ATLANTA -- A lousy sports town.

You hear it, you read it.

Out-of-towners say they see it, feel it.

So, what is it about this metro area of about 3 million? Is the perception reality? It says here that it's not.

	They built Philips Arena, but fans haven't come to watch the Hawks.

Certainly, Atlanta isn't Chicago where supporting bad teams like the Bears and Bulls and Cubs has become a tradition.

In fact, fans in Atlanta don't support bad teams. Maybe that makes them bad fans, but it also qualifies them as more discerning people.

Truth to tell, the Atlanta fan will come out. He will support his team. But he would like a little value for his money.

Consider the Falcons, whose crowds dipped into the 40,000s when they plummeted from their Super Bowl appearance in 1999. Under the ownership of Arthur Blank, they sold out in 2002, and ever game for last season and for the coming season has been sold out.

Blank was smart. He turned the upper deck in the Georgia Dome into a bargain basement. Season tickets were $100 with the understanding that you weren't going to see much from up there. People didn't care. For $100, they were part of a great football revival.

The Braves dipped from almost 3 million in attendance last season to something like 2.7 million. That makes this a bad sports town because the Braves have won 11 straight division titles. But they've won only one World Series. Imagine, if you will, the Yankees or Mets win 11 straight division titles and one World Series. How much patience would they have in New York?

The hockey Thrashers are last in their division, a place they have frequented since coming into the NHL. In their 3½ years of existence, they are a nifty 76-176-14. At that performance level, $58 to $220 for anything in the lower bowl seems a little pricey to people down here.

And the Hawks ... oh, the Hawks. Count up a lot of losses, almost as many losses as victories. The Hawks are 1,391-1,328 for all these years. That's not bad. Almost worse, it's mediocre.

They have been bad enough lately, though the Cavaliers and the Nuggets guarantee the Hawks can't be last. The Hawks currently ride a serious slump, 86-160 over the last 3½ years, 19-30 this season, spoiling the advantage they share with the hockey club of playing in Philips Arena, one of the unique facilities in the country.

It is the Hawks who put the mark of shame on this town that has the Georgia Dome, beautiful Turner Field for baseball and fabulous Philips Arena.

	“	It's up to us to put an attractive team on the court. It's too easy to blame the fans. We have to give them a product they want to identify with and come see. ”
		— Lee Douglas, Hawks executive vice president

"It's up to us to put an attractive team on the court," Hawks executive vice president Lee Douglas said. "It's too easy to blame the fans. We have to give them a product they want to identify with and come see."

The Hawks, which have never really won anything since moving here in 1968, have spoiled winter for anyone who likes basketball. They dumped two coaches in the last four years and incumbent Terry Stotts doesn't have much chance of lasting the way the team is going. The Hawks were 8-14 under Stotts at the All-Star break. They were 11-16 under Lon Kruger.

Kruger, remember, had this idea of a playoff guarantee. That's how much he believed in Theo Ratliff, Glenn Robinson and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The Hawks put up a $125 bounty for every full season-ticket buyer if they didn't make the playoffs. They got 4,000 responses. That's a $500,000 rebate. How do you think they like them apples at AOL where money leaks like a sieve?

And it's not like hoop fans in Atlanta have never turned out. When the franchise brought in Moses Malone in 1988, stirring excitement after a seven-game series loss to Boston, the town responded with gusto. There were 24 sellouts and average attendance was 15,715 in a building that seated 16,371. Think fans were turned off when at the end of the trail the Hawks were ousted from the playoffs in five games -- by a mediocre Milwaukee team?

On March 27,1998, when Michael Jordan was about to retire for the second time, the town set an NBA single-game attendance record of 62,046, many of whom could not possibly see the ball but simply wanted to be there.

That's not the mark of a bad sports town. It's not like no one comes to see them. The Hawks have had seven crowds of 16,000 to 19,000 this season. For Yao Ming, they had a game-day walk-up of 6,000. It's those Tuesdays and Wednesdays when Toronto or Cleveland is in town that crowds most often sink into single digits and that's because of the small season-ticket base.

This is a town where players enjoy themselves. Damon Stoudamire plays in Portland and has a home in Atlanta. Tyrone Hill lives here. Shaquille O'Neal has a place in Buckhead, the upscale condo and entertainment heart of the city.

It's the playing facilities, the airport, the hotels, the great restaurants and bars that bring them to Atlanta. You have to work hard NOT to have a good time in this town.

The SEC football championship is staged annually in the Georgia Dome. The men's NCAA Final Four was here and the women's championship will be here this winter. In this decade, Atlanta has been host to the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game. NBA commissioner David Stern called it "a great place to stage our game." He then admitted he wished the Hawks were a lot better.

So do we all.

Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.