Stephen A Smith on Fox's Best [censored] Sports Show

[Vol4ever]

last night. They were discussing that the Hawks were the worst franchise in professional sports. Smith did defend the Hawks a little and stated the Clipps were the worst franchise in sports.

I agree with Stephen A. Smith but the Hawks are a terribly managed franchise, the fans in Atlanta are collegiate fans and really don't care about the NBA.

To save this franchise the Hawks must get a very good team and not just good a entertaining team, o half fill Phillips arena. At the current pace the team is on the Hawks could possibly one day be moved to another city. If it hadn't been for Ted Turner a few years ago I believe the Hawks would be in New Orleans now.

The new owner of the team must come in and spend BIG money to get exitement going in this town, if not the team is doomed!

[Traceman]

sports town in the country. As for the town being a college town, I think that is only a part of it. This is a town who likes frontrunners and historically, GA and GA Tech have had winning programs. Look at the Falcons. The team was LOVED in '98 when they went 14-2 and the fans were excited going into '99. When they struggled out of the gate, it took one of the most exciting players to EVER put on a uniform and a playoff run to bring the excitement back. The Falcons landing Vick was the equivalent of the Cavs landing LeBron James. Now let's see if LeBron can lead his team to the playoffs in his 2nd year.

[chillzatl]

Unless they went to school at UGA or Tech, you aren't going to find many die hard fans for ANY team in this town. It's just how it is. There are so many transplant sports fans in this town that they aren't willing to get behind the home team until start winning big or win it all. Mediocrity is not tolerated. Even if that mediocrity is 11 straight division titles and a slew of 100 win seasons.

Let mike Vick fail to get beyond the first round for a few seasons and we'll see just how quickly the great fan support comes to an end around here.

That's how its' been as long as i've been here. If a team sucks and they start winning, they will get fans. But they have to continue to improve and eventually get a championship or the fans will stop showing up. At least on the same level they did when they were building to that level of excellent mediocrity.

[Guest]

ediocrity is not tolerated. Even if that mediocrity is 11 straight division titles and a slew of 100 win seasons."

I think alot(not all) of the Braves problem is the fact

that AOL owns the team.

The deal is that in Atlanta, the fans want a legit reason

to spend their money on teams. Lets face it, teams continue

to drive up ticket prices, food prices.... Why should fans

continue to spend more and more money? So owners

can gouge prices higher?

[Dejay]

Do we have to bring this up AGAIN?! What is so wrong with expecting more from your team when the status quo hasn't good enough to win the big trophy? As a city, we've been there and done that with division titles and just getting into the playoffs like the Hawks used to do. We don't have the history of having championship parades, let alone consistent winning. Nor have we had teams here long enough that our parents and grandparents saw and supported when they were younger and reared us up since birth to cheer for as opposed to other places like Detroit and Philadelphia, who's had major sports since the early 1900's. There's a reason why Neyland Stadium seats 106,000 and not just 50,000; folks from there remember their fathers and uncles taking them to the games back in the day and teaching them about Tennessee football since they learned to walk and never departed from it. Add that to the fact that Atlanta is one of the biggest transient cities in the country for its size and you have what you have. Think about it; almost a million people have moved here in the last decade. A million Laker fans, Bulls fans, Steeler fans, Yankee fans, Cowboy fans, Bears fans, etc. How are you going to sell them on Falcons football (pre-Vick) when they've never had consecutive winning seasons or Hawks basketball when they haven't sniffed a conference finals in over 30 years? I'll answer that; YOU DON'T AND YOU CAN'T. And as for the Braves not selling out despite winning 11 straight division titles, well, so? All those division banners taught us was that second place still equals FIRST LOSER. If you don't believe me, just ask the Buffalo Bills or the New Jersey Nets. It would've been a lot more significant to people here if they had hoisted up three or four more World Series championship banners but they haven't last I checked. And that's our measuring stick down here; WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. We've seen enough 50-win Hawk teams get slapped up side the head in the playoffs to nauseate a polar bear and we've had it up to here with watching other cities celebrate a championship while we're stuck with talking about our salary cap position in 2005. We're tired of watching other baseball teams celebrate at Turner Field in October. And we're sick of seeing our basketball team on the wrong end of highlight reels every night on SportsCenter and being the butt of jokes from Charles Barkley on TNT. So on behalf of the citizens of Atlanta, the city I LOVE, let me apologize to the 'real' hardcore fans out there. We apologize for having the common sense NOT to spend our hard-earned $$$ on a consistently bad product. It must be because we have 11 months of good weather and find other things to do (i.e. more options in the winter and spring) other than pay to see a team get smoked by 20 before halftime. We're sorry to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to a franchise that hasn't made one stench of progress toward winning a title whatsoever in their 35+ year stay in town. We're sorry that although we've spent hundreds of millions to build them new facilities with sweetheart leases that we get a little edgy when they don't make an adequate return on the investment by putting up championship banners that MATTER. Our message to the Hawks is show us SOMETHING. If you can't bring us a title this year, at least give the impression that you're TRYING to and stop with the 'well, the salary cap prevents us from....' stuff. We've seen countless teams acquire talent with a lot more on the payroll so the 'wait three years, then we'll have something' crap doesn't hold water. Give us something to rally around. Give us a reason to spend $$$ on your product other than the fact that Shaq or McGrady is coming to town because we really don't care about them. We (the 'hardcore' fans here) care about OUR team. The Atlanta Hawks.

