Official Game Thread: Hawks at Bulls -- At Long Last, The Season Opener!

[lethalweapon3]

“Nice. But what does THAT have to do with anything?”

 

The Parliament of Great Britain was obsessed with tea, and not only in the late afternoons.

Desperate to save the floundering British East India Company and its stockpiles of leafy product, the Brits sought to apply a duty to tea supplies illicitly smuggled overseas into its North American colonies by the Dutch.

This was in the year 1773. Taxation without representation, it turns out, was not a compelling sell for dear old John Bull.

While fumbling away the Americas, England’s brand of manifest Western imperialism stretched in the opposite direction, beyond India and toward the Pacific Ocean. European aggressions and incursions during the First and Second Opium Wars led to the seizure of Beijing and pried open Chinese ports to Western trade.

The insatiable demand for Far Eastern-world tea made the cost for procuring Chinese tea of considerable importance among nobility. This was a matter tracked and noted routinely by aristocrats in powdered wigs during proceedings at the British House of Commons throughout the mid-1800s.

Were it not for these developments, an English-borne idiom from those bygone days would never have crossed the seas, over the centuries, and landed squarely within the lexicon of a dear co-worker situated across from my glorified cubicle:

“Sure, and what does THAT have to do with the price of tea in China???”

Pre-Zoom, I would hear that query being uttered at least a couple occasions per month. First harked in an age before Wikipedia, this, I assumed, must be some whimsical quip she crafted entirely out of thin air.

“You know, our accounts’ quarterly reports are due in 45 minutes,” her supervisor warns. “I can’t locate the Palm Bay portfolio file; I think maybe it got deleted by accident?” advises her subordinate assistant. “Sigh… we’re fresh out of K-Cups again!”, frets one lazy colleague. You know what’s coming. Tea. China. Not even Atlanta native Boldy James around to make it make sense.

Matters that feel urgent to some are not so pressing to others. It is incumbent upon you, the urged, to explain in swift but certain terms why your urgency should rise to a level where she has to put down whatever she’s planning to do, while trudging through the planned tedium of her life and workday, to instead address your immediate needs. And don’t you dare lob a non sequitur in her direction. “Say, there’s new research that says people with exposed tattoos are significantly less likely to earn a raise. You might consider wearing more turtlenecks!”

“Yeah, so what?” is not the most professional of retorts. The conceptual intrusion of valued plant product from half a world away is, I suppose, a far more novel approach to questioning relevancy. “…the price of tea in China?” is so off-putting, though, our co-workers never know how to craft a proper response, so they usually just saunter off to pester someone else. It’s the part about the tea that gets me.

Here is another one you would hear in first-world Western dialogue. “I wouldn’t trade Trae Young away, not for all the tea in China.” It is truly hyperbolic, but “all the tea” represents something highly valuable, as in, “not for all the money in the world.” Up through the 1800s, global wars for geographic supremacy were often waged over the trade of innocuous yet regionally precious items like tea. Silk. Opium. That is all to say nothing of treating whole living, breathing, laborious people as cost-effective and controlled commodities.

What I came away with, by my colleague’s routine rhetorical barb, is that the most impactful instances in our lives often hinge on decisions and events that we would give not as much as a moment’s thought. In modern times, the value of a barrel of crude oil in a land seemingly far away may have our local economic worlds plunging, or perhaps soaring.

It may be the quality of life for a bear near a polar ice shelf, or some school of fish, essential for human sustenance, left to wrangle with some voracious invasive species that once served as a traveler’s fun baby aquatic souvenir pet. A half-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures, inducing perennial coastal flood problems at trendy hi-rise condo parking decks in Miami, or for impoverished neighborhoods of sea-level dwellings in Luanda. A tyrannical, insular leader in a far-flung country that somehow was granted access to intercontinental missiles and bioweaponry. Residential growth encroaching a volcano, or a fault line, that is way past due for a cataclysm.

Whenever calamitous major events happen in our lifetimes, they never impact people the same way universally. You can have the benefit of wealth, knowledge, geography, connections and/or health working in your favor over that of your neighbors and your fellow citizens yet, at the wrong time on the wrong day, be the one unduly impacted by Life’s Lottery.

