Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks are one of the NBA’s oldest franchises, though their roots lie far from Georgia. Founded in 1946 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, the club began in the neighbouring Mississippi River towns of Moline and Rock Island (Illinois) and Davenport (Iowa). The name honoured the Black Hawk War of 1832, a short but brutal conflict that reshaped the Upper Midwest.

That war began when Black Hawk, a Sauk leader, disputed a land cession that had pushed his people west of the Mississippi. Convinced the deal was unjust, he led around 1,000 followers — men, women, and children — back to their homelands along the Rock River. Panic among settlers brought in state militias and U.S. Army regulars. Skirmishes followed — Stillman’s Run being the most notorious early clash — and the campaign drew in figures who would loom large in later American history, including a young Abraham Lincoln serving in the Illinois militia and future president Zachary Taylor as a regular officer. The war ended at the Mississippi’s edge at the Battle of Bad Axe, where hundreds of Native people were killed while attempting to flee across the river. Black Hawk was captured and later dictated his autobiography, giving a rare Native account of the conflict. For the United States, the defeat of Black Hawk opened the way to rapid settlement and mining in what is now Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa; for the Sauk and Meskwaki, it was another devastating loss of land and life. Naming the original basketball team after Black Hawk reflected both the memory and mythology of resistance — a nod to courage, defiance and endurance.

The franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1951, shortening the name to the Hawks and keeping the raptor as a fierce, portable emblem. A second relocation took them to St. Louis, where the club reached its first sustained peak. With Bob Pettit — one of the NBA’s early greats — and running mates such as Cliff Hagan and Slater Martin, the Hawks won the 1958 NBA Championship, one of the rare interruptions to Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics dynasty. In 1968, amid shifting arena deals and southern growth, the team moved again, this time to Atlanta, where it has stayed ever since.

Atlanta’s own story is one of repeated reinvention. Founded in the 1830s as a railway terminus (it was literally called “Terminus” before becoming “Atlanta”), the city became a key Confederate hub during the American Civil War and was famously burned during General Sherman’s 1864 march. The post-war rebuild produced the “Gate City of the South”, a commercial centre that later grew into an aviation powerhouse; Hartsfield–Jackson would become the world’s busiest airport, while Delta Air Lines anchored the region’s rise. In the mid-20th century, Atlanta branded itself “the city too busy to hate”, and became a command post of the Civil Rights Movement — home to Dr Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a generation of Black leadership that would shape American politics and culture. Hosting the 1996 Summer Olympics signalled Atlanta’s global ambitions, even as the city wrestled with the legacies of growth, race and redevelopment. The Hawks’ identity — fast, resilient, forward-looking — fits neatly into this arc from ash and rails to runways and skyscrapers.

The Hawks’ badge today is sleek and deliberate: a red-and-white roundel with a stylised hawk’s head — the fan-named “Pac-Man” — projecting speed, focus and menace. It’s a simple, modern mark that plays well with the city’s own design language. In recent seasons the club has also leaned into Atlanta’s history with kits that honour local icons, including MLK-themed uniforms, linking the franchise’s present to the city’s wider civic story.

On the floor, Atlanta has produced its own highlights. The 1980s belonged to Dominique Wilkins — “The Human Highlight Film” — whose aerial assaults made the Omni one of the league’s great stages. Later, under Mike Budenholzer, a deep, team-centric group won 60 games in 2014–15 and put the club back on the map. Most recently, Trae Young’s range and swagger powered the Hawks to the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals, reigniting the city’s belief that something bigger might be building.

The Atlanta Hawks are more than a basketball team. They carry the memory of Black Hawk’s defiance, the triumph of St. Louis, and Atlanta’s journey from railway embers to Olympic host and Civil Rights capital. They are Dominique’s dunks and Trae Young’s audacity. Their badge is a hawk’s head — sharp, unblinking — a bird of prey for a city that keeps its eyes forward.