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1996–97 Atlanta Hawks season

NBA professional basketball team season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ3628160 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1996–97 Atlanta Hawks season was the 48th season for the Atlanta Hawks in the National Basketball Association, and their 29th season in Atlanta, Georgia. During this season, Hawks owner Ted Turner was the then-vice chairman of Time Warner after acquiring Turner Broadcasting System.

Season summary

Off-season

During the off-season, the Hawks signed free agent All-Star center Dikembe Mutombo to help strengthen their defense. The team also signed free agents Tyrone Corbin, Willie Burton, Eldridge Recasner, and former Georgia Tech University guard Jon Barry; Corbin previously played for the Hawks during the 1994–95 season.

Regular season

With the addition of Mutombo and Corbin, the Hawks struggled with a 5–6 start to the regular season, but soon recovered and played above .500 in winning percentage for the remainder of the season. In December, the team signed free agent, and three-point specialist Henry James, and later on released Burton to free agency in January after 24 games. The Hawks posted a 14–2 record in January, which included a 10-game winning streak, and later on held a 31–15 record at the All-Star break. The Hawks posted a seven-game winning streak in March, and finished in second place in the Central Division with a 56–26 record, earning the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference; the team qualified for the NBA playoffs for the fifth consecutive year. The Hawks also posted a successful 36–5 home record at the Omni Coliseum, which was the third-best in the league, and also won 20 consecutive home games from November 12, 1996 to February 12, 1997. The Hawks had the third best team defensive rating in the NBA.

Steve Smith averaged 20.1 points and 4.2 assists per game, and contributed 130 three-point field goals, while Christian Laettner averaged 18.1 points and 8.8 rebounds per game, and Mookie Blaylock provided the team with 17.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 2.7 steals per game, led the Hawks with 221 three-point field goals, and was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1996–97 Atlanta Hawks season” as nBA professional basketball team season. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1994, 1997—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Atlanta, Hawks and season can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as nBA professional basketball team season. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3628160. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1994 and 1997.

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The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1996–97 Atlanta Hawks season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.