But the one thing about a global crisis -- when it is genuinely global in nature, and when one considers the indirect effects, no one individual is truly immune. Everyone is connected, and everyone, in some varying measure, is impacted.

Did you wish to enjoy watching the Atlanta Hawks close out their season at the freshly refurbished State Farm Arena this past April? Fresh off March Madness, and a Final Four tournament flushed with collegiate prospects in the fancy new stadium around the corner?

Were you looking forward to the start of the pro baseball and WNBA seasons, football practices, and futbol games, for our dear Boys and Girls of Summer? The NBA playoffs, the draft, Vegas Summer League, and a free agency period where our Hawks might flex their considerable cap space? The Olympic trials, and The Games themselves? Me too.

Never mind sporting events packed with fans… how about the summer blockbusters at the movies? The social clustering at festivals in the parks and parades in the streets that commence every year, just as soon as the temperatures warm and the cherry blossoms bloom?

What, pray tell, does any of that have to do with some wintertime outbreak of mysterious illness in mainland China?

In the dumbest of all dumb luck, a guy from France, working for a professional sports team based in Salt Lake City, tries to assuage American reporters that a malady spreading from China and surging with oft-fatal consequences through Iran, Italy (as Danilo Gallinari’s friends and family could attest at the time), and the Pacific Northwest was not all that big of a deal. For no good reason, one must add, aside from him trying to lighten the mood at increasingly distant press conferences.

Frenchie acquires said illness in short order, along with a teammate or two. In even shorter order, the Atlanta Hawks’ 2019-20 season, and future Hall of Famer Vince Carter’s sun-setting career, abruptly ends, just as things for the team looked to be getting zany and fun.

Of course, many of us have been impacted in ways far beyond the inconvenience of watching our favorite team ball outta control during the long slog back to NBA relevancy. If you are reading this far, and that’s amazing unto itself, I do hope for the best of health and prosperity for you, your colleagues, and especially your loved ones.

Frankly, though, the next time I must hear someone on TV murmur, “IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES…”, is one difficult time too many. I am so tired and sick of 2020, y’all!

A winter of uncertainty, a springtime of destabilization and despair, a summer of chokeholds, bullets, flames, tear gas, shattered glass and shuttered businesses, an autumn of polarization, destructive floods and fires, and “SARS-Cov-2: Pandemic Boogaloo,” with our medical and unsung professional heroes forced to take up recurring star roles. I talked so much trash about 2019, and The Teens in general, only for 2020 to do us all like this?

Allow me to share a prior December time, when a new year was on the horizon, and things weren’t so sweet.

After failing through years of balancing grad studies, a part-time internship, and second-shift jerbs here in Atlanta, I was completing my first full year of full-time 9-to-5 (8-to-6, really), a modest-paying Federal Gummint gig. The boss comes along and presents an offer she hopes I can’t refuse.

“Would you like to ring in the new year alone, in this office, reporting to my superiors?” Ummm… tell me more?

This wasn’t just any rando new year approaching. These days, you must sit down post-millennials and explain to them, as you might a small child, why pro wrestling star Chris Jericho ran around for years proclaiming himself, “Y2J.” (“Le Champiòn!” makes even less sense but, as usual, I digress.)

“Y2K” was a Big Friggin’ Deal. Rest his purple soul, Prince tried his best to warn us all about Two Thousand Zero Zero, because the mood sure wasn’t feeling like a party to literally end all parties. Anxieties were high.

We had just trudged through a year of deadly terrorist acts and terrorist trials, protests of police killings, downright absurd tornadoes, sudden and tragic fatalities of notables. The dot-com bubble that was touted to propel our global economy into the brave new millennium was leaking air. And here in the US of A, our immature and impeached commander-in-chief was on the outs, stressing everyone out along the way.

Not in the least because, with all the shenanigans going on in the world, he wouldn’t resist his depraved urge to summon someone less than half his age into his ovular office so he could just grab her by so, yeahhh… Y2K! The onset of a year that everyone could see coming except, in all their infinite wisdom, the smarty pants that constructed the digital electronic foundation of modern society.

