ATLANTA, GEORGIA - MAY 30: A fan wearing a jersey of Trae Young #11 of the Atlanta Hawks sits prior to game four of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals between the Atlanta Hawks and the New York Knicks at State Farm Arena on May 30, 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
This Year’s NBA Champion Will Bring A Title To A Cursed Sports City
At many points this year, the Atlanta Hawks’ season has seemed to teeter on the brink of destruction. They started out with a sub-.500 record under former coach Lloyd Pierce before switching to Nate McMillan at midseason; they were heavily picked against by the media going into the first round of the playoffs against the New York Knicks; they fell into huge deficits against the Philadelphia 76ers multiple times during the second round; they had to win without superstar Trae Young to keep things even with the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night. Each time, the Hawks did something very un-Atlanta-like: they overcame the adversity rather than succumbing to it.
As Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it after Game 7 of the Sixers series, “We’re not accustomed to seeing Atlanta teams play like this when it matters most, but by the time these Hawks are done they might have reconfigured the way we — and the world — view Atlanta sports.”
It’s about time. Since 1980, no city in pro sports has underachieved more than Atlanta in terms of winning pro championships.1 Atlanta has won just one title in that time span, which is about 4.75 less than you’d expect if you made the simple-yet-egalitarian assumption that all teams in a league had an equal shot at a championship each year.
No city’s sports fans are sheltered from the agony of defeat. By definition, only one team in a particular league can win the championship, so seasons in even the most successful cities are likely to end in heartbreak just as often as they end in Champagne baths.
But some have undoubtedly had it better than others. Among the “Big Five” of North American professional sports,2 just five metro areas — New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area — have hogged nearly half (43 percent) of the 186 available titles since 1980. A Lakers letdown, for example, might be softened with an L.A. Kings victory in the Stanley Cup. For other cities, the pain is more unabated. Seasons upon seasons of coming up short can imbue a sense of fatalism in even the most optimistic supporters.
But at least for a moment, however fleeting, that is about to change. After the Los Angeles Clippers were bounced from the NBA playoffs on Wednesday night, we’re left with three teams — the Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns — from cities ranked among the nine most title-starved towns in professional sports over the past four decades,3 and one of those will deliver the tinsel that has long evaded its residents. It’s even more symbolically significant that the NBA will cut against the title-hoarding narrative: The league has been the epitome of unfairness, with just 12 cities hogging all the championship glory since 1980. (Los Angeles alone has taken home 11 of those 41 titles.)
Milwaukee is certainly not in a region bereft of title-winning.4 Green Bay, which lies just two hours to the north up I-43, is home to the perennially successful Packers, who have won two Super Bowls since 1980 and played a chunk of their home games through the 1990s in Milwaukee. But the city’s two full-time franchises — the Bucks and Brewers — have been defined by years of mediocrity. Neither has been outright awful; the Bucks have gone just above .500 since the 1980-81 season, while the Brew Crew has treaded slightly below that mark. But more often than not, each club has faltered when it mattered the most.