[Gray Mule]

Grandma and Grandpa, years ago when I was young, didn't

have pro sports anywhere in the south. If you followed

a pro team, it was from up north.

I didn't even follow basketball. I grew up a New York

Yankee Hating, Cleveland Indians fan. Pro football?

The Washington Redskins were our closest team. I

rooted for them.

Atlanta? They had the baseball Crackers. That was it.

Any Grandma and Grandpa who followed pro basketball

probably weren't Hawk fans. The Hawks were in another

city.

Then, all these people who have moved to Atlanta in recent

years to make it one of the fastest growing cities

anywhere, having grown up supporting their home team,

find that this team now visits Atlanta. They come out

and root for "Their own personal" home team, the team

they left behind.

News flash. Transplanted N.B.A. fans are not automaticly

Hawks fans and may never be.

Tech. and Georgia have die hard fans. Why? These

schools were here when your great-grandparents were

young kids.

Dejay is correct. Listen to what was said. I agree.

[Traceman]

[Dejay]

Please continue

[Traceman]

REGARDLESS of the reasons you put forth, this town DOES NOT support teams unless they win. PERIOD! You can come up with all the reasons why NOT supporting them does not make the people of Atlanta bad sports fans and maybe they aren't. That being said, they DON'T support the teams unless they are winning and winning BIG!

In other markets (not all markets), winning certainly brings even more fan support but even when they are losing, the teams enjoy SOME level of support from their fan base. Here, the Falcons, Braves and even the Hawks have a certain "core" fanbase that will be there win, lose or draw but that "core" fanbase is a lot smaller than it is in a lot of other cities.

I would NEVER call a person a bad fan for refusing to spend their money to support ANY team. That being said, when fans in other cities continue to spend money to support their teams EVEN WHEN THEY LOSE, there IS a difference!

Fan support DOES make a difference to the players on the field. The players are professionals and theoretically it shouldn't matter if the team plays in front of 100 or 100,000 but in reality, it DOES matter. Fan support often gives the players that little "extra" to get the job done while also disrupting the flow of what the other team is trying to do.

I think fan support can make enough of a difference in enough games to make a less than mediocre team slightly more than medicore. In other words, an 8-8 Falcons' team WITHOUT support might be a 10-6 team WITH fan support. A 35 win Hawks team WITHOUT fan support might be a 42 win team WITH fan support. I think that teams in other cities get the benefit of that fan support and their mediocre teams make the playoffs while the Atlanta teams don't get the benefit of that fan support and their mediocre teams don't make the playoffs.

