The Hawks are confident that they will make the playoffs next year. Jeff Denberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that they are so confident, that they will pay their fans if they don?t see the post season.

Every full-season ticket holder will receive $125 if the Hawks don?t make the playoffs. That's about a $500,000 bet for the Hawks, based on last year's sales of about 4,000 packages at between $1,025 and $3,485 each. It's an unprecedented offer among Atlanta teams and rare in professional sports. The Hawks have not made the playoffs in three seasons.

"I expect this team to make the playoffs," Hawks president Stan Kasten said Monday. "When we do make the playoffs, we will reward our [full] season ticketholders by giving them the first playoff game free."

Kasten said he talked to Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff, Jason Terry and Dion Glover because "they're going to be hearing about this all summer and every day during the season. They're going to have to live with this. They said, fine. . . . And the way they've dedicated themselves this summer [by working as a team three times each month], I think that says they are doing what's necessary to be in the playoffs."

Kasten said objections to offering the rebate were twofold: "As we learned last year, too many things can go wrong during a season," he said. "The other thing is that half the teams in the league lose every night. We don't sell winning and losing. We sell entertainment and competition."