What made you a Hawks Fan.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

Dominique.  And the fact that the Hawks were shown on cable ( TBS and TNT ).

[AdoSalcin]

I moved here in 2000 from eastern europe and instantly became Hawks fan... Why? because they are my home team now... i dont care if they are the worst team in the universe, they are my team.... Atl is my hometown now and Hawks will always be my team...  I dont care if they never ever win a game again they will still be my team......thats what being a fan is all about...  

[Diesel]

Many moons ago.  Being taken to the Hawks game in the OMNI.  Hearing the cross sounds of sneakers squeaking, players calling picks, and an organ....  Seeing John Drew and Fast Eddie Johnson dispose of the Bullets.  Then getting the chance to meet Tree Rollins and Dan Roundfield a little later than that.   John Drew was my favorite player... then he was traded for this guy who played for UGA that I liked.  I had watched Hugh Durham mold a team down at UGA.  The team consisted of Dominique, Vern Fleming and Terry Fair.   It was a great time for UGA athletics because somewhere in that time, their football team with Buck Blue and Herschell Walker were killing folks too.  I think UGA won the NIT or something and Nique declared and was drafted by Utah.  He didn't play his first year and was traded for my favorite player John Drew.  Happy and mad at the same time, Nique came in and set fire to the league.  (BTW, UGA went to the final four of the NCAA without Nique).   So there was that hope that we would build a new UGA with the hawks.  So 1984 was our chance.  We needed a PG and Fleming was coming out.   You had Hakeem, Bowie, Jordan... etc. etc. etc... Fleming hasn't been drafted then the Hawks pick...  Kevin Willis.  What the hell man!!!! Fleming gets picked by the Pacers and there went my UGA in ATL dream.  I learned to love Kevin Willis.  I even met him the year he broke his foot.  Nique made it an atmosphere that you just couldn't not like the Hawks.  Then the Hawks games were on TBS.  And the telecast were great... Dominique is Magnifique.

 

[Gray Mule]

I live in the mountains, in the same house I was born in.  I look out my window

and what do I see?  Mountains.  They have always been there.  That's my reason

for always being a Hawk fan, because they have always been there.

I was, however, only a casual fan until, not having the Braves to watch in the winter,

I got really hooked because the Hawks were regularly on TV.  I was posting on

another site, along with Diesel, among others, when Hawksquawk was born.  Been

here ever since. - - WELCOME TO THE NEW POSTER !!

[benhillboy]

I don't know why I'm a Hawks fan since my first ever NBA game was the game that Nique got traded. Lol.

I'm so excited the days leading up to the game telling EVERYBODY I knew I'm going to my first NBA game and I get to see Nique.  What a treat.

I get up that morning, turn on SportsCenter and heard the news, Nique traded to the horrible Clippers for frikkin Danny Manning.

That was long bus ride from Savannah to the Omni.  I was so pissed.

Damn, that made me sad.  So sorry.

[jvell]

Living in the ATL for 27 years and supporting the local team. They grow on you if you are BB fan and want to see live NBA action.

[Richesly]

Born in Atlanta. Been watching the Hawks since my dad got me into basketball when I was 6 watching Manning. First game was the game after Nique was traded. I don't remember the game, just that my dad thought Manning would lead the Hawks to a chip.

[ATLHawks3]

The 2008 playoff series against Boston.

[HorfordMustang]

2008, I'm in school in Atlanta.  Never really watched the NBA before, only college.  Got tickets to a Hawks game and loved every second.  From there I was hooked.  Went to all 3 playoff games that year against the Celtics.  Electric atmosphere.  There was something so fun about those JJ/Smith teams, luckily for me Horford quickly became my favorite player. As Bud continues to develop his guys, I think we have a real good shot at 55-60+ win seasons for a long time and potential for deep playoff runs.

[jy23]

Moved to Atlanta in 97 from Tennessee. At that point there were no teams in Tennessee to root for so I already kinda followed the Falcons and Hawks....was already a big Braves fan. The moment I found out we were moving to GA it was a done deal. At that point I couldn't care less how good or bad either team was I was just soooooooo excited to have my own team. Lucky for me both teams were pretty decent at that point. 

What really put it over the top for me was my first week at school Christian laettner, mookie, and Allan Henderson came to my school with Harry the hawk. I was losing my mind. One of my best memories as a kid. That and meeting the Falcons at the airport when they came back from beating the Vikings to go to the super bowl. I've been hooked ever since.

[lethalweapon3]

I was a teenager watching a 1977 rerun (no pun intended) of What's Happening. In the episode called "Give Me Odds," Re-Run gets into wagering along with his brother-in-law, Ike, and realized Dwayne (who was pretty much clueless about football) was on a roll, correctly predicting all the winners of NFL football games.

Disguising Dwayne's hunches as his own surefire, foolproof "system," Re-Run advises Ike, who promised his wife he had quit gambling, to "bet the house" on his stone-cold-lock football picks. After gaining Ike's trust and momentary respect, Re-Run asks Ike to bet $10 for Rog on Dwayne's upset pick of the year: hapless Tampa Bay, a recent expansion team, toppling the mighty Oakland Raiders, 10-7. A newly confident Ike plunks down 500 bucks (his wife's vacation money) into the football pool on the Buccaneers, who are eventually savaged by the Raiders as Re-Run and Ike are embarrassed.

