Atlanta Hawks: The Dominique Wilkins Question

On Tuesday evening when Kasim Reed, the mayor of Atlanta, called a press conference to talk about the recent furore surrounding the Atlanta Hawks, the focus was all on one man. No, not the mayor himself, but the 6’8′ figure that stood beside him.

Dominique Wilkins was in the building.

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The Hawks have a loyal, and hardcore, group of supporters that attend games, the problem as everyone knows is that there aren’t enough of them to regularly fill out Philips Arena. The reason for that is, one way or another, the franchise has failed to capture the imagination of the entire city of Atlanta for the best part of 20 years.

Philips Arena might be nicknamed the Highlight Factory, but even that was a spill over from bygone days, and the team’s time playing in the old Omni Coliseum. In 25 years of playing at the Omni, nobody quite lit the arena, or the city, up like Wilkins did. Known as the “Human Highlight Reel” for his explosive and athletic variety of dunks, in truth he’s the man responsible for the current arena’s nickname.

With the complex mess that has been the Hawks’ recent race scandal, the team needs to earn back the trust of the community. Steve Koonin, the team’s CEO, has already put a number of measures in place to try and facilitate positive change, such as reaching out to community leaders for open discussions on race, and creating a role of chief diversity officer within the franchise.

As much as those actions will help, they’re unlikely to completely overturn the Atlanta community’s sentiment towards figures in ownership or the front office of the Hawks. The only way in which it might be possible to do that is if the face of the franchise was to become someone who holds instant respect and credibility with the fans.

This is where Wilkins could come in, as arguably the greatest player in the franchise’s history, and a man who is generally synonymous with the Atlanta Hawks. There had been mutterings of Wilkins interest in buying the team over the past week or so, but Hawks fans were waiting for something a little more concrete before letting excitement kick in.

In Tuesday’s press conference, confirmation of Wilkins’ intentions arrived.

Dominque Wilkins says he does have interest in buying the Hawks.
— Chris Vivlamore (@CVivlamoreAJC) September 16, 2014

On the same day that it was confirmed a statue of Wilkins was in the works, it almost seemed fitting.

The 54-year-old’s jersey is one of three to have been retired and hang from the rafters in Philips Arena, and with good cause too. Nobody has played more games than Wilkins for the Hawks, and in those 882 games he managed to rack up a total of 23,292 points, comfortably making him the franchise’s all-time leading scorer.

Wilkins’ affinity with the team doesn’t end there either. For the past ten years, Wilkins has served as the Hawks vice president of basketball operations, in a role that has seen him mainly act as a community liaison, and good-will ambassador. On top of that, Wilkins acts as the color commentator on Hawks’ broadcasts for Fox Sports South, alongside long serving play-by-play man Bob Rathbun.

So, as that evidences, for many years Dominique Wilkins has already been the face and voice of the Atlanta Hawks, but what would be interesting now is whether he’d be prepared to bring that more to the forefront.

The sale of the Hawks, and the search for their new owner is unlikely to be a simple process, as you would expect the NBA to be especially careful in vetting potential investors. Yet, if anyone was going to seem like an easy choice for the league, it would surely be Wilkins, or a group that he may head.

There’s still a long way to go before this process plays out in its entirety, but have no doubt about, if the fans were to be polled on who they’d want to own the team, Dominique Wilkins would be a runaway winner.