The Atlanta Hawks are rebuilding and I’m okay with that

For somebody to be good, somebody else has to be bad. That’s how it works in the zero-sum game of professional sports win totals. While the Orlando Magic have come out of the gate looking like a playoff team, their division rival Atlanta Hawks have been anything but. After winning on opening night on the road versus the Dallas Mavericks, Atlanta dropped eight straight games and finds itself at the bottom of the awful Eastern Conference.

This is the new reality for Hawks basketball. After a decade of fun, albeit ultimately underwhelming seasons of making the playoffs, Atlanta is in a full-blown rebuild. It was inevitable, especially after the front office changes this past offseason.

The Hawks were able to pry Travis Schlenk away from the Golden State Warriors as their new general manager. It seems like just yesterday the 2014-15 Hawks were winning 19 games in a row, sending four guys to the NBA All-Star Game, winning a franchise record 60 games and reaching their first Eastern Conference Finals. Now this year’s team might struggle to win 19 games all season.

Read More: What’s Tyler Ulis’ whole deal?

Not since the 2006-07 NBA season have the Hawks played outright bad basketball. That team ended up with the No. 3 overall pick, taking power forward Al Horford out of Florida. Atlanta has not been in the draft lottery since picking Horford, but will almost certainly be scouting for a top-five pick this year.

So what’s the point of watching your favorite team unsurprisingly lose by double-digits every night? There’s plenty of great things to do in the southern metropolis of Atlanta besides watch bad basketball. That being said, I can’t look away from the beautiful disaster I’m seeing.

With the Hawks future entwined with the upcoming draft lottery, shouldn’t I be fixated on the top 19-year-olds the college game has to offer?

No, I’m going to watch the Hawks struggle to find rhythm offensively and I’m perfectly fine with that. Rebuilding in a fickle sports market like Atlanta is difficult, but it seems that the Hawks are going about it the right way.

Unlike the city’s baseball counterpart, the Hawks aren’t reaching into their past to hopefully build a brighter future. During his first few years in Atlanta, Budenholzer’s three best players were Horford, power forward Paul Millsap and point guard Jeff Teague. All were All-Stars in their prime in Atlanta. Now, the top three players are point guard Dennis Schroder, wing Kent Bazemore and maybe rookie power forward John Collins. The guy can jump and he’s really captivating his first year out of Wake Forest.

Admittedly, it’s strange to root for a team that I know has no chance of winning this year. However, it’s a different viewing experience than many Atlanta hoops fans aren’t accustomed to. But everyone — fans, ownership, the front office, the coaching staff — seems to be onboard with this new change of direction of Atlanta basketball, knowing that it has to get worse before it gets better is understood.

See, what Atlanta wants to be is a championship caliber basketball team. The last 10 years have been fun, but at the end of the day, the Hawks were trying to prop up really good instead of chasing great. It just doesn’t cut it in the same conference as LeBron James. Atlanta knows that the East runs through him. He’ll exit his prime (and perhaps the league) in a few years or so, maybe the Hawks will be ready to compete by the end of the decade? Or perhaps the first few years of the next one?

Next: The Step Back's 2018 NBA Draft Big Board: Version 1.0

It’s still early in the rebuilding process, but I’m learning to fall in love with a basketball team again, not as platform for winning. There are some quirky personalities on this team like Bazemore, Schroder, Mike Muscala and DeAndre’ Bembry’s hair to cheer me up. They’re sure to keep things interesting while the losing continues. And everyone now and then, lightning will strike and this group will pull out a big win over a team like the Cavs.As long as Bazemore, Schroder, Luke Babbitt and Marco Belinelli play hard and set a positive example for youngsters like Collins, Taurean Prince and Tyler Dorsey, I’ll handle the losing.

Embrace the rebuild and the weirdness.