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. After 38 days in Buffalo, the team moved to Moline, Illinois, where they were renamed the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. 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 as the St. Louis Hawks 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 Hawks moved to Atlanta on May 3, 1968, and became the Atlanta Hawks, when Kerner sold the franchise to Thomas Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders. The ownership of the team includes billionaire James Cox Chambers.
The Hawks currently own the second-longest drought (behind the Sacramento Kings) of not winning an NBA championship at 67 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. 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.
History 1946–1953: Buffalo, Tri-Cities, and Milwaukee
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 (NBL), 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. Their first game, which was 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. The team, which needed to draw 3,600 fans per game to break even, struggled to draw even 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. In addition to the city of Moline for the Tri-Cities representation, the Bisons franchise also considered the bigger cities of Minneapolis and Milwaukee as potential options for them to move to instead, with the game deciding their new location being a December 6, 1946 game in Moline that drew in 4,000 people for a neutral match between the Chicago American Gears and Syracuse Nationals (now Philadelphia 76ers)., pp. 163–164
Upon moving 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. During the team's existence as the Blackhawks, the team had also been referred to as both the Tri-City Blackhawks and Quad-City Blackhawks alongside the more official Tri-Cities Blackhawks. The team featured guard/forward and coach Nat Hickey, and was owned by Leo Ferris and Ben Kerner. 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.
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 moved to Milwaukee, and became the Milwaukee Hawks.
1954–1965: St. Louis and the Bob Pettit era
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, Milwaukee's rival in the beer industry, and became the St. Louis Hawks. Milwaukee would remain without an NBA team until 1968 when the Milwaukee Bucks made their debut.
In 1956, Bob Pettit captured the league's first official Most Valuable Player award, and the St. Louis Hawks drafted 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.
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 NBA 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 NBA 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.
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 NBA 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.
1965–1976: Move to Atlanta 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 due to deferred maintenance that would not be addressed until 1967, when it was finally renovated to accommodate the arrival of the National Hockey League's (NHL) St. Louis Blues. Kerner also did not want to be a tenant to the city and move to the renovated arena full-time, wishing to have his own building in order to retain all revenue, but was continually rebuffed by St. Louis regarding his demands. In early 1967, Kerner briefly put the Hawks up for sale. One of the bidders was a New Orleans group led by future talk show host Morton Downey Jr.. The deal would collapse, and after one month, the team was taken back off the market.
Unable to resolve the arena situation, on May 3, 1968, Kerner sold the Hawks to Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders, which would be subject to league approval. When the deal was approved, the new owners moved the team to Atlanta to begin play for the 1968–69 season. 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 record in the Western Division. Cousins' firm soon developed the Omni Coliseum, a 16,500-seat arena in downtown Atlanta, for the Hawks and the NHL's expansion Atlanta Flames ice hockey franchise, which opened for the 1972–73 season as the first phase of a massive sports, office, hotel, and retail complex, most of which is now the CNN Center. The team would also unite its color scheme with that of the Flames, replacing a transitional two-season green and blue color scheme in favor of white, gold, and red. A simplified version of the team's logo was also introduced, retaining the hawk head silhouette inside a circle.
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 selected 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.
1977–1982: Ted Turner purchases team Cable network entrepreneur and Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner bought the team in 1977 and hired Hubie Brown to become head coach. 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. 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, their first as a member of 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.
1982–1994: Dominique Wilkins era
In 1982, the franchise acquired superstar Dominique Wilkins (a University of Georgia alumnus) and promoted Mike Fratello to head coach a year later. 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.