But before the game, Dwayne got pressed by his buddies to reveal his super-secret method for making his picks.

 

Raj: There's GOT to be more to it... I mean, well, how do you know who's going to win?

Dwayne: Helmets.

Re-Run: HELMETS?

Dwayne: Helmets! The team with the fanciest helmets is gonna win!

 

Upon hearing this, I ejected myself from papaweapon3's Barcalounger, screaming at the set: "That's ME!!!"

 

 

I always had an irrational affinity for (a) teams and cities without much of a championship history, and (b) clever uniforms, bright colors, and logos. The Venn diagram for those interests placed the Hawks and Falcons of that time squarely in the middle (Native American symbolism on sports teams gave me the heebie-jeebies even as a kid, so it was easy to translate my antipathy for Washington's football team into indifference toward Atlanta's sad-sack baseball team). The siren of Atlanta toward persons of my profession and demographic made the appeal even stronger.

By 1985, it was clear that my hometown 76ers were about to embark on a slow, unnerving slide toward irrelevancy. Home games at the time (if you didn't buy the team's local cable channel) were not aired on local TV unless there was a national game on CBS, so my mind wandered toward NBA teams not in the City of Brotherly Shove. Most prominent for me at the time were the Cavaliers, the upstart Mavericks, the Nuggets, the SuperSonics... and the Hawks. The arrival of The Superstation, TBS, to prime-time living rooms allowed me to watch more Hawks than any other non-Sixers NBA team, and suffice to say I liked what I saw.

 

~lw3

[Dnice]

Born and grew up in Georgia, I didn't know much about the nba as a youth, I did have a Hawk team poster with Drew and Roundfield, I don't remember the early Nique years, but I'd watch them on TBS with Skip Carey, as I would with the Braves around the mid-80s.  

[sturt]

I like to say that I had the adolescent rebellion thing going on at age 7. So, I wasn't about to be a sheep, and just root for the team that everyone else supported... at that time, it would have been the Cincinnati Royals, right... to you young-uns, that's today's Sacramento Kings.

But whereas I'd chosen my baseball and football teams by just picking out a baseball card and a football card of a player (Joe Morgan and Craig Morton respectively) and then just spontaneously adopted that team (Astros and Cowboys respectively), I somehow already knew about this Pistol Pete Maravich guy... I'm not even clear how that happened, but I seem to remember my older brother mentioning him once. Then, there was the uniforms... for the time, they really stood out from the rest. So, I was pretty excited to finally obtain Pistol's basketball card--had to trade a friend for it.

Once I adopted them, it became a real challenge to get to watch them play, but then again, it was an era when I could only depend on getting two of the three broadcast networks in the first place. Thankfully, ABC had the NBA contract and so I remember watching the Hawks play one of two teams the very few times they would get put on national TV... the Bullets and the Knicks. More often, I would sit by my AM radio at night trying to coax the WSB signal to reach Huntington, WV.

For the record, I remained loyal to the Astros even after they traded Little Joe to the evil Big Red Machine, and to the Cowboys after they traded Morton to the evil New York Giants... as I did (obviously) when Pistol was dispatched in a big-time trade to the Jazz. I've since had to abandon the Astros, though... forced by Bud Selig to choose between the game I love (traditional baseball) and the team I'd loved... but that's another story for another thread.

[Dejay]

Great opening topic that I never got to read until now. My story is kinda similar...

Growing up, my dad and I use to attend nothing but hockey games. For some strange reason, there was a huge mix of people who saw the old Flames live, not just the typical group of suburbanites that a certain former basketball team owner tried to entice to attend games. Maybe because they were the most successful team in town at the time. Then again, maybe it was because they were perhaps one of the saltiest teams in the NHL. It took nothing to set those guys off and when the fuse was lit, they were bad news. Ask any member of the Broad Street Bullies in Philly and they'll tell you all about having to survive fighting with the Flames on the ice and the Atlanta fans hurling everything not nailed down at them between periods or ejections. 

Anyway, one day my dad got a hold to some Hawks tickets. While we did see a few of their games on TV, it never struck me as a must-see event like watching the Flames all but take their own skates off to beat someone with in person. This one would be different because coming to town was some guy by the name of Dr. J. Knowing that the game had already sold out weeks in advance, we were both stoked.

I do remember a few things from that game. For starters, Dr. J. dunked on everyone except the scoreboard. Speaking of which, the main scoreboard at midcourt didn't work AT ALL. They had to resort to announcing the time and score over the PA system. And just when everyone thought that the Sixers had put the game away, the underdog Hawks came storming back out of nowhere. For some reason, we had to leave before the game ended and for many years, I had thought that they lost in regulation but in actuality, they won in overtime. The underdog Hawks showed heart and courage that night, something that they sometimes lacked in subsequent seasons. I've been rooting them along ever since...

[AHF]

Grew up loving watching Nique, Willis, Spud (what little kid didn't idolize him?), Doc, Carr, Battle, Tree, Wittman, Malone, Theus, Roundfield and many others through the 80's and that love carried into the 90's and beyond.  For a team that was never much of a contender, those 80's Hawks teams were talented and entertaining as hell!

[HawksNWaffles]

All the great stories. I'm most excited about this team and wherr it's going. I do believe that a Bud led team can break to the Atlanta sports curse. I want to see those lifelong Hawks fans finally be able to rejoice about a championship......won in Atlanta.