Daily NBA Fix 4-13-14: Atlanta Hawks Set For Annual Postseason Elimination
By Phil Watson
Welcome to the Daily NBA Fix for Sunday, April 13, the morning after the Atlanta Hawks and Dallas Mavericks punched their playoff tickets with victories.
For the Hawks, it might be sort of a bittersweet experience. Atlanta is in the postseason for the seventh consecutive season—the longest streak in the Eastern Conference—but has not advanced past the conference semifinals in the last six trips.
They’ve gone out in the first round in each of the last two seasons, but it r
uns much deeper than that in the ATL.
The Hawks moved from St. Louis to Atlanta in 1968 and lost in the Western Division Finals in both 1969 and 1970. But since the NBA realigned to the Eastern/Western Conference format in 1970, the Hawks have never advanced past the conference semifinals. That’s 43 years and 27 playoff appearances later.
It’s fair to say their prospects of ending that streak are grim. With the exception of the New York Knicks in the lockout-shortened 1999 season, no No. 8 seed has ever advanced beyond the conference semifinals.
The Hawks have already locked up the eighth seed in the East; they trail the seventh-place Charlotte Bobcats by four games, so the Hawks will get either Indiana or Miami in the first round, whichever one wraps up the top seed in the East.
In a season replete with tales of tanking … ahem, “rebuilding,” Atlanta is where no franchise wants to find itself. The Hawks are in the dreaded middle ground—not bad enough to get into the lottery, not good enough to actually compete for the championship.
Still, it’s hard not to congratulate the Hawks for playing the game the right way. When All-Star center Al Horford went down with a torn pectoral muscle in December, the easiest thing in the world for the Hawks to do would have been to concede defeat … lots and lots of defeat.
But they hung around, hung in the race and put together a decent finishing kick to put away the Knicks for the final playoff spot in the East.
The Daily NBA Fix will deliver highlights, game capsules, the top and bottom five players, the dreaded Goose Egg, Clean and Sober and Ironman awards, we’ll recap who’s circling the drain, there will be some interesting pieces of relevant (and not-so-relevant) information and we’ll look at today’s daily lines for those people who like to wager a buck or two.
Check out the highlights below from the night that was, then get into the game capsules (home teams in CAPS).