All six of the Atlanta Hawks faithful are on pins and needles today, myself included. As the Hawks stand ready to play their first Eastern Conference Finals game ever tonight in Atlanta, they square off not only against the Cleveland Cavaliers but against history, convention, and celebrity.

The most obvious and immediate obstacle in their way to securing a further elevated place in franchise history is one LeBron Wilhelm James III. He is surely a distinguished man of prodigious basketball talent, having attended the last four NBA finals in a row, winning two of them. He is one of those “good at everything” type of players, combining speed, strength, intuition, and an uncanny knack for tossing objects through other objects. Having to confront this foe during this stretch has worked out poorly for every Eastern Conference team for quite some time. Is there any way we can convince him to go play another sport during this series? It worked out for the Rockets and Knicks! Other options for combating this Monstar-quality foe include hiring Bill Murray as a last second wise-cracking bench player and telling the Hawks that the water they’re drinking is actually a secret formula that enhances their basketball abilities. (When the ruse is revealed, they’ll discover that their newly found greatness came from within, and we’ll all learn something about ourselves that day.)

They also stand in the path of not one, but two separate NBA narratives that are consistently spouted by sportswriters who somehow seem to avoid watching, analyzing, or reading anything related to the sport they’re tasked with writing about. And indeed, why would you want to dive into any level of statistical analysis when constructing easy narratives and relating to personal emotions and feelings is so…I mean…you know what, scratch that, let’s move on. The narratives are:

1) So called “Jump Shooting Teams” are inconsistent and can’t be relied on for producing points consistently. Anyone that watches basketball with any frequency will surely raise an eyebrow at this idea. Come with me on a statistical journey, dear reader, one which I assure you will be brief and simple to understand (as I am a simple sort of man and have no expertise in advanced math). All stats are readily available at http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2015.html#all_team_stats

Across the NBA this season, teams have shot only 28.8% of their shots from within 0-3 feet of the rim. This is the area where you’ll find your layups, dunks, alley-oops, and runners. This also means that the remaining 71.2% of shot attempts were – you guessed it, jump shots. Furthermore, of the top 5 teams that shot the most non-jump shots as a percentage of their attempts, only 2 of them made the playoffs (New Orleans and Milwaukee) and both were eliminated in the first round. This would seem to indicate sort of the opposite of this narrative being true.

Additionally, of the 12 teams that shot the highest percentage from 3 point range (GSW, ATL, LAC, NO, CLE, SAS, MIL, POR, WAS, CHI, DAL, TOR) ALL OF THEM MADE THE PLAYOFFS. You can assist me, readers, by sighing heavily and rolling your eyes if someone ever bloviates to you again about the flaws of a “jump shooting team”. Thus ends this brief encounter with numbers.

2) You can’t win without a “Superstar” on your team. This trope is mostly trotted out there by people that yell at cameras for a living. This idea conveniently leaves out the championship-winning and dominant for multiple seasons squad of the Detroit Pistons, a mere decade previous. It also has managed to redefine the wizened corpses of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli, and Tim Duncan as “Superstars” to fit this conceit, forgetting that none of them have played like a top 25 player in nearly a decade. I don’t disagree that it’s easier to write a recap about a team if there’s a single person you can use to characterize an entire organization, like Duncan’s sullen and humorless demeanor, or LeBron Rosewater James, Esq.’s perceived selfishness with his Decision programme, or Kobe Bryant’s firey temper and competitive spirit. But it’s only telling a portion of the story to focus on individuals, and it’s actually doing a disservice to the efforts of the other 9 or so players that had equal opportunity to affect the outcome of the contest.

The challenge remaining that is most relevant to the experience of the Magnificent Six (as I have come to lovingly call myself and my five loyal friends), is an encroaching feeling of dread, a furious reshaking of the magic 8-ball, praying that this time it won’t say “my sources say no”. Having never been so deep into the playoffs, have the Atlanta Hawks and their sextet overstepped our bounds and are now out of our league? Will there be a loss of competitive edge, feeling as though we’ve accomplished enough already?

The only solution for The Six Shooters will be to ply ourselves liberally with alcohol to stem back these waves of negativity and doubt. We are flying close to the sun, but to date the wax is holding firm.