When I was a kid I used to love to check the box scores in the sports section; I guess I’ve always been a bit of a sports nerd. There was always one number that I paid attention to the most when I’d look through the numbers, that was the attendance numbers from each team’s game. I knew that capacity at Madison Square Garden was a little over 18,000, the Boston Garden was just under 15,000, and The Forum in L.A. was about 17,500. All of those places had atmosphere without rival; “The Mecca”, “The Franchise”, and “Showtime” were the cornerstones teams of a budding NBA juggernaut. In the southeast though, there was another number that I looked for, 16,378, that was the capacity of The Omni Coliseum where there was an atmosphere just as electric. We didn’t have Bernard King, Bird, or Magic; but we did have a scoring wiz named Dominique who would delight the fans with spinning drives, bank shot jumpers, and dunks that would send John Sterling, yes, that same John Sterling that you probably hate to hear say “Theeeeeeeeeee Yankees WIN!!!” into a complete lather with his signature “On the fly! In the sky! Dominique!!!” And most nights when I looked at the box scores the number was right at capacity and if it wasn’t full it’s guaranteed the noise level in that old barn made it seem like it was jammed. Unbeknownst to most, The Omni was a jumping arena when the Hawks were at home. Fast forward to my adult life: Madison Square Garden is being updated to a sleeker, sexier place to accommodate the new generations of Knicks fans; Boston Garden gave way to the TD Garden a block away and the fans that followed them were treated to more dominating basketball and an additional banner from the Big 3 of Garnett, Pierce, and Allen; and the Forum was replaced by the wonder that is the Staples Center where Kobe and the Gang hang out and win to the delight of Laker Nation. The Omni here in Atlanta was replaced too, by a sparkling new Philips Arena in the fall of 1999, but even as the arena is built on the very same spot that the Omni stood, where Dominique thrilled, and John Sterling yelled, and Spud Webb defied gravity, the enthusiasm of those days didn’t follow.