OPINION: The Atlanta Hawks are back to .500 and are a heck of a lot of fun to watch

Atlanta, Ga.-I know you have heard me say this before but you really should take a moment and come down to the new and improved State Farm Arena, formerly known as Philips Arena, and see the new and improved Atlanta Hawks play. The team is a lot of fun to watch and worth a couple of tickets. Let me explain.

Wednesday night was the Hawks home opener against the equally as young and fun to watch Dallas Mavericks. The energy in the building is always good on opening night, after almost 10 years of covering the team I have seen big crowds to start the home side of the season before. Wednesday night’s crowd had a little more to take in as the arena has been modernized with a barber shop, restaurant, to name a few things. There is a new Hawks Shop on the mezzanine level and for your viewing pleasure two scoreboards on either side of the player benches to better keep up with the in-game stats and out of town games. The mid-court overhead scoreboard is also a massive marvel of technological wonder (see photo).

Now about the team. On top of the fact that Vince Carter is a starting forward and a major influence on the team already, rookie point guard Trae Young has been as good as advertised, if not better. On Wednesday he would pick up three first half fouls before coming back in the game and playing a phenomenal fourth quarter. Young’s 17 points (10 from the free-throw line, 8-10 from the line during the fourth quarter) were all clutch and continue to sound the alarm throughout the league that the Hawks are young and talented. He scored 35 points and dished 11 assists the previous game in Cleveland.

Veterans Kent Bazemore (who scored 32 points on Wednesday night, a career-high), Taurean Prince (nine points during the fourth quarter) and Alex Len have all been important to the good play of late and will have to continue to do so if this team is going to win more games than they lose this season.

I didn’t mention last year’s NBA All-Rookie team selection and fan favorite John Collins, who has not played yet this season as he gets healthy from an injury.

Down by 20 points to Dallas after the first quarter and by just 10 points at halftime, Atlanta came back to take their first lead of the game on three Young free-throws with less than three minutes remaining in the game. The Hawks won the game 111-104 while also evening their overall record at 2-2, the first time this franchise has been at .500 since the 2016-17 season. They were never .500 last year. How can you not root for that?

Dallas was up by as much as 26 points during the home opener and the Hawks never quit. There have been times last year that the team’s effort would not have waned but their skill set would not have allowed them to finish the comeback. This is not that season by the early looks of things. You have to want to root for a good basketball team here after the seasons the Braves, Atlanta United and Georgia Bulldogs have been having and are still having.

The expanded seating section in the upper rafters, the Chick-fil-A Zone, will make it even more possible for fans to get tickets for when Lebron James and the Lakers or Steph Curry and the reigning champion Golden State Warriors come to town this season.  

There’s plenty of room, available cheap tickets (I can’t say as much for the parking downtown) and a very good team on the court, so there’s no reason to not pull for the Atlanta Hawks this season. They are for real and if nothing else really fun to watch.

“What a fun night that was,” said Hawks first-year head coach Lloyd Pierce during his first home court post-game press conference.