Just to take another gander at how bizarre the Hawks' home schedule is this season, I did a little research this afternoon. This is the Hawks 41st season in Atlanta. In the 40 prior seasons, the Hawks have only had 3 homestands of 7 games or longer:

1975-76: 7 games - 3-4 record
1978-79: 8 games - 8-0 record*
2005-06: 7 games - 2-5 record**

That's 3 in 40 years. This year, as you may know, we've had not only December's 8-game homestand (where the Hawks went 7-1), but also a 7-game home stretch that ends tonight with a game against the Dallas Mavericks. If my math is correct, that means 40% of the 7+ game homestands in franchise history have happened this year. Bizarre.

* I was hoping this might be the first time the Hawks had ever had a chance to go undefeated during a homestand of this length, but that honor belongs to the 1978-79 squad. That team must have been pretty similar to this one - they finished the season 34-7 at home but only 12-29 on the road, finishing at 46-36.

** Somehow I forgot about this. We've been saying all season we'd never seen an 8-game homestand let alone a 7-game - turns out it happened just two years ago. Oops.

As we discussed today in the Gameday Preview, one of the main stories of this season has been the Hawks' ability to take advantage of these stretches at home. They've beaten good teams, they've beaten bad teams. They've won close games, they've won blowouts. They've won defensive struggles in the 80s, and they've won shootouts in the 120s. And if they can finish the task tonight against the Mavs, they will put themselves in terrific position to use that home-court advantage to their, umm, advantage, come playoff time. A win tonight whittles the team's magic number to 4 for a playoff spot, and would give Atlanta a 4-game lead over Miami with only 14 games remaining.

It would also give the squad it's first 7-game winning streak of any kind since 1998-99.

If you can tear yourself away from March Madness, I highly recommend coming down to Philips Arena tonight to root on the home team as they try to finish this one off in style.

Game time is 7:00 ET, and it is also being shown in HD on FS South.