Hawks clinch rare winning season, playoffs next

Reaching the summit has been more rewarding than the journey for the Hawks.

Monday’s win over Minnesota locked up the Hawks’ first winning campaign since the lockout shortened 1998-99 season.

The playoffs are next. The Hawks’ magic number to secure their second straight playoff berth is two, according to Elias Sports. The Hawkslead Chicago, the eighth-place team in the Eastern Conference, by 9 games with 11 games remaining. That number could shrink to one after the Bulls host Detroit Tuesday.

For teams like San Antonio, the Hawks’ opponent Wednesday at Philips Arena, winning seasons are routine. Only championship seasons get the blood pumping.

For the Hawks, it’s hard not to pause for a moment just to acknowledge the difficult road traveled.

“When we first started, we had a bunch of young kids trying to learn to play NBA basketball,” Hawkscoach Mike Woodson said. “And every year we’ve grown. It’s been a rocky road. But we’ve gotten better. I tip my hat to the guys in our locker room. Those guys have worked on their individual games in the summer, and they all bought into what me and my staff were trying to do.”

Only Woodson, his staff and forward Josh Smith were around at the start, when the Hawks trudged through a 13-win season five years ago. Many other players have passed through the Hawks’ locker room since.

The only thing that piled up faster than the losses, Smith said, were the Hawks’ critics. That’s why he, as much as anyone, smiled all the way out of the building Monday night.

“It feels good to prove people wrong as a team and as an organization,” he said. “You get tired of being told you’re not good enough or you can’t do something. And that’s all anybody had to say about us for a long time. So to be in this position now, with a chance to not only make the playoffs but also a chance to snag home court advantage and put up the best season this city has seen in years, it means a lot.

“It shows you just how much we’ve grown as a group. Myself and Joe [Johnson] and Marvin [Williams] and some of the other guys that have been around the last three or four years, we’ve gone from the bottom to where we are now and it’s a good feeling.”

Good enough to keep the Hawkshungry for more, according to Johnson, who played on a Phoenix team that led the league in wins during his final season with the franchise.

“Once you get a taste of winning, it drives you even harder to get to that next level,” Johnson said. “A winning season is great. There’s no denying that. But the real test is seeing how much better we can get. We’ve still got a lot left to do this season, and I’m talking before we even start thinking about the playoffs.”

The Hawks have already achieved one of their main goals, which was to better last year’s 37-win total and secure a winning season.

“Me knowing the dynamics of where we’ve been and where we’re going, it’s really just unbelievable,” Woodson said. “It takes a lot of work to get to this point. And this team, and these guys, they’ve made major strides in a short period of time when some people didn’t think it was quick enough.”