Before the 2014–15 season began, nearly everyone's attention was fixed on Cleveland.
Last summer, the Cavaliers welcomed back their "Emperor," LeBron James, acquired the "double-double machine" Kevin Love, and already had Kyrie Irving, the hugely popular 2011 first overall pick. A younger, more powerful Big Three had taken shape just like that.
In most people's eyes at the time, such a roster would be hard to match not only in the Eastern Conference, but across the entire league.
Even the Memphis Grizzlies could not guarantee they would completely crush this younger Big Three.
The East had practically become a one-team conference. Other than the Cavaliers, no one could even dream of the top spot in the East.
But once the season truly began, it was not the Cleveland Cavaliers who surprised people—it was the Atlanta Hawks, a team nearly everyone had forgotten from the previous season!
Under Coach Budenholzer's leadership, the Hawks had held first place in the East from the very start of the season, with considerably more wins than the Cavaliers.
The Hawks' five starters were Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, DeMar Carroll, Paul Millsap, and Al Jefferson Horford.
Not one of those five could be called an undisputed superstar, and they simply could not compare to the star-studded Cavaliers.
On this first-place Hawks team, the leading scorer averaged only 16.7 points per game—Millsap. And at this point in the season, not a single player had scored 30+ points in any game.
No matter how one looked at it, the Hawks did not seem like a team that could succeed.
The Hawks indeed had little individual heroism, but they had brought the spirit of team basketball to its absolute fullest.
That made it impossible not to mention their head coach, Mike Budenholzer.
This coach, who had come from the