Advertisement

This is how bad things have gotten for the Atlanta Hawks

This man is the living embodiment of the Hawks season.
This man is the living embodiment of the Hawks season.

Now that the Atlanta Hawks are without all four of their All-Stars from the beloved 60-win team that reached the 2015 Eastern Conference finals — a teardown completed when linchpins Al Horford and Paul Millsap walked in successive free agencies, we knew things could get bad for them this season.

We just didn’t realize they would fall to this depth so quickly.

[Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

It does not get lower than getting blown out so badly by a Brooklyn Nets team that’s been among the league’s dredges for three years running that your fans are lying across five empty front-row seats:

The amount of disrespect here is just incredible. Not only do there have to be this many premium seats available to do even attempt this, but you have to be so comfortable in your don’t-give-a-damn-ness to actually go through with watching the final minutes of an NBA game from the front row as if you’re on the couch like some dad yelling to his kids to throw him a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

And nobody around him even seems to think it’s all that out of the ordinary.

Granted, the Hawks were shooting worse from the field (36.6 percent) than the Nets were from 3-point range (41.7 percent) against a Brooklyn team that owns one of the NBA’s 10 worst defenses, but man, this had to be depressing for Atlanta players who noticed a dude practically napping on the sidelines.

Like, this man did not find an ounce of excitement in watching an NBA team led by Dennis Schroder.

No picture has ever captured the art of rooting for a tanking basketball team quite like this, and we’re barely a quarter of the way into the season. Things will only get worse for a Hawks team that owns the NBA’s second-worst record (5-18) against the league’s second-easiest schedule so far this season.

That’s not going to do much to help Atlanta’s attendance, which at 75.5 percent capacity is the league’s worst — by far. By season’s end, everybody at Philips Arena will have their choice of lounge areas.

– – – – – – –

Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!