Hawks Playoff Game 1

Yeah! My Hawks are in the playoffs for the first time in the 21st century. Sure they're going to get destmolished (yes I just made up that word) by the Celtics, but THEY'RE IN BAYBEE! I'm going to post some Hawks cards before each game over the next couple of weeks to celebrate the horrible horrible beating that KG and company are going to put on them. First up is some 70's cards of Lou Hudson.

1970-71 Topps

Topps basketball cards were tall boys in 1969 and 1970. The 1969 edition was the first Topps hoops set since '58-'59 and was the first basketball set at all since Fleer's '61-62 set. I prefer the 1970 edition, the ovel border never appealed to me. Check out the shiny blue uniform!

The back is an orangy-pink color similar to the '67 Topps baseball backs. It's a nice simple layout with full career stats, a bio and a large cartoon on the right. I wonder how the military cartoon went over in the early 70's? As you can see Lou became a scoring machine once the Hawks moved to Atlanta, in part because Lenny Wilkins flat out refused to go and was traded to the Sonics. Hudson filled the scoring void quite well with almost 22 per game.

1971-72 Topps

The next year Topps was back to a standard card size and the Hawks were wearing their ugliest uniforms. What kind of team colors are blue and chartreuse?? Just wait till the next card to see what I mean. This is one of the weirder card designs ever for Topps. What the heck is that font supposed to be on top?

The back is a solid yellow and blue. Ss you see Lou is now a scoring machine! After losing to the Lakers in the western conference finals the year before, the Hawks were moved to the East in '70-'71. That's not all the moving the Hawks had to do, check out the cartoon. Ted Turner thought about moving them to New Orleans in the early 80's as well... I would be rooting for the expansion Atlanta Freakniks right now if that happened.

1972-73 Topps

This is one of my favorite designs. Nice bright background, with the bold team name angling up on the botton. That's a good looking card. The uniform however is atrocious. Just look at that ugly thing! With the possible exeption of the White Sox unis with the shorts, this is easily more horrible than any ugly uniform that Major League Baseball came up with. That didn't keep the Hawks from using it as an alternate uniform a couple of years ago, they replaced the chartreuse with an even uglier lime green to boot. Here's a bit of trivia for you - in the Disney movie The Cat From Outer Space, pay attention to the scene where the space cat helps the Lakers win so McLean Stevenson doesn't lose his bet on the game. That's the Hawks in those terrible uniforms that gets screwed over by that darn cat!

Blue and orange backs for the win. There were so many borderline undreadablew backs on Topps cards, but this isn't one of them. Lou and his 26.8 points a game was voted the most popular Hawk in '70-71. Check out the shooting percentage in the writeup. When is the last time a shooting guard who scores 25 points a night had a .503 shooting percentage? This is before the time of long range bombers shooting threes.

1973-74 Topps

This is one of the uglier designs of the '70's but I have good memories of it. I got a pile of these cards in terrible condition a long time ago and they were the first old basketball cards I ever had. Well, at the time they weren't that old, but you know what I mean. They were almost old as me. The card looks like it was designed with an 8-count box of crayons and the photos feature many really dark blurry action shots like this one, but even so it's kind of a fascinating set. The hawks are also finally in red uniforms, thank God.

Here's one of the unreadable backs I was talking about. Tiny blue stats on a red background. All you need to know about his stats though is that Lou is still scoring almost a quarter of his team's points and that's with Pete Maravich playing aside him. Lou was effective as both a guard and forward and moved back and forth as the team needed. He could dish it out and rebound effectively too.

Next up on Wednesday is a team set (or most of one at least) from the 70's including another card of Sweet Lou. If you want some more Hoops cards in the meantime, check out Basketball 4 You. They even have something for the Braves fans out there.