Hawks attendance

[lethalweapon3]

Sports identity in the Southeast has long been tied to (1) SEC Football, (2) NASCAR, (3) The Braves, (4) Pro-Wrestling, (5) Florida spring training, (6) Augusta links, (7) Kentucky and UNC-Duke hoops, and (8) Put-Me-In-Coach Minor League Ball. Only a couple of those options involve indoor venues.

Travel throughout the region, and it’s not hard to find a fan who’s tethered eternally to the Bravos because, “heck, they were the only game around,” for a long time. It was either that, or bandwagoning the Yankees (although Steinbrenner and retirees hijacked Florida) and Dodgers, and what jagoff could look their neighbors in the face doing that? Yet, you’ll sooner find a Knicks or Lakers fan in Savannah than a Hawks die-hard.

On a global scale, pro basketball here in Georgia wasn’t all that different from the product sold to the rest of the galaxy. But athletic ventures in things like “pro” wrestling (“It’s still real to me!”), and college football, were able to create a uniquely successful Southern orientation that drew fan interest throughout the region, and beyond.

People like to watch pro rasslin’… but they LOVED to come see Ric Flair, Ole Anderson, and Good Ol’ Dusty. There’s college football… and then, there’s Jawja, and Bama. It’s like seeking out great barbeque. There might be some better ribs and sauces somewhere out there in Oregon… but who’s going to waste their time finding out?

From their inception, the Falcons would quickly build a rivalry with the Saints and, later, the Bucs, fighting for the annual claim of the South’s least-suckiest NFL team. But the Braves had the Atlantic seaboard from D.C. down to Key West pretty much all to themselves.

The Hawks had a slightly-smaller footprint than the Braves to work with, due to the Bullets and Jazz. But they were unable to establish that Southern foothold that predominantly outdoors-in-the-summer sports could offer, even though they, like in pro baseball, were “the only game around.”

In the NBA, our Hawks failed to capitalize on being “the only game” not just in town, but throughout the Southeast, mostly between 1968 and the arrival of expansion clubs for Charlotte and Florida in 1988. The market from the Mississippi River to the Carolinas, from Nashville to Florida, was ours to seize for two decades.

It’s not like we didn’t try, back in the day when we could play regional “home” games in places like New Orleans, swooping in on miffed former Jazz fans in 1985, post-ABA Charlotte in 1978, or “neutral” sites like Auburn, Columbia, Memphis and Greenville back in the late 1960s. Without a steady nearby rival, without title-contending teams that the national/regional media took seriously, it just didn’t stick.

After swinging-and-missing with Pistol Pete, Nique became our best shot at a distinctive “Mouth of the South.” Alas, he could not outshine another North Carolina prep star in eventually capturing the world’s imagination. Yeah, I don’t think that’s Gatorade, Nique, maybe not the best idea. The lack of a coastal media propagating local stars as marquee-worthy reflected itself when it came time to recognize Nique among the NBA's Top 50 all-time, or a first-ever Dream Team in 1992.

Even with a SuperStation/CNN/TBS/TNT in town ready to make a TV bump, Ted Turner’s Hawks were neither exciting nor successful enough to draw legions of fans, from in or out of town, to the Omni. Ted was able to use wrestling shows in the summer as a lead-in, to help make that downright-awful (but for Dale Murphy) Braves baseball palatable, and his combined ownership probably helped keep the Hawks and Braves moored here, and not trucked to some desperate market elsewhere. But five decades in, only one of Ted’s sports clubs became an air-conditioned household name.

I’ve always dreamed of a SEC-style, Falcons-Saints-type rivalry among the Southeast’s NBA markets. But like the Falcons and Braves, for way too long, we were always interspersed with teams from other markets. Our Atlanta tenure began regularly tipping off with clubs from low-transplant locales like San Diego and Phoenix. Once we were allowed to quit pretending we were some Western team in 1971, the Hawks got lumped in with Midwestern and Texas markets during the Central Division years. Post ABA-merger, the Jazz ran to Salt Lake City, and our closest East Coast competitor, the Bullets eventually wound-up with vastly more popular Mid-Atlantic and New England clubs.

By the 1980s, our geographically closest rival was small-market Indiana. After brief Western Conference stays, retiree-heavy Miami and Orlando got to begin their existence building division rivalries with the Knicks, Sixers, and Celtics. By the end of their first decade, Miami’s most despised adversary was New York, and Atlanta was but a road bump along the way.

Only the Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets got to start out sharing its division with Atlanta, still in the Midwest-heavy Central Division, and they never built up enough of a tempest between each other to boost their respective fandom. Any chance of fostering animosity among the Southern NBA clubs is about done, now that interest in making geographical divisions manner has waned.

Three of the top-10 TV markets unassociated with LeBron, the Cavs and Dubs, during last year’s NBA Finals? Atlanta, Memphis, and Richmond. The year before? Memphis, Atlanta, and Norfolk. It wasn’t always this way. But the Southern sports fan is attracted to watching pro basketball… on TV, when it’s played at its highest level. The challenge for the Hawks and, now, the Grizzlies and Hornets, is to create atmospheres that draw us out of our separate air-conditioned abodes and into one where we get to cheer, and boo, together.

Would fans from upstate New Hampshire make the trek to Boston for a mid-week Celtics game? You betcha. Would some from Jacksonville come up to Atlanta for a weekend, just to cheer on the Hawks? Maybe once in a blue moon, at best. More likely, he/she would be satisfied with catching them on the Boob Tube. But they would pack their bags and hop on the first flight to get to Starrcade. For pro-hoops to “catch hold” as a hot ticket in the so-called Deep South, it will take Hawks players, as either "faces" or "heels", who can make fans yell, “Whoo!”

~lw3