Wilkins to the Los Angeles Clippers for Danny Manning. Manning signed with the Phoenix Suns as a free agent that same summer. On the 6th of March 2015, a statue of Dominique Wilkins was unveiled outside Philips Arena.

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• 6. Drought and Renaissance

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  Dikembe Mutombo signed with Atlanta the summer after the Wilkins trade, agreeing to a five-year, $55 million contract. He won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award in back-to-back seasons, 1997 and 1998. The team posted records of 56-26 and 50-32 in those same two years.

  The arena situation forced another change. The Omni Coliseum had been built with weathering steel designed to rust into a protective seal. Atlanta's humid subtropical climate made that plan unworkable. The rust never stopped. After the final home game at the Omni in 1997, the Hawks played temporarily at Georgia Tech while a new arena was built on the same site. Philips Arena opened for the 1999-2000 season.

  Two trades that same season sent Steve Smith and Mookie Blaylock out of Atlanta. Both had been among the team's most popular players. Their departures contributed to a 28-54 record, the franchise's first playoff absence since 1977. The Hawks would not return to the postseason for eight years.

  A 2005 sign-and-trade brought Joe Johnson from the Phoenix Suns and began a slow revival. Johnson earned All-Star selections in each of his six full seasons as a Hawk. The 2007-08 team ended an eight-year playoff drought and pushed the eventual champions, the Boston Celtics, to a game seven in the first round.

  Mike Budenholzer, an assistant coach from San Antonio, was hired as head coach on the 28th of May 2013. On the 31st of January 2015, the Hawks beat Portland to go 17-0 for the calendar month. No NBA team had ever done that before. Four Hawks were named All-Stars that year: Jeff Teague, Paul Millsap, Kyle Korver, and Al Horford. The final record was 60-22, the best in franchise history.

  In the playoffs, the Hawks defeated Brooklyn in six games, then Washington in six more. It was the first time in franchise history they had reached the Eastern Conference Finals. Cleveland swept them in four games. The franchise was sold to a group led by billionaire Tony Ressler for $850 million. The NBA Board of Governors approved the deal on the 24th of June 2015.

  In July 2016, the team signed center Dwight Howard to a three-year, $70 million contract. He was traded to Charlotte less than a year later. The 2017-18 Hawks fell to 24-58, last in the Eastern Conference. Budenholzer and the franchise parted ways on the 25th of April 2018.

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• 7. Trae Young

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  The defining trade of the modern era came on the 21st of June 2018. The Hawks used the third overall pick on Luka Doncic and immediately dealt him to the Dallas Mavericks. In return, Atlanta received a protected 2019 first-round pick and the draft rights to Trae Young.

  On the 23rd of January 2020, Young was voted a starter in the All-Star Game. He was the first Hawks player to start that game since Dikembe Mutombo in 1998.

  The 2020-21 season began at 14-20 before head coach Lloyd Pierce was dismissed. Nate McMillan took over on an interim basis. The team immediately won eight games in a row. The Hawks went 27-11 under McMillan, finished 41-31, and reached the Eastern Conference Finals. They upset the top-seeded Philadelphia 76ers in the second round. It was only the second time in 54 years the franchise had advanced past the second round. The Bucks won the conference finals in six games. Young was injured in game three when he stepped on an official's foot.

  On the 30th of June 2022, the Hawks traded Danilo Gallinari and three future first-round picks to San Antonio for Dejounte Murray. That pairing lasted two seasons before Murray was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans.

  In the 2024 NBA draft, the Hawks held the first overall pick for the first time since 1975. They selected Zaccharie Risacher from France. Dyson Daniels set a franchise record of 229 steals during the 2024-25 season and won the NBA Most Improved Player award. On the 9th of January 2026, Trae Young was traded to the Washington Wizards for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert, ending his eight-year tenure in Atlanta. Nickeil Alexander-Walker won the Most Improved Player award the following season, making it two consecutive years a Hawk had claimed that honor.

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