We were told many of these innovative and inventive whiz-kids, over the decades, were not thinking forward enough to envision the first digit of a calendar year maybe one day needing to dial all the way up to 2.

Your solar-powered calculator might no longer function on January 1, 2000. Will your wristwatch? Will the whiz-bang gadgetry in your new car? Will the banks? Might the ATMs stop spitting out money? Might they involuntarily start, and would that be a good or a bad thing? Will the air traffic control tower go kaput, and will planes drop from the sky like autumn leaves? Will we spend the ensuing months rediscovering candles, firewood, books, bicycles and manual typewriters, because the electric grid collapsed to a state beyond repair?

None of this was my boss’ most pressing concern. Here in Atlanta, her intention was to pass the buck so while she was home stuffing her mattress with twenties or whatever, some lackey was overseeing her office, assuming the phones still worked, to report to her superiors on whether or not the Earth began melting as the clock struck one second past midnight.

“Oh, and for your heroic effort on behalf of our agency and our nation, Lethal, how about… time-and-a-half for overtime?” I flew home to Philadelphia for the holiday break and, no, I would not return for the balance of that month.

I hoped to spend New Year’s Eve nestled at home, quietly, with my dear parents. But Mommaweapon3 had other designs for my presence, too. Back in the days before The ‘Net and twerking, there was networking. The biggest Black business networking group in town announced the biggest Y2K bash in town would be on the penthouse floor of one of Philly’s tallest buildings.

Champagne will flow! Hors d’Oeuvres will be devoured! Slides will be Electric! Business cards will float through the air like confetti! Lethal might find an acceptable date, and he might be compelled to finally come home! (Momma’s exclamation, not mine.) Two hundred dollars a head, already paid in full before I could head to Hartsfield. This was not up for debate. “Bring your BEST suit!”, MW3 demanded, her way of inferring polka-dots would be tragically out of vogue in the coming year/decade/century/millennium.

With the hours ticking away before the clock struck midnight, my parents and I arrived at the Center City skyrise, in our Sunday Best on a Friday night, to find all the doors bolted shut. A glum security guard who probably was not offered time-and-a-half sauntered over from the lobby to share the predictable news. The fly-by-night Y2K Bougie Bash organizer, fearing what might happen to his bank account – because… Y2K – grabbed the loot out of his ATM and literally flew-by-night out of town. The networking group was too embarrassed to call people on their home landlines until it was way too late.

My folks had reserved a hotel across the street, intending for us to have a comfy room to sober up and sleep after the final champagne toasts were clanged. Suddenly, they were scrambling back there to test whether Domino’s Delivers at the penultimate hour of the final night of the 20^th Century. I had no designs on waiting around to find out. I ditched the tie, grabbed my change of clothes – “polka-dot silk shirt, CHECK…” – and hoofed it to Penn’s Landing.

Just across the Delaware River, Sisterweapon3 made it to her “party like it’s 1999”, what was billed as a grand shindig inviting thousands to pack into the region’s big new riverfront aquarium. Only, she would find, there was no valet, no coat checks for all the goose down and fake fur, the “bottomless champagne” turned out to be insufficient to fill half of anyone’s plastic flutes, the lobster never made it out of the tanks, and the only hors d’oeuvres that made it inside were cool, stale “soft” pretzels. One per attendee, not that you could wash the pretzel down with anything. This was upsetting, to her and her homegirls, that the belugas were better fed at the 11th hour of her Night To Remember.

My possibly final close-out meal consisted of Tastykakes, procured from a convenience store just before they closed for the evening, and a Snapple Iced Tea (thanks, China.) But I paid $2.50, not $250, so Advantage, Me. Awaiting the fireworks above the Ben Franklin Bridge, my mind raced over a dizzying number of matters, and not simply due to the sugar rush. “TEN!”

“Will I still have a job after spurning my boss’ pleas down in Atlanta and skipping town? Just in case, how much rent have I got saved up? How much longer can I hold out before diving back into grad school? Did… I… just accidentally meet my future soulmate a couple months ago at the library? I’m really gonna have to pursue that when I make it back to Georgia next week. I WILL be able to get back, right? Right?” “NINE!”

