The Atlanta Hawks kick-off our Southeast Division previews. You can read past previews here.
It’s that time of year again, when sportswriters who spend most of the season ignoring the Atlanta Hawks suddenly pay attention to the Hawks just long enough to write a season preview of the team 
and sound all authoritative and stuff. (Then they file their Hawks preview and suddenly become experts on teams, like, the Bucks or the Jazz or some other random squad.)
For SLAMonline’s season previews, I drew the Hawks, because they’re my favorite team, because I write a column for their website and because I probably watched about 70 games last season. Really quickly, I can tell you the Hawks are going to be a better regular season team this year. While everyone seems to be bemoaning their lack of depth, the addition of Flip Murray, Mo Evans and Randolph Morris means they’re actually deeper this year than last year, and they’re also going to get a full season with Mike Bibby, which will make a significant difference. I think a .500 season should be the benchmark, and that should be enough to get them into the postseason once again.
Anyway, I wanted to talk to a real expert on the Hawks for this preview, so late last week I got on the phone with Linkstigator and Atlanta Journal-Constitution Hawks beat writer Sekou Smith and we previewed the upcoming season.
Have a listen…
[audio:http://slamonline.com/audio/sekou.mp3]
