On Monday night, the Atlanta Hawks got a much needed win the Boston Celtics. The victory felt especially sweet for the fans and players. With all the recent history between the two teams, its easy to understand why.
Atlanta Hawks fans enjoyed that one. The team played well all-around, against the 2nd place team in the East no less, to snag a win on the road. While it was a good win, this one carried a lot more weight than your average regular season game. That’s easy to understand when the triumph came against the Boston Celtics.
The Hawks and Celtics have been rivals before. Back in their St. Louis days, a meeting between the two in the Finals was regular. When Dominique Wilkins was earning his statue here, the two teams had some fierce battles.
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The epic 7-game heavyweight bout between Larry Bird and the Human Highlight Reel easily comes to mind.
The almost-epic upset of the top seeded Big Three Celtics added to their history. But presently, this rivalry is beginning to get some new life.
It began last year, with Atlanta’s first round playoff series win over the squad from Beantown. Paul Millsap and Isaiah Thomas duked it out in a Hawks overtime loss. Dennis Schroder and Thomas also began their feud with an in game altercation.
And, most importantly, the Hawks took a series win in Game 6. However, the Celtics got their revenge by poaching Atlanta stalwart Al Horford in free agency.
Come 2017, the Atlanta-Boston rivalry has become even bigger. One reason comes from outside of basketball. The New England Patriots stealing a Super Bowl win, after being down 28-3, from the Atlanta Falcons added plenty of hurt between these cities.
In another Boston win, a national audience got to watch another almost-epic performance from the Hawks as they almost came back from 20 points down against the Celtics. The game was classic rivalry material, as it was Tim Hardaway Jr’s coming out party, and Isaiah Thomas might have said some stuff about Schroder’s family. Yep, that sounds like a rivalry beginning to bloom.
So just as the bad blood between these two was climaxing, we had Monday night’s game in Boston. Schroder started talking before the game even began, reiterating what Thomas had said last time around.
Atlanta secured a relatively easy win in the Garden, almost rubbing in the victory. But during that win, Dwight Howard might have brought this rivalry full circle. The native Atlantan was fouled hard by Horford, which he didn’t take too kindly to.
After a probably-too-emphatic slam ended Superman’s night, Dwight had set the tone for this match-up in the future. He gives the Hawks the mean streak the present-Celtic Horford never could. Whether its our big man or the East’s leading scorer Isaiah Thomas, you need mean streak for a rivalry. And we’ve got ourselves a rivalry.
Here’s hoping for another playoff series with Boston soon.