Those of us huddled around the riversides were putting on a good face, but the barometric pressure of what was, or was not, about to transpire in Y2K hovered over every half-cognizant adult’s head. Due to some combination of bumbling stupidity, woeful short-sightedness, and mindless avarice on the part of the grown-ups we entrusted to oversee our First World nations, there was no 95 percent confidence level about the world around us making it into 2000 unscathed. We can’t even get the boozy 1999 parties to go right… are the nuclear warheads secure at this hour? “EIGHT!”

We had been conditioned for generations that 2001 was supposed to be a Space Odyssey, decades of dreams directed beyond the celestial heavens, boldly venturing where no mere mortal had gone before. Surely, as 2001 neared, we would be sipping mimosas at Sunday brunches on Mars. But no. With one year and mere seconds to go, here we were, gravity-bound mortals, on the same shores the colonial fellas rocking deerskin breeches in 1773 stood. Huddled masses, yearning to find an all-night diner or something. O, how far we have come! “SEVEN!”

We got to “ZERO!” The fireworks didn’t misfire and take us out. Nobody died, not in unconventional ways. From all accounts, the globe seemed to be spinning okay. A passerby in a Flyers sweater who reeked of Jägermeister and Cheez Wiz jumped forward to give Yours Truly a celebratory smooch on the cheek, a fleeting reminder that, at least for the moment, Philly was still Philly.

The mood, as I strolled through the South Street bar scene and around downtown until sunrise, was oddly comforting. Through all the missteps and disappointments, we did it. We crazy kids did it! No, we won’t be walking on the moon any time soon. But we did manage to moonwalk straight into the new millennium, so that oughta count for something.

My spirits were lifted by yet another thought. Sooner or later, I will get to see if my lifelong favorite NBA team was finally getting up off the mat to become a true championship contender again. “HEY! SIXERS!”, bellowed a drunken fellow from the Fat Tuesday bar, pointing out my “76” ballcap with an assuring thumbs up (it’s Philly, but I’m reasonably sure that was a thumb).

The 76ers spent most of the prior 15 years degenerating from a title contender, to a likely also-ran, to a nightly ran-out-the-building laughingstock in The Association. But over the years leading up to 2000, slow but encouraging progress was being made. Four years before, the owner that ran the team into smithereens sold the club to the NHL Flyers owner. He, in turn, turned to a physical therapist previously contracted to make something, anything out of Shawn Bradley, handing the PT the keys to the whole basketball operation.

The new brass wanted to win, but they understood a competitive standard would take some time to build. They grabbed a Duke guy and made him the GM. They eventually brought in a defensive-minded mercenary with strong player connections to be the head coach.

This rebuild would take several seasons, to be sure, with draft and trade missteps along the way. But Philadelphia fans like myself were more than willing to be patient. That is because the team drafted somebody, #1 overall in 1996, that was clearly worth the wait.

That somebody was diminutive, barely 170 pounds soaking wet. But, he assembled a sturdy body made of copper wire, a golden handle, and a heart made of magnetic, titanium steel. His drives and dishes were daring feats defying physics and logic alike, and his clutch-shot capabilities had fans on their feet before the plays could even unfold. On-ball defense? Who cares? Turnovers? Served best with ice cream. Allen Iverson was a marvel, and he and his fans were willing to wait for the rest of his squad to catch up.

Coming off a strike-shortened season where he became the first scoring champ not named MJ or Hakeem the Dream since 1985, A.I.’s Sixers upset Doc Rivers’ Magic in the 1999 Playoffs, their first playoff appearance in eight years. Not even a second-round sweep versus the experienced Pacers could dampen the spirit of usually dour Philly fans. “Wait ‘Til Next Year!”

Can a cat this size, in his fourth pro season and certainly first as an All-Star, carry an NBA team on his back all the way to The Finals? To championships? As giddy fans, we just needed to stay positive and have the fortune to see this brave run through to its logical end. Y2K, please stay out of our way.

Years later, my bandwagon-jumping landed me with both feet in my current NBA home. Armored up with ownership and management regimes we can believe in, Atlanta Hawks fans bear a consensual giddiness about our team’s assemblage for the race to the 2021 Playoffs. Not the least of which is because there is an emerging All-Star, in Trae Young (Top-4 NBA averages of 29.6 PPG, 9.3 APG), to craft a competitive unit around.

