Fanning the flames
May 3, 2008 at 2:11 pm by Russell McLendon in Sports
When Hawks point guard Mike Bibby called the large crowds in Boston “fair-weather fans” early in the first-round playoff series between the Hawks and Celtics, the comment elicited umbrage from Bostonians, as well as an obvious response: “What, as opposed to Hawks fans?”
Atlanta sports fans aren’t exactly renowned for passion or dedication. Braves fans are jaded by the years of restrained success, and Falcons fans are understandably bitter about their team’s fits and starts.
And Hawks fans? For much of the last 20 years, they’ve mostly just stayed home – more no-weather than fair-weather.
But that’s changed during the last seven days. The last three games at Philips Arena, culminating in Friday night’s largest crowd in venue history, have been a coming-out party for a city that’s been wanting to like its basketball team for years. The young Hawks needed a pumped-up crowd to win, and the wary crowd needed an exciting Hawks team to get pumped up about. The stars are currently in alignment.
Friday’s must-win Game 6 was controlled by the Celtics early, with Atlanta down by 12 at the end of the first quarter. Fair-weather fans might start quieting down or muttering with discontent in the face of such a heavily favored team poised to deliver a season-ending, knockout blow. But thanks to the budding relationship between Hawk and Hawk fan, there was trust in the air. The Hawks have proved they can muster an improbable comeback, the kind of thing a fan needs to see to have faith in a team when it’s down. In the slurred, shouted and yet somehow unspoken communication between a basketball team and the crowd watching it, the record turnout of 20,425 buzzed with belief.
Marvin Williams, the much maligned 2005 draft pick who kept Chris Paul a non-Hawk, rose to the occasion of a double-teamed Joe Johnson to take over the second quarter, leading all scorers for the period with 8 points and hitting two long jump shots from just inside the arc that seemed to spark a momentum shift. The second one cut Boston’s lead to six, and during the next six minutes the Hawks scrapped together a mini-comeback, finishing the first half with two free throws by Josh Childress to cut Boston’s lead to 50-49.
For much of the second half, it was a matter of chipping away and being patient. As the half wore on, the Hawks looked increasingly quick and mobile, swarming on loose balls and slicing through the Boston defense. Meanwhile, the Celtics grew more flat-footed and unconnected. As Bibby sprung to life and began directing more movement in the paint, that dynamism flooded into the crowd. By the time the Hawks took the lead, you could almost see the air vibrating in Philips Arena.
“[The fans] have been big for us all series long,” Hawks forward and Atlanta native Josh Smith said in the locker room afterward. “Just showing us love and giving us the motivation we need to win games.”
Even though the Celtics were within striking distance until the end, the fans wouldn’t let them think. That intangible mental state that sports writers and athletes have long struggled to describe with idioms such as being “in the zone” was seemingly generated and maintained by the fans. Paul Pierce fouling out on a lay-in by Childress, and minutes later Joe Johnson hitting an ill-advised 3-pointer with 1:06 left, clinched the contest in the crowd’s collective mind, and that was all it took. The Celtics had several chances in the final minute to come back, but they looked too frazzled and shocked.
Much of the crowd was wearing the same white T-shirt, handed out at the doors before the game, that said “Shock the world.” The basketball world is understandably shocked that a No. 8 team that made the playoffs with a losing record has forced the No. 1 team in the Eastern Division to Game 7.
That Game 7 Sunday will be a test whether the Hawks, who haven’t played particularly well on the road this year, can cram this energy and momentum into their luggage. But in the process of shocking Boston and the world Friday night, Atlanta also shocked itself. Variants of “I’ve never seen it like this here” could be heard repeatedly bouncing off the concourse walls as giddy fans staggered from Philips Arena toward an all-too-rare spectacle in Atlanta: streets full of rowdy, honking Hawks fans.
(Photos by Russell McLendon)
May 10th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
[...] during the Hawks’ seven-game first-round epic with the C’s in ‘08 (prompting one Atlanta blogger to remind Bibby that Hawks fans were best described as “no-weather”) and now it’s [...]