{"id":699922,"date":"2026-04-05T17:28:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T17:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/699922\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T17:28:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T17:28:43","slug":"viral-post-over-hawk-hiding-in-plain-sight-sparks-discussion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/699922\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral post over hawk hiding in plain sight sparks discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post on reddit was the genesis of viral reactions earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The user named mandevillan admitted that they had never seen the Hawk in the \u2018Pac-Man\u2019 logo<\/a> used by the team as an alternate since 2014. The logo itself is a revamping of a bygone era for the franchise (and it\u2019s seemingly more widely used that the primary logo that has \u201cATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL\u201d in a ring around the hawk \u2014 even at halfcourt in State Farm Arena).<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

This person had been looking at this logo from right to left, apparently.<\/p>\n

\"Atlanta<\/p>\n

Atlanta Hawks logo<\/p>\n

From the post:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a fan since I was a kid who moved to Atlanta in 1992. Thirty-plus years!<\/p>\n

I was on\u00a0NBA.com\u00a0just now looking at standings, and I noticed something that I never have before\u2026I finally saw the Hawks logo the way it was meant to be seen.<\/p>\n

My whole life I\u2019ve been viewing it right to left. It always looked like some predatory Pac-Man-esque creature, like a hawk with a single tooth and open beak snapping at prey or something.<\/p>\n

But today, for the first time ever, I viewed it left to right. And it\u2019s clearly just\u2026 a hawk. In flight probably. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s the whole thing.<\/p>\n

I feel like an idiot. Thirty years. I can\u2019t be the only one. Right? Right??<\/p>\n

That post drew ridicule from people. How could you not clearly see the Hawks with its eye and beak???<\/p>\n

A quick backstory on the history of the logo (much of this info came via the great Chris Creamer at SportsLogos dot net<\/a>). The original design debuted in 1972, just the fifth season since the franchise moved from St. Louis to Atlanta.<\/p>\n

That logo had the hawk titled in an upwards direction from left to right. It\u2019s an iconic and clean look that perfectly uses minimalism to great effect. I mean, just look at these warmup jersey sets:<\/p>\n

\"EAST<\/p>\n

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. \u2013 1993: Dominique Wilkins #21 of the Atlanta Hawks stretches against the New Jersey Nets during a game played circa 1993 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 1993 NBAE (Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler\/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n

But since the Hawks weren\u2019t able to bring back the logo in its original form in 2014, they made a primary and an alternate logo that contained a re-designed Hawk outline, going from \u201cATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL CLUB\u201d back to \u201cATLANTA HAWKS BASKETBALL\u201d in the writing of the primary logo in 2020.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Pac-Man, the arcade game character, came out in 1980. You know, the loveable guy that gobble up white pellets and tries to avoid the ghosts chasing him.<\/p>\n

That original character was just a yellow circle with a pie-shaped cutout for a mouth to the side:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An attendee walks past a Pac-Man logo painted on the ground at the Google I\/O Annual Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, U.S., on Wednesday, May 17, 2017. Google’s artificial intelligence-based voice Assistant is on more than 100 million devices now, and the company is leveraging a longtime competitor to expand the technology to even more people. Photographer: Michael Short\/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

So when you overlay the Hawks logo with the original Pac-Man, you can see the resemblance and reason behind the colloquial name \u2014 the \u2018Pac-Man\u2019 Hawks logo.<\/p>\n

But, man, missing the hawk in the logo for almost 35 years? And then admitting that on the wide world web? You couldn\u2019t torture that info out of me.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Did you ever misinterpret the old or even current logo? Let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A post on reddit was the genesis of viral reactions earlier this week. The user named mandevillan admitted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,208,3874,7,149,568,677,6,2337,6433],"class_list":{"0":"post-699922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-hawks","10":"tag-atlantahawks","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-dallas-mavericks","13":"tag-getty-images","14":"tag-hawks","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-new-jersey-nets","17":"tag-state-farm-arena"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116353285583965775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}