But much remains to be assessed, with burning questions that will not likely be quenched at the start, or even the end, of this second pandemic-shortened season. The biggest one… Arrested Development, or Rested Development?

It is possible that lottery teams like the Hawks and their hosts this evening, the Chicago Bulls (8 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports Chicago) could benefit from having sustained their playing core through the disruption of last season, players distance-learning their way through the past nine months by focusing on personal conditioning, and by watching gobs of game tape together.

Indeed, there is the prevailing argument that having twice to thrice the time off the NBA floor could grant clubs like the Hawks and Bulls a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime competitive rest advantage. The perspective is particularly sound if the league stays true to its edict limiting the “load management” of weary veterans on more established teams. Layer onto this the usual injuries and illnesses that unfold, and it is conceivable we will witness vets on shallow, exceedingly star-reliant playoff teams feeling overtaxed against rested upstarts.

There is also the countering view, that nothing that forges a strong team better than trial by fire. The optimistic view toward the Phoenix Suns, a club stuck outside the postseason for over a decade, is steeped in the ability for everyone to observe their winning maturation during the summertime Bubble bonanza that concluded the 2019-20 regular season. Atlanta and Chicago (22-43) were not afforded this opportunity. Accordingly, it is the Suns (26-39 pre-Bubble) who get ESPN’s first spotlight of the season this evening, versus Luka and the Mavs.

The curtain closed on the Hawks (20-47) in March as they dropped the fourth of their final five games in an overtime home loss to the lowly New York Knicks. That earned Atlanta another Top-10 lottery pick to add to the silo in the form of defensively versatile big-man Onyeka Okongwu, who will need time to catch up once he returns from his minor injury.

There are a host of new veterans in the mix, including Gallinari, Rajon Rondo, former Bull Kris Dunn (a #5 draft pick just two years before Trae), Solomon Hill, and big-fish free agent pickup Bogdan Bogdanovic. But with the ability to measure non-Bubble teams’ on-court practices in weeks, rather than months, with the inability by Atlanta to cut their teeth versus live, playoff-caliber competition all this time, are teams like the Knicks that far off in the rear-view mirror?

The pace of this season’s pandemic-truncated 72-game schedule is unforgiving for all NBA teams, not merely those on the come-up. Based on the first 37 games revealed, there will be significantly more instances where the Hawks appear for their third game in four nights (13 games so far; 20 scheduled last season), or fourth game in six nights (15 scheduled so far; 19 scheduled in 2019-20).

In addition to seven pairs of contests on back-to-back nights, and counting, Atlanta’s first-half schedule includes three consecutive-game road opponents, all of whom are favored foes in the Eastern Conference (Brooklyn next week, Boston in February, Miami as the calendar turns to March). The only four-game homestand currently scheduled at State Farm Arena (Lakers, Mavericks, Jazz, Raptors), likely before a mere smattering of NBA fans, will be far from a cakewalk.

Forecasting also involves the rosy assumption that the NBA’s protocols and arena-site regulations will keep players and staffs COVID-free while allowing games to tip off as scheduled. Football and baseball teams that went gung-ho on their seasons beyond bubbly environs withered through shortened rosters, postponements, cancellations, and other sudden scheduling shifts. In basketball, there is no 53-man roster, nor are there any “offensive line” or “pitching staff” specialists to isolate when the pervasive threat of an outbreak looms.

The Hawks must rely on not only each other, but their opponents, to keep rosters healthy and capable of competition, thereby keeping an already crammed first-half schedule from becoming a mad-dash scramble on the other end of March’s All-Star Break.

The teams that emerge from this season smelling like a rose will not only be those with top-flight talent staying upright, but those who have stocked their rosters with resiliency in mind. Each of Atlanta’s strategic newcomers is, arguably at worst, a substantial upgrade from an outgoing contributor during 2019’s season opener. Without naming names of the duly departed, the additions also include 2020 trade-deadline acquisition Clint Capela, whose defense and rebounding around the rim should spark a sea change in Atlanta’s ability to thwart opposing scoops to the hoop.