The bottom line is that the old "give us something to support" arguement may be valid but REGARDLESS of the reason, the fans in this town have NOT historically supported the teams here and as a result, the label of bad sports town has been put upon us.

[Dejay]

I'm not saying that Atlanta is the perfect sports town. However, if Atlanta is a 'fairweather' town like you suggest, then EVERY sports city in the country is a fairweather one. You have your exceptions of course (Green Bay, Sacramento, Portland, San Antonio, Salt Lake City), however, you have to preface that because they only have one team and when that team is the only game in town, the tendency to go out and support them is WAY higher than it would be if there was an alternative. Other than that, there isn't a city that I know of that hasn't had their fair share of non-support of their teams when things went south. The Phillies are in a pennant chase; where are the fans there? How come the Boston Bruins had trouble with attendance in recent years? What happened to the folks that sold out the Forum when the Showtime Lakers went away? If I'm not mistaken, I recalled the old Chicago Stadium being more empty than the Omni used to be before MJ came to town. So was the Spectrum after Barkley was traded away (pre-Allen Iverson). Where are all the Denver fans that once broke attendance records when the Rockies started out? Aren't they more 'hardcore'? How come the football Cardinals are no longer in St. Louis? Could it be because they refused (gasp) to come out because they no longer excepted 4-12 seasons as good enough? And please explain all of the no-shows in Giants Stadium when the Jets lost with the likes of Joe Walton and Richie Kotite running the show. And PLEASE don't get me started on how many more people should be attending Oakland A's games right now; where are they? If I'm not mistaken, Houston and Phoenix had almost as many empty seats in their buildings as we did in ours for NLDS playoff games a couple of years ago; shouldn't they be more apt to come out since they DON'T have a dozen division banners hanging up and the postseason isn't necessarily treated as a birthright as it is here? However we, never, EVER, hear criticism about, let alone IN those towns when they don't show up for games, do we? Besides, in virtually every one of those places where folks say that they have more 'hardcore' fans, don't they have more people living there than in Atlanta, anyway? They certainly do after you subtract all of the transplants here. Of the 4 million in the metro area, maybe 25% of them are actually from here (and I'm stretching that percentage a great deal to be more realistic). The same 25% that saw Pete Babcock cry about the cap every eight minutes. The same 25% that saw Bob Weiss wax poetic about how we'll love Adam Keefe once he gets on the court. The same 25% that watched (insert playoff team here) celebrate at Turner Field every October. The same 25% that saw Rankin Smith, Sr. get on a podium and say that 'we've reached a plateau' after firing Leeman Bennett and bring in Dan Henning and his 22-41-1 record afterwards. The same 25% that read the SI magazine that painted the entire city as 'Losersville'. Oh yeah, they wouldn't be jaded by all of that in Philly, NY, or Chicago, wouldn't they? That isn't the case in those other 'hardcore' cities, isn't it? Could it be that the only reason other places seem to have more 'hardcore' folks in their town is because they have more people that were born and raised there (natural hometown allegiance) in the first place??? To me, I just don't see why Atlanta is put up as the posterchild of a bad sports town when other cities have never had as much as a litmus test done to them yet.

[Guest]

Agreed! The worst thing about the Hawks franchise is

that it never has shown the attitude of "Well we want

this guy, lets go out and get him!" they've never never

showned they are out to win a title...It seems like the

playoffs has always been thought to be good enough

around here.

[Dejay]

What's wrong with NOT excepting the status quo when the status quo hasn't been enough to have ticker-tape parades at season's end? And what exactly defines a 'hardcore' fan? Do you have to attend a certain amount of games after your team is mathematically eliminated from playoff contention? Do you get your 'hardcore fan' certificate at the gate? To me, just being on this forum talking Hawks basketball in the middle of August should qualify ANYONE as a 'hardcore' Hawks fan. Some of the biggest fans in the world aren't necessarily the ones you see in the arena every night. I should know because I'm no longer a season-ticket holder and a lot of members on this board aren't, either. But would you consider your allegiance to the Hawks any less in terms of value than Laker fans who piled on the bandwagon after Shaq came to town? [censored] NO!! So folks here have a higher premium for their entertainment $$$ than in other markets; BIG 'EFFIN' DEAL!! To me, that should be taken as a badge of honor and not as an insult.

