Along the path to their first (and last) NBA Championship, the St. Louis Hawks pulled off eight-straight wins away from their nest over a 21-day stretch in December 1957 (including “neutral site” games). The run concluded with a victory in Dallas over a Minneapolis Lakers team that featured Erik Spoelstra’s father, before the Hawks lost a few days later by just two points... in Philadelphia. Is past prologue?

Away from home 57 years later, the Atlanta Hawks have been flying high for awhile, victors of their last eight road games. But the Eastern Conference leaders will have to endure an East Coast road-trip that spans four games over six nights before returning home for the MLK Day Game. This trip will include a pair of “trap games”, beginning tonight with the Philadelphia 76ers (7:00 PM Eastern, SportSouth, CSN Philly). The fire-sale Boston Celtics awaits the Hawks’ arrival tomorrow night.

The Hawks always seem to catch the 76ers (7-29) just as Philly’s starting to smell itself a bit. The Hawks had to slow the Sixers’ roll back on December 10, as Philadelphia was coming off its first two wins of the season over the course of its previous three games, with three days rest in between. Now the Sixers host the Hawks with two days’ rest after pulling off three wins in their last four games, all thrilling (for them, at least) victories within the closing seconds of each game.

A Tony Wroten jumper with ten seconds remaining did in the LeBron-less, Kyrie-less, lifeless Cavaliers a week ago. Then the Sixers pulled off wins on back-to-back nights for the first time in over a year. Nerlens Noel dunked a game-clincher on the Nyets with three seconds to go in Brooklyn last Friday, and the next night the Sixers hung on for the final ten seconds to prevail after Michael Carter-Williams made a layup. None of those opponents have played remotely as well as Atlanta lately, but if it comes down to the final minutes, the Sixers will damn the torpedoes and ditch the tank job.

Outside of San Antonio, there is perhaps no NBA coach who better understands what Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer is trying to put together than Philadelphia head coach and former Spurs assistant Brett Brown. He was given the chance to become The Man Who’s Sitting Next to the Man when Coach Bud flew the Spurs’ coaching coop for Atlanta. Instead, Brown accepted Sam Hinkie’s offer to manage a reclamation project in the City of Brotherly Shove. His charges have the “pace” part down (99.1 possessions per-48, 4^th-highest pace in the NBA), but don’t have the talent (90.6 PPG, 29.9 3FG% and 41.1 FG%, last in NBA) necessary to adequately “space” the floor. Brown’s affable demeanor takes some of the media heat off of him as he coaches up a team designed to fail, but a few wins every now and then help him instill confidence in the Philly Phaithful.

Sixer games are an intentional slopfest, a lot of wild back-and-forth with occasional highlight-reel-quality play from their up-and-coming stars. In Atlanta, the 2-19 Sixers never held a lead but played the Hawks as close to the vest as possible and for a full half. Then Philly repeatedly pulled within ten points before the Hawks could pull away in the final quarter for the most headache-inducing 16-point win of the year.

Between the 5:30 mark in the third quarter and 8:45 in the fourth, the lurching Hawks made just one field goal, half of the Sixers’ two in that stretch. The teams totaled three field goals in the opening and closing minutes of the first three quarters and the start of the fourth. Opponents’ sense of disbelief that they’re not blowing out the JaKarr Sampsons of the world by halftime adversely affects their play, working to the 76ers’ competitive advantage.

The Spirit of ’76 might not be so high without the boisterous efforts of one of their biggest followers – namely, rookie K.J. McDaniels’ mother. Shawn Chapman-McDaniels comes to Sixer games to cheer on her son’s team as loudly as possible. Check that… to cheer on her son as loudly as possible, to the extent where she’s audibly booing and screaming from the sidelines whenever her jumping-jack of a kid isn’t receiving passes from teammates. Booing in Philadelphia is like “y’all” in Atlanta, so the Alabama native fits right in, but she traveled to an Orlando game and was nearly escorted out.

Chapman-McDaniels was not let in on the Sixers’ ulterior motives, and eventually let her feelings be known in no uncertain terms on Twitter, earning her quite the following. K.J., his teammates, and the McDaniels clan has “suspended” Mom from Twitter, even betting her money, until she can prove she can bite her tongue for a full week. Yet her unwavering “attytood” has become not a distracting spectacle but a team-bonding effect on Philly’s sideline. If she’s at tonight’s game, you’ll know.