The offseason work put in by basketball-ops executive Travis Schlenk and the administrative crew gives third-year head coach Lloyd Pierce and his own upgraded staff more options to compete and succeed from the outset. If the Hawks’ starters are performing well, there is less trepidation toward giving them a breather. When they are struggling, there is less concern about making a bad situation even more dire.

Such are the benefits of possessing quality roster depth. But the pressure is on LP to assess, in real time, the optimal lineups and rotations in pursuit of victory. Hawk players’ hearts, guts, and brains will certainly be tested along the quest to attain playoff-worthy competency. Yet unlike the fraudulent fictional Wizard frantically pulling levers in the Land of Oz, there will be no curtain for Pierce to hide behind when the results of his gameday decisions disappoint.

Resiliency will be measured by Atlanta’s ability to build positive runs in games, deploying multiple lineups, while swiftly stemming the runs by their opponents. It will be measured by their ability to cobble together winning streaks, and to keep the errors in one loss from bleeding into the next.

Resiliency will be measured by opponents dreading what is coming but, aside from Trae and John Collins (21.6 PPG, 10.1 RPG, 1.6 BPG), not knowing where it will be coming from. For a club that hopes to be more than just a worthy Play-in candidate, weeks-long losing skids are henceforth impermissible. Young going for forty, Collins hunting for 20-10s in his contract year, while their Hawks are down twenty, must become Yesterday’s News.

While the early schedule is high-paced, the first nine games of Atlanta’s slate feature just one opponent that appeared in the 2020 NBA Playoffs, although the healthier, star-infused Nets and the Hawk-trouncing Grizzlies are noteworthy in this list. The Bulls made no significant moves to upgrade their roster, unless one counts lottery prize Patrick Williams and veteran guard Garrett Temple, the latter recently recovering from multiple symptoms of COVID-19.

However, Chicago did make long-awaited moves that are hoped to infuse new life into a mostly young but dormant core. The Garpax regime is no more, as Arturas Karnisovas arrived last spring from the Nuggets to help clean house. Karnisovas previously helped turn Denver’s fortunes around after he wooed free agent Paul Millsap from Atlanta in 2017.

After teasing the Bulls’ fanbase with the idea of retaining Jim Boylen, AK aimed his sights toward longtime Oklahoma City head coach Billy Donovan. The Thunder were supposed to be cellar-dwellers in 2020 after parting ways with several of Donovan’s biggest stars. But with the aid of a de facto player-coach in Chris Paul sticking around, OKC was instead a first-round playoff threat, a status that Chicago, whose last two playoff wins came with Rondo starting at the point in 2017, would graciously accept. But with all due respect to Thaddeus Young, Donovan no longer has an influential veteran presence the likes of CP3, or even Steven Adams, at his disposal.

It is notable that Donovan would choose to break up with Sam Presti and his growing treasure trove of future picks to latch onto this rebuild in the Second City. Perhaps it is because Billy D trusts he can make more than Boylen could out of versatile super-scorer Zach LaVine (career-highs of 25.5 PPG, 4.8 RPG, 4.2 APG, 1.5 SPG) and the surface-scratching young trio of Coby White, Wendell Carter, and Lauri Markkanen. Kirkland Signature oenophile Otto Porter, who returned from season-long injury just in time for last season to end, is only 27 years of age, and still has a chance to make his production match his Richie-rich contract in this contract year.

Garpax, though, left behind precious little wiggle room in the salary cap for Karnisovas to flex in his first year, and little useful support along the back lines for Donovan to give his fledgling corps a boost. Chicago’s fortunes improved only slightly when Dunn replaced Tomas Satoransky in the starting lineup last year; the emerging White will assume that point guard spot this season. After Satoransky, Cristiano Felicio, Ryan Arcidiacono, Denzel Valentine, Chandler Hutchison, and Luke Kornet seem to be hanging around the United Center only long enough for their guaranteed contracts to expire.