[Diesel]

Deejay, while I agree with many aspects of what you are saying... I have to state that Atlanta has an ignorance about Sports that makes the fans very fairweather....

I think you have hit on the major point... The transient City of Atlanta is HOST to many visitors who will not automatically be fans of the sports teams. AND, I agree that it's up to the OWNERS and Front Office people to put a team on the floor that can deserve the fans dollars.... BUT.... There's more to it than that.

For years, Nique was the human highlight reel. He wowed crowds. He was the builder and archietect (SP) of the OMNI... But even in the midst of the Nique years, I would go to the games and the stands would be empty. The team was winning, the fans had a draw in NIQUE, the price of a ticket was reasonable....but the stands were empty. As Trace has tried to say, the Hawks never did carry a strong CORE.

BUT, let me talk about the ignorance of the Atlanta Fans. The Atlanta fan will come out for Gimmicks... Here are several Case in Points:

1. The Tomahawk Chop.

2. The Dirty Bird.

3. Two Legit to quit.

4. The Finger Wave.

5. Bad Moon Rison.

6. The Magic Wand (or whatever they do now).

The casual Atlanta fan doesn't see the game as being a SPORT. They see it as being ENTERTAINMENT. They want some marketing plan that will excite them and make them feel like part of the team. IF the team is winning the gimmick is better like when the Falcons were doing the dirty Bird. BUT Atlanta sports fans are not so concerned with Sports as they are with personalities. I was at the stadium the day that Deion Sanders ended his contract holdout during his rookie year. He ran a touchdown back on the Rams on his first or second punt return. The next Sunday, the Stadium was Filled because NOW, the team had a personality that it could follow. The same is true of Micheal Vick. While he sat in the Shawdows, nobody cared. When he played last year, as the National media started to care, Atlanta fans started to care. This year, he is on the cover of everything and he is consider the best or second best QB in the game. What it translates into is that the games will be packed. NO Blackouts in Atlanta.

In Hawks Basketball, for Atlanta to fill the gym... They need more than a good team. [censored] we have had 50=60 game winners who had to play playoff games in front of Visiting HOME crowds. I remember Indy packing their fans into the OMNI for the Indiana=Atlanta Playoff game.

However, I'm willing to betcha.... If we had 1 or 2 exciting players who had Charisma and PLAYED to the Crowds, the seats would be packed. We need another Gimmick. So no, good guys like JT and SAR are not going to get it. We need somebody who the fans can cheer.

Here's a thought...

I'm willing to bet, that had Big Dog Barked after EVERY DUNK and Put up a Sign to the crowd and Had a section of the PHil called the Dog pound and Everytime he made a big Play, a Piped in Bark would come over the loud speaker, that he would not have been traded.

Today, NBA players don't know how to market themselves. That's why I say we should get Vince Carter. He would make sure that the PHil stayed full. It doesn't matter if we have all the position taken care of right now, we need a personality more than we need a complete team.

[Guest]

You make alot of good points. The media doesn't give

a flip about the Hawks...So neither does the Atlanta

fans.

In a way sports is not much different than going to a

movie...If you know it's a bad product or boring product

you wouldn't pay your money to go see it.

I never bought much into the whole dirty bird and stuff...

but it's nice to have exciting players.

[Guest]

Today, NBA players don't know how to market themselves. That's why I say we should get Vince Carter. He would make sure that the PHil stayed full. It doesn't matter if we have all the position taken care of right now, we need a personality more than we need a complete team.

"

Agreed! The NBA doesn't understand how to market itself

PERIOD. KC and the sunshine band isn't going to draw

fans..