While showing some sense of a pulse on the court, the Sixers have been quite the busy beavers in their front office since falling in Atlanta back in December. Their leading scorer from that contest, Alexey Shved (13 points off the bench)? He’s been Shvedded, off to Houston for Ronny Turiaf (who was also discarded), some 33-year old Eurostiff (ce n’est pas tu, Ronny!) who will never see an NBA floor without a press pass, and a future second-round pick.

Brandon Davies was also sent packing, to Brooklyn, in exchange for Jorge Gutierrez (they dumped him, too), Andrei Kirilenko and (in a small nod by the Nets’ Billy King to the Hawks’ front office) a swap-rights option for second-rounders in 2020. Brett Brown’s post-trade coffee klatch with Andrei apparently didn’t go as smoothly as planned: Kirilenko refuses to report to the team, while Philadelphia has suspended him without pay.

Malcolm Lee was picked up a week before the Hawks game, played for a couple minutes, and was promptly dropped like he wasn’t hot the next day. Ronald Roberts was yo-yo’ed before finally getting waived to make room for a young Turkish import, forward Furkan Aldemir. His mom, it’s believed, does not wish to be known as “Mother Furkan”.

That 33-year-old Eurostiff whose name isn’t worth finding out? He was shipped to the Clips for cash and our old friends Cenk Akyol (you remember Cenk, don’t you? He earned us some pocket change and a nice meal with Antawn Jamison at last year’s trade deadline!) and Jared Cunningham. Didn’t know Cunningham was with the Sixers? No worries: they cut him loose, too.

Philadelphia GM Sam Hinkie’s credo is probably, “The Trick is Not Minding.” The net results of his presto-change-o magic? Aldemir, straight cash, minor picks, and the right to slide all up in AK-47’s DMs. None of that pseudo-player movement, though, has impacted the 76ers’ near-respectable 7-12 run after an 0-17 start to the season. The Sixers’ recent winning ways have also happened without Hollis Thompson, who was starting at 2-guard but returns tonight after missing almost a month with a respiratory infection.

Philadelphia collected a season-high 12 swats against Indiana on Saturday, and the Hawks got rejected a team-high 10 times by the Sixers in December. Philly depends on the windmill-length arms of Noel, Carter-Williams and McDaniels to make stops, and on their collective youthful energy to beat teams down the floor for fastbreak points (15.0 per game, 2^nd in East behind tomorrow’s opponent, Boston). The 76ers’ 17.9 PPG off turnovers is right behind Atlanta’s 18.1 (2^nd in East), so protecting the rock and bigs getting back on defense will be paramount for Atlanta.

Better movement away from the ball and distracting cuts to the basket should help Atlanta open up shooters around the perimeter. Kyle Korver was dogged by Sixer wings in December but still ended the day 5-for-7 from three-point country, matching Paul Millsap’s team-high 17 points. Pero Antić (3-for-5 3FGs on Sunday) had no pressure launching shots against the Wizards, but he will have to be decisive tonight as won’t be given time for his patented jumpfakes against Noel.

Dennis Schröder (2-for-3 3FGs) was immensely confident at the close of Sunday’s big win over the Wizards, but could not walk away from 2-for-11 shooting inside the arc. If they can get defenders at their backs on drives, Schröder (2-for-9 FGs vs. Philly in December) and Shelvin Mack could have big offensive outings to offset Philly’s MCW and Wroten. Jeff Teague, Millsap, and DeMarre Carroll will all be resting tonight, allowing Schröder, Thabo Sefolosha and Mike Muscala (whose contract for the rest of the season was fully guaranteed last week) ample time to shine in the starting lineup.

The Hawks will also want to improve on the 69.2 FT% (on just 13 attempts) they shot in December versus Philly. Solid free throw shooting by the Hawks was a key difference between the satisfying conclusions in the Memphis (82.6 team FT%) and Washington (83.3%) games and the hang-on-to-your-hat finish in Detroit (66.7 team FT%) last week. Even with a slimmer lineup, the Hawks won’t want their chance for an unprecedented ninth-straight road win to turn into a nail-biter.

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3