Amid this rough economy, with only a handful of NBA head coaching positions out there, long-term job security is likely of paramount importance to Donovan. He is likely assured of the opportunity to see a rebuild through if the playoff-push with this year’s crop falters early, and Chicago still has all its future first-rounders available if they need to start from scratch yet again. Whereas in Atlanta the heat will be on the coaching staff, in Chi-town the onus is on LaVine and the playable players to learn from Donovan and grow in meaningful ways together, lest they transition from aspirants to assets before the NBA’s trade deadline arrives.

Atlanta Hawks fandom, at its height, is a perpetual state of cautious optimism. Beginning with ownership on down to the final spots on the roster, the feeling around town is that there is as much to look forward to as at any time in the past several seasons, if not decades.

Whenever this collective, in its current shape, makes its big breakthrough, outshines its expectations, and achieves its greatest triumphs, I want more than anything for all Squawkers to be around to savor it, to have the ability to be together, in the arena, the forums and the streets, and rejoice in it. Whether times are looking up, or looking bleak, I want every Hawks fan, young and old, to be able to see this through.

To do so, we must do what it takes to help ourselves, our loved ones, and our neighbors to persevere. Our willingness to do so acknowledges an understanding that we are all connected in ways large and small, and that our ability to unwittingly spew infinitesimal droplets of harmful viral load should not be the only way we affect one another’s lives.

Our incremental decisions and risks we take can have consequences impacting others, not necessarily immediate, nor detrimental, nor obvious to the naked eye. But the wise decisions we make individually may help us all see things through. Get your teapot ready; a couple stories come to mind.

A Polish prisoner during the Holocaust and his German captors, along a “death march” to a concentration camp during the final years of World War II, were under siege from Allied aircraft. Taking a wise but daring risk, the 16-year-old and other prisoners broke away from the doomed Nazi troops and proceeded to take cover in the Bavarian woods. When a tank neared him, the escapee recognized the US star and took the calculated risk to run toward it.

An African-American GI appeared from the tank, and the escapee dropped to his knees and declared the only three English words his mother taught him: “God Bless America!” Assessing the emaciated kid as a non-enemy, the soldier pulled him into the tank.

Liberated, the young man was eventually rescued by an aunt in Paris, winding his way from France to Australia to the United States, earning his J.D. from Harvard. What does this have to do with anything? The lawyer and future White House adviser’s harrowing tale of survival would serve as a source of inspiration for a stepson from his second marriage. In just a few weeks, that stepson will be overseeing America’s foreign affairs as our newest U.S. Secretary of State.

The horrific atrocities committed by Nazis and fascists across Europe during the period through World War II compelled one Serbian sculptor. Dozens of his works memorializing victims and resistors from that period are peppered throughout what was then Yugoslavia, including the “Stone Flower” monument (1966) seen above.

The sculptor became a respected university architecture professor and, later, mayor in Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s capital city. Yet he continued to speak unabashedly afoul of Slobodan Milosevic and his “Make Yugoslavia Not Too Shabby Again for the First Time in a While” nationalist tactics.  As a dissident of the president, he suffered through threats of death and violent attacks by Milosevic’s henchmen, along with seizures of his university work and a spiteful disinformation campaign by the state-run media.

Exiling to Paris and eventually Vienna, the renowned sculptor outlived the breakup of Yugoslavia, Milosevic’s autocratic regime in Serbia and, eventually, the accused war criminal Milosevic himself. What does that have to do with anything? During the height of the geopolitical breakup of Yugoslavia, Montenegrin Serbs Dragan and Koviljka Bogdanovic dared to come together and bring a child into the world. They knew, precisely, which honorary was honorable enough to be worthy of their son’s name. Sorry, Slobodan.

Bogdan and the new cast members cast the Hawks’ near-term potential in a different light. Even with Capela (doubtful, Achilles), Rondo (quarantine restrictions), Dunn (knee cartilage), Snell (foot bone inflammation) and Okongwu (same inflammation, different foot) unavailable for the opening games, the Hawks have a depth advantage over the Bulls and other NBA clubs that have been shelved for months, along with a coaching-continuity edge. What remains to be seen is if this team has figured out how to exploit these gains.

