Fired Weiss Fails to Succeed in Atlanta

The Atlanta Hawks fired Bob Weiss as coach Monday, saying it’s time to hire someone who can take the team past the first round of the playoffs.

“It’s not that it’s been a failure, it just hasn’t been successful enough,” General Manager Pete Babcock said at a news conference.

“We won 43 games last season. There were more teams below us than above us. But we understand that’s mediocre. We lost seven straight home games in December. We lost to teams we had no business losing to, including Dallas.

“The benchmark for success in the NBA is 50 wins. We can easily see how we could have won seven more games.”

Weiss guided the Hawks into the playoffs with a 43-39 record. But they lost three in a row to the Chicago Bulls during the first round. The Hawks have not made it past the first round of the playoffs since 1988.

Much of their regular-season success was due to Dominique Wilkins. Returning after sitting out the second half of the 1991-92 season because of a ruptured Achilles’ tendon, Wilkins averaged 29.9 points, second in the league to Chicago’s Michael Jordan.

The Hawks were 124-122 in three seasons under Weiss. They also made it to the playoffs his first year, 1990-91, but lost in the first round to Detroit.

Weiss replaced Mike Fratello on May 22, 1990.