A terrific win by the Hawks last night as they held on late to beat the Wizards 103-99 in the team's final home game of the preseason. I know it's only preseason, but there is just a lot to like right now about the way things are going for this group. The guys have one more preseason contest, tomorrow night at New Orleans, and then the countdown is on to the season-opener Friday Nov. 2 against Dallas.

Speaking of tomorrow's game against New Orleans, I will actually be making the trip to the Big Easy with the team. It's the first time the Hawks have visited New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and Hawks VP of Public Relations Arthur Triche, a New Orleans native, has arranged for the team to tour several sites to give them a sense of the damage and destruction. We talked all about it yesterday in the weekly podcast - for almost every player on the team, this will be their first time to New Orleans, and it promises to be a real eye-opener.

As someone who grew up in Mississippi just a couple hours from New Orleans, I have a soft spot in my heart for the city and what it has gone through over the past two years, and I think it's incredibly important to keep the entire region in the national conscience. As the team will see over the course of the next two days, the calendar may have turned twice since Katrina but there is still a ton of work left to be done to restore the area.

I will be documenting the team's trip to the affected areas here on the website, so check back this week for photos and interviews.

As we are seeing with the wildfires in California this week, disasters and emergencies can happen anywhere. It's important that we lend a hand where we can, so that others will do the same for us if it ever (god forbid) happened to us.