There is no reason for Atlanta’s feeling-out process to be accompanied by listless losses, no reason to wait for growth and camaraderie to take hold before the winning streaks start, and no reason for “moral victories” to become the moral of this season’s story. Defeat wayward teams like the Hornets now, consistently, while they are on the schedule. That way, if 2021 becomes The Year of the Murder Hornets that 2020 was supposed to be, and we all get chased back into bubbly settings, Atlanta will have compiled enough Ws to keep from being left on the outs and getting stung again.  

In this season and in those to come, may our Atlanta Hawks be as prosperous on the hardwood as they look promising on paper. More importantly, through these years, may all Hawks fans around the world be healthy and stable enough to enjoy their team’s ride toward prominence. Preferably together, as the holiday song goes, if the fates allow.

Because -- just between you and I -- ultimately, all our fates are intertwined. That’s the tea!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours. And… Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[kg01]

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 Hawks Fans!!!

 

 

@lethalweapon3...as always - you the Man!  How we have all missed these Game Day writeups! I always finish wanting more.

 

 

 

[lethalweapon3]

Y'all had better not give me 9 months to draft a gamethread again!

On the Bulls' side of the floor, Satoransky and two-way guard Devon Dotson are quarantining (like Rondo, we're going to hear a LOT about "Health & Safety Protocol") and are listed as questionable for today's action. Thaddeus Young is working through a leg infection and is out of commission.

 

~lw3

 

[JayBirdHawk]

The Bulls are also a non-Bubble participant so no excuses tonight for the Hawks on that front.

[bleachkit]

Hawks are slight favorites for this week follow Vegas lines.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

I have to admit. I missed these pre-game write-ups.

LOL @ the Y2K section.  The craziest thing I did during that time, was fill my bathtub up with water, before we hit the club for New Year's Eve.

My thought . . . if something did happen to essential services, I'd at least have about 35 gallons of fresh water I can use.

 

[macdaddy]

[Peoriabird]

32 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

The Bulls are also a non-Bubble participant so no excuses tonight for the Hawks on that front.

There will be plenty of them believe me!

[lethalweapon3]

Boylen's Bulls waxed the Hawks in all three games last calendar year (once in early November, twice in December), by deficits of 20, 34 (both without JC), and (without Trae) 35. In one of those odd quirks of the NBA scheduling that only ever seem to befall the Hawks, they played Chicago in all three games on the back end of a back-to-back; the front-end foes in the last two games were (vs.) Milwaukee and (at) Miami. With Dunn and the Bulls daring anyone other than Trae (1-for-14 on 3FGs vs. CHI last season) to score, Jabari Parker and Alex Len led the way to slaughter in the first two contests.

Chicago has bested the Hawks in the last five meetings at the United Center.

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

1 minute ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Boylen's Bulls waxed the Hawks in all three games last calendar year (once in early November, twice in December), by deficits of 20, 34 (both without JC), and (without Trae) 35. In one of those odd quirks of the NBA scheduling that only ever seem to befall the Hawks, they played Chicago in all three games on the back end of a back-to-back; the front-end foes in the last two games were (vs.) Milwaukee and (at) Miami. With Dunn and the Bulls daring anyone other than Trae (1-for-14 on 3FGs vs. CHI last season) to score, Jabari Parker and Alex Len led the way to slaughter in the first two contests.

Chicago has bested the Hawks in the last five meetings at the United Center.

~lw3

[Gray Mule]

He's back!  Boston tea party and all!  Bulls have run over us enough.  We'll have no more bull feathers for our first season game.  This is, for the first time in a while, our season of hope.

GO ATL HAWKS !!

[NBASupes]

Merry Christmas and Go Hawks!

[JayBirdHawk]

Fother Mucker!!! Sigh.

 

This is looking like a lemon purchase.

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[terrell]

2 hours ago, Peoriabird said:

There will be plenty of them believe me!

Well we are missing half our team so............lol

Edited December 23, 2020 by terrell

[macdaddy]

what's all this elbow and ankle soreness stuff.   If that kept me from working i'd never  work another day in my life.  

[terrell]

27 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

lol. No way theyre gonna keep Goodwin from not playing, with him knowing Rondo and Dunn are out..

Edited December 23, 2020 by terrell

[ATLHawks3]

If he was hurt, he shouldn't have played in the preseason. 

[macdaddy]