Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks are a franchise that has lived more lives than most NBA teams can imagine. Born in 1946 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, representing a cluster of small cities straddling the Iowa-Illinois border, the team migrated to Milwaukee and then to St. Louis before finally settling in Atlanta in 1968. That restlessness is baked into the franchise's DNA - a team perpetually searching for the right combination of city, stars, and circumstances to become what it has always believed it could be. The lone championship came in 1958, when Bob Pettit and the St. Louis Hawks toppled the mighty Boston Celtics, a feat that feels increasingly mythic with each passing decade.

Atlanta gave the Hawks a stage worthy of their ambitions. State Farm Arena sits in the heart of downtown, and on its best nights - when the crowd is locked in and the team is running - it pulses with the energy of a city that has always been more culturally dynamic than its sports franchises have reflected. Dominique Wilkins, the Human Highlight Film, became the franchise's most iconic figure through the 1980s, turning the Hawks into a League Pass favorite with his aerial artistry even as the team could never quite break through the Eastern Conference's elite. The Wilkins-era Hawks were thrilling and frustrating in equal measure, a combination that has become something of a franchise tradition.

The modern Hawks have cycled through eras with dizzying speed. The 2014-15 team that went 60-22 with four All-Stars and a beautiful passing offense felt like a breakthrough, but it dissolved almost as quickly as it formed. Trae Young's arrival in 2018 injected the franchise with genuine star power - his 2021 playoff run to the Eastern Conference Finals, punctuated by a shimmy at Madison Square Garden, was the kind of moment that can define a franchise for a generation. Whether Atlanta can build a championship-caliber roster around Young's singular brilliance remains the central question, but the Hawks have never lacked for confidence. In a city that runs on ambition and reinvention, the Hawks fit right in.