Mike Glenn as Hawks Color Commentator: "Stinger's" Analysis Never Hurt

Turning on an FSN South broadcast of an Atlanta Hawks game these days is encouraging.

There's a young, talented squad out there, and they're finally winning some games; Bob Rathburn's still giving his usual excellent play-by-play; and the pride of the franchise, Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins, provides the color commentary.

I love what's going on now, but still...

I can't help but feel a wave of nostalgia when I remember the days of SportSouth and Mike "Stinger" Glenn.

It was in 2005 that I succumbed to an obsession with my hometown team. This was unlucky, as the Hawks had the worst record in the league that year, losing 69 games.

But at the same time, it was lucky, because that was Stinger's last season as full-time color commentator for Atlanta games, and though the results of the contests in that campaign were almost always painful, he made the experience of watching bearable.

Glenn, who played 10 seasons in the NBA with various teams (of course including the Hawks), somehow managed to maintain a positive attitude throughout the club's struggles.

He could get excited about an Al Harrington drive to the basket or Antoine Walker three, though everyone knew that those two weren't in our long-term future.

There weren't a ton of positives to be found with the group—a friend recently reminded me that Obinna Ekezie was at one point our starting center—but Mike found ways to point them out. Young "fellas" (as Glenn would have called them) like Josh Smith and Childress were developing, and he liked to remind us viewers of their potential.

Now that I think about it, something in his background probably indicated that he'd be a great TV personality.

This is a man that had perfect attendance through all his public schooling in the state of Georgia, a man who graduated with honors from Southern Illinois before going pro, and a man who took graduate classes at St. John's while he was playing for the Knicks.

He was awarded the NBA's J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 1981. He has, at various times, been affiliated with the "Bee a Buckler" Safety Program, the Georgia Lifesavers, and Leadership Atlanta.

And these days?

Oh, he's just running a free basketball camp for the hearing-impaired and writing autobiographies of famous African-Americans in his free time.

No disrespect to Steve Smith (FSN South's Hawks analyst in '06 and '07) or 'Nique, but Glenn had a knack for the word game. His honesty, passion, and genuine friendliness always shone through, though the games were often cloudy during his tenure as a commentator.

He found it in himself to jump up for Peja Drobnjak threes, to let loose great laughs for Rathburn's corny jokes, and to keep alive the on-life-support Hawks fan base during the long winning drought that Atlanta endured.

Good thing I can still catch him on the postgame show, Hawks Live, these days.  Just wouldn't be the same without the Stinger.