ATLANTA — What the Atlanta Hawks are doing right now is unbelievable.

When I say “unbelievable,” I’m not talking about the typical sporting usage, like where some scrub from the deep end of the bench throws in a three-quarter-court shot at the buzzer to upend Big State U. No, I’m talking the literal usage, which is that, given the Hawks’ history, fan support and expectations, the fact that they have won 17 straight games, sit atop the Eastern Conference, and are selling out Philips Arena while doing so, quite literally defies any kind of rational belief. I have lived in Atlanta most of my life, and I kid you not when I say I expected to see puppies running pick-and-roll drills down Peachtree Street before I’d see the Hawks playing sustained elite-level basketball ... and fans fighting for tickets to watch.

This is more than just a reinvention, more than just a resurgence. This is Nickelback writing a symphony that moves you to tears. This is McDonald’s crafting a mouthwatering New York strip. This is Adam Sandler delivering heartbreaking nuance. You get the idea: the prevailing reaction to the Hawks’ sudden flight is stunned incredulity: Really? Those guys? Huh … wait, are we talking about the ATLANTA Hawks?

And then you watch them play, and you realize that this team is different from all other Hawks teams — indeed, all other Atlanta teams in the city’s history — on a genetic level. The Braves battered teams for most of a decade, but did so with four-and-counting Hall of Famers. The Falcons have had brief surges of dominance, always followed by comic ineptitude.

But the Hawks, at least for the first half of this season, have a grasp on the game of basketball that borders on the mystical. Everyone contributes, everyone clicks.

Here’s a sample play: Jeff Teague drives into the top of the lane, dishes to Kyle Korver, who dumps it low to Al Horford, who sees nothing and kicks it back out to DeMarre Carroll on the wing, who swings it around to Paul Millsap low, who finds Horford for the dunk. This is not an unusual play. This is not a drill. This is how the Hawks run their offense every time down the court, the ball moving to an open man faster than any defender can hope to switch off, their arms outstretched futilely even as their minds go oh no, Hawk after Hawk standing so wide open that you think maybe they’ve snuck an extra couple players on the court.

How the hell do you defend against that? Collapse to the inside and Korver et al. sling up threes like a cubicle dweller burying crumpled office-paper balls. Double up anybody and the Hawks will locate and exploit your weak spot faster than your significant other during a fight over the dishes.

It’s working. Heaven help Atlanta, it’s working. At this writing, the Hawks sit at 38-8, the most wins in the NBA, including 31 of their last 33. They’re 12-2 against the mighty West. They’ve got three All-Stars (Horford, Millsap and Teague), the first time they’ve done that since 1979-80. And they’re 21-3 at home, in a place where “Atlanta fans” is at last no longer an oxymoron.

It’s not that Atlanta fans don’t have passion. It’s just that said passion almost never ran in the Hawks’ direction. This is a fan base that actually booed its own team when Michael Jordan played his final game here, because then-Hawk Shareef Abdur-Rahim hit a shot at the buzzer to win the game and prevent overtime. The city can’t take pleasure in its own legacy of misery, like Chicago, or sit back with the cool confidence that the world revolves around it even in losses, like New York. No, in most cases, if you’re not winning, you’re forgotten. In most cases.

The Hawks have long been one of those other cases: even when the team wins, nobody cares. They’re a civic fixture, like a modern art museum that everyone’s proud to claim for the purposes of pride but nobody really ever visits. They’ve served a reasonable purpose — keeping the lights on at Philips Arena between Garth Brooks and Beyoncé concerts — but it’s not like they’ve been some insiders-only hidden secret, the under-the-radar band that owns the local scene and then breaks big. Everybody knew the Hawks were here. Nobody much cared.

“The perception around the league was that Atlanta fans were ... laid-back,” says reservist Elton Brand, who played 14 seasons around the league before arriving in Atlanta last year. “The reality is, they’re great when you give them something to cheer for."

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