Hawks: the season so far

Quin Snyder enters his second full season as head coach of a Hawks team rebuilt around Jalen Johnson, who made All-NBA Third Team and his first All-Star appearance last season. Last season the Hawks went 46-36, ranked 12th in net rating, 14th on offense and 9th on defense, but their shape changed mid-year when Trae Young was traded to Washington for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert, ending his eight seasons running the offense. Kristaps Porziņģis, acquired that summer, barely played before Atlanta flipped him to Golden State for Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield. The new mix won 11 straight games and the Hawks made the playoffs as the sixth seed, taking two games off the eventual champion Knicks before losing in six. Nickeil Alexander-Walker won Most Improved Player, Dyson Daniels won it the year before, and Onyeka Okongwu and Dyson Daniels anchor the defense. Atlanta sits at $198.5 million in payroll, over the cap but under the tax, with Johnson's $30 million extension now the largest deal on the books. In the draft the Hawks took Kingston Flemings, Zuby Ejiofor and Henri Veesaar, who tore his ACL in September and will miss the season. The summer's other move sent a package to Oklahoma City for guard Aaron Wiggins.

The Hawks built their identity on pace and ball movement, a style that outlasted the Young era and now runs through Johnson, Daniels and Alexander-Walker in a more egalitarian offense. Atlanta's clearest rival is Boston, a Southeast Division foil the Hawks have outmaneuvered on the margins, including the trade that brought them Porziņģis by exploiting the Celtics' tax situation. The Knicks are now a measuring stick after beating Atlanta in six games in the first round last spring; the Hawks were the only team to beat New York twice in that playoff run. Every one of those games carries the weight of whether Atlanta's new core can finally get past a team it has already shown it can beat.

The Hawks play at State Farm Arena, known as Philips Arena until State Farm bought the naming rights in 2018, in downtown Atlanta. The franchise is owned by a group led by Tony Ressler, with Grant Hill, Steven Price, Rick Schnall, Sara Blakely, Jesse Itzler and Jami Gertz holding minority stakes, having bought the team from Atlanta Spirit LLC in 2015. The Hawks have retired jersey number 59 in honor of Kasim Reed, mayor of Atlanta from 2010 to 2018, and the NBA retired Bill Russell's No. 6 across the league in 2022.

The Hawks are chasing a return to the conference finals, a stage they haven't reached since 2021, and a first trip past the second round since. They're trying to build on a playoff series against the Knicks they nearly won, with a center rotation that was too thin and not enough firepower from Alexander-Walker and Johnson in the losses. Financially, they sit under the tax line with Daniels and Johnson now long-term pieces, owing first-round picks to San Antonio in 2027 and swapping picks with others through 2029. Fans argue over whether Kuminga's defensive flashes from the playoffs translate into a full season, and whether this roster, without Young or Porziņģis, has enough scoring punch to get past New York.

The Atlanta Hawks play in the NBA's Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference out of State Farm Arena, with ownership that includes billionaire James Cox Chambers. The franchise began as the Buffalo Bisons, founded in 1946 in Buffalo, New York, in the National Basketball League under owners Ben Kerner and Leo Ferris. After 38 days the team moved to Moline, Illinois, and became the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. It joined the NBA in 1949 through the NBL-BAA merger, briefly coached by Red Auerbach, then moved to Milwaukee in 1951 as the Milwaukee Hawks and to St. Louis in 1955 as the St. Louis Hawks.

In St. Louis the Hawks built their only championship run. They drafted Bob Pettit in 1954; in 1956 he won the league's first official MVP award, and the Hawks drafted Bill Russell with the second overall pick before trading him to the Boston Celtics for Cliff Hagan and Ed Macauley. The Hawks reached the NBA Finals four times, in 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1961, and played the Celtics in all four. They lost the first in double overtime in a Game 7, won the second 4–2 in 1958 for the franchise's only title behind a 50-point game from Pettit, then lost the last two, in 1960 under coach Ed Macauley and in 1961 with rookie Lenny Wilkens.

Kerner sold the team on May 3, 1968, to Atlanta developer Thomas Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders, who moved it to Atlanta. The Hawks spent their first four seasons at Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus before the 16,500-seat Omni Coliseum opened for the 1972–73 season, shared with the Atlanta Flames. Pete Maravich and Lou Hudson led the roster in this stretch. The 1975 NBA draft cost the Hawks two top picks: David Thompson and Marvin Webster, taken first and third overall, both signed instead with the Denver Nuggets of the ABA and never played for Atlanta.

Ted Turner, who also owned the Atlanta Braves, bought the Hawks in 1977 and hired Hubie Brown, then the only NBA team in the Deep South. Brown was named Coach of the Year in 1978 and led the team to a 50–32 record and a Central Division title in 1979–80, but he was fired with three games left the following season during a 31–51 collapse that began 4–0 before 13 losses in the next 14 games.

The Dominique Wilkins era began with his acquisition in 1982 and Mike Fratello's promotion to head coach. Weak attendance sent 12 home games to New Orleans' Lakefront Arena in 1984–85, funded by Barry Mendelson for $1.2 million, where the team went 6–6. Wilkins won the Slam Dunk Contest in 1985 and 1990 in a rivalry with Michael Jordan; Spud Webb won the dunk contest and Fratello was Coach of the Year, both in 1986. The Hawks won 50 or more games every season from 1985 to 1989 and took the division at 57–25 in 1986–87, a franchise record that stood until 2014–15. Lenny Wilkens took over as coach in 1993 and tied that win total, going 57 games in 1993–94 and earning his own Coach of the Year award, before losing to the fifth-seeded Indiana Pacers in six games and seeing Wilkins — the franchise's all-time leading scorer — traded to the Los Angeles Clippers for Danny Manning. A statue of Wilkins went up outside Philips Arena on March 6, 2015.

Dikembe Mutombo later signed a five-year, $55 million deal, and along the way coach Wilkens broke Red Auerbach's record for coaching wins with his 939th victory. The Hawks have gone 67 seasons without a title since St. Louis, the second-longest drought in the league behind the Sacramento Kings, and they went 48 years without advancing past the second round of the playoffs until finally breaking through in 2015. They made the playoffs in ten straight seasons, from 2008 to 2017, one of only four NBA teams to do so in the 21st century. In the 2024 NBA draft, Atlanta took Zaccharie Risacher with the first overall pick, its first top selection since 1975.