Claim: Moses Malone was on an NBA team.

The Atlanta Hawks are a professional basketball team based in Atlanta , Georgia . The Hawks compete in the National Basketball Association -LRB- NBA -RRB- as a member of the league 's Eastern Conference Southeast Division . The team plays its home games at Philips Arena .   The team 's origins can be traced to the establishment of the Buffalo Bisons in 1946 in Buffalo , New York , a member of the National Basketball League -LRB- NBL -RRB- and owned by Ben Kerner and Leo Ferris . After 38 days in Buffalo , the team moved to Moline , Illinois , where they were renamed the Tri-Cities Blackhawks . In 1949 , they joined the NBA as part of the merger between the NBL and the Basketball Association of America -LRB- BAA -RRB- , and had Red Auerbach as coach briefly . In 1951 , Kerner moved the team to Milwaukee , where they changed their name to the Hawks . Kerner and the team moved again in 1955 to St. Louis , where they won their only NBA championship in 1958 and qualified to play in the NBA Finals in 1957 , 1960 and 1961 . The Hawks played the Boston Celtics in all four of their trips to the NBA Finals . The St. Louis Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968 , when Kerner sold the franchise to Thomas Cousins and former Georgia Governor Carl Sanders .   The Hawks currently own the second-longest drought -LRB- behind the Sacramento Kings -RRB- of not winning an NBA championship at 57 seasons . The franchise 's lone NBA championship , as well as all four NBA Finals appearances , occurred when the team was based in St. Louis . Meanwhile , they went 48 years without advancing past the second round of the playoffs in any format , until finally breaking through in 2015 . Much of the failure they 've experienced in the postseason can be traced back to their poor history in the NBA draft . Since 1980 , the Hawks have drafted only four players who have been chosen to play in an NBA All-Star Game -LRB- Doc Rivers , Kevin Willis , Al Horford , and Jeff Teague -RRB- . Dominique Wilkins was actually selected by the Utah Jazz and traded to the Hawks a few months after the draft . Horford and Teague are the only All-Star Hawks to have been drafted since Willis was selected in 1984 , and Horford is also the only first-rounder the Hawks selected in their nine-year playoff drought to play in an NBA All-Star Game .