The St. Louis Hawks were a first-place NBA team in 1968, but they were also-rans in the hearts of hometown sports fans.
On May 3, 1968, club owner Ben Kerner sold the Hawks to a group that moved them to Atlanta. The departure occurred 10 years after the franchise won its only NBA championship in 1958.
Though the Hawks were Western Division champions in 1968, finishing the regular season with a 56-26 record, their average home attendance was 6,288. Struggling to attract customers to St. Louis’ Kiel Auditorium, the Hawks played six of their home games in Miami during the 1967-68 season.
In 1955, when the Hawks relocated from Milwaukee, the baseball Cardinals were the only other major professional sports franchise in St. Louis. By 1968, the Cardinals and Hawks had been joined in St. Louis by the NFL Cardinals, the NHL Blues and the Stars of the North American Soccer League.
The baseball Cardinals were longtime kings in St. Louis, and the football Cardinals, as well as the Blues, who joined the NHL in 1967, surpassed the Hawks in popularity.
“Things have been going downhill slowly,” Kerner said to the Associated Press. “Since 1960, when the football Cardinals came here, people instead of buying eight season tickets from us split it four and four. The same thing happened again with hockey.”
Money ball
After beating the Boston Celtics in the 1958 NBA Finals, the Hawks had their peak home attendance years in the next three seasons, averaging 8,548 in 1958-59, 8,409 in 1959-60 and 8,561 in 1960-61, according to the Association for Professional Basketball Research.
The baseball Cardinals and the football Cardinals benefitted from the 1966 opening of Busch Memorial Stadium in downtown St. Louis. The Blues, who reached the Stanley Cup Finals in their debut season, played at St. Louis Arena.
“The Hawks, it developed, could stand everything except competition for the sports buck,” Bob Broeg wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Coached by Richie Guerin and bolstered by standout players such as Zelmo Beatty, Lenny Wilkens, Joe Caldwell, Bill Bridges, Paul Silas and Lou Hudson, the Hawks opened the 1967-68 season by winning 16 of their first 17 games, but ticket sales remained flat.
“When your team starts off with a 16-1 record and you have a hard time drawing crowds at home, you have to wonder,” Kerner said.
Facing the San Francisco Warriors in the first round of the playoffs, the Hawks played the first two games at St. Louis, drawing crowds of 5,018 and 5,810 to Kiel Auditorium, according to the Post-Dispatch. With the best-of-seven series tied at 2-2, Game 5 was played at St. Louis’ Washington University and attracted slightly more than 4,000.
“The crowds at the playoff games were very discouraging,” Kerner said. “This certainly was a factor in my decision to sell the club.”
Fast break
The Warriors, featuring players such as Rudy LaRusso, Nate Thurmond and Jeff Mullins, upset the favored Hawks, winning four of six games in their playoff series. Soon after, Kerner was approached by an Atlanta group, led by real estate developer Thomas Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders.
“Negotiations progressed rapidly,” Kerner said.
Cousins told the Atlanta Constitution a deal was reached quickly “because there were other cities who would have jumped in had we sat back.”
Kerner sold the Hawks for about $3.5 million, the Post-Dispatch reported.
“The attendance for the last four or five years has not been good,” Kerner said. “It appears that the interest is not there. If you have a product that people don’t want, you can’t make them buy it.”
Kerner said he tried to find a St. Louis group to purchase the Hawks, but didn’t find any.
Wrote Broeg: “Public apathy was apparent. The man was justified in selling, though it’s too bad he couldn’t have given St. Louisans one more chance or, because he’d become wealthy here, been willing to take a little less to keep it here.”
New South
Guerin told the Atlanta Constitution he was eager to coach in Atlanta because the city was “very progressive, fast-growing and, equally, fast-developing.”
“The only thing about the sale that I’m a little down about is the fact I’m parting company with such a fine man as Mr. Kerner,” Guerin said. “It has been more than just a coach-owner relationship between the two of us. Mr. Kerner is a man for whom I have the greatest respect.”
The Hawks became the third major professional sports franchise to come to Atlanta since 1965, joining the baseball Braves and the NFL Falcons.
In 1968-69, their first season in Atlanta, the Hawks played at Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus and averaged 4,474 per home game.
The Hawks never have won a NBA championship since moving to Atlanta. St. Louis never has gotten a NBA franchise since the Hawks departed, though they did have the Spirits of the American Basketball Association from 1974-76.
RetroSimba 
During 1966-67, Kerner had tried to sell the Hawks to a New Orleans group, but the deal fell through due to some shaky financing. A few “home” games that year were played in Memphis.
Very good insights. Thank you!
I was always curious and wondered why the Hawks moved?
The article doesn’t even begin to touch on the real reasons for the Hawks’ departure. Race had much to do with it. In a year of racial and political turmoil, America was deeply divided. St. Louis was especially polarized. Whites fled for the suburbs and inner-city blacks faced urban blight. The Hawks, once kings of the city in the 1950s, started five blacks. The hockey Bkues, new and novel, we’re all-white.
since it was the 60’s, could it be because they had Black players?
that’s correct.too many black players, the same reason memphis refused to keep them
Just one day before the Hawks would end up playing what would be their final game in St. Louis before a little over 4,000 in attendance. The St. Louis Blues played their final home game of the regular season in front of 13,600 fans. Did Mr. Kerner ever consider trying to work out a deal with the Arena?
Ben Kerner sold the team because for two years in a row the Hawks had to play their playoff games at the old Washington University field house that had 1100 seats. The moron’s who ran Kiel Auditorium for the City of St. louis shit all over the Hawks for 10 years and Kerner had enough and want to sell to out of town buyers so he could shove it to the politicians who ran the city of St. Louis!