 Following his collegiate career, the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) drafted Givens with the 16th overall pick in the 1978 NBA draft.He played two years for the Hawks, scoring 1,040 points in 156 games (6.7 ppg).Givens played for the Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team of Japan, where he still returns regularly with his family to visit the friends he made there, in 1982-83.