Had it started and ended with a Bruce Levenson email, the Hawks might have dismissed this latest unseemly chapter with an apology and an eye-roll: “We’re really sorry, but what can we do? Our owners are nuts.” But this didn’t begin with one screed about attendance, and there’s no telling where it will end.
The Hawks admit that general manager Danny Ferry, while reading from a background report during a June conference call with ownership, spoke words that they themselves have adjudged as “offensive and racist.” The words concerned Luol Deng, who was a Hawks’ target during free agency and who’s from South Sudan.
The AJC’s Chris Vivlamore reports that Ferry said/read: “He’s a good guy overall. But he is not perfect. He’s got some African in him. And I don’t say that in a bad way.”
Taken aback, the Atlanta-based segment of the Hawks’ ownership group asked for a review of procedures for background checks. That led to the discovery of Levenson’s email, in which he ascribed the team’s anemic attendance to “the black crowd (scaring) away the whites,” which led to Levenson’s announcement Sunday morning that he would sell his share of the team.
As regrettable as Levenson’s email was, the impact of Ferry’s remark — whether it was a recitation of someone else’s words or his off-the-cuff observation — has the potential to do more harm to the Hawks’ main product, which is their basketball team. CEO Steve Koonin said Sunday that Ferry will be disciplined in a manner unspecified. Meaning: This isn’t some outside agency claiming that he erred; it’s the Hawks conceding the point.
Levenson’s email was wrong-headed in many ways but mostly wrong on the facts. It was an outsider’s perception — Levenson is from Washington D.C. and commuted to games via private plane — of Atlanta. The part about there not being enough affluent African-Americans to buy season tickets might be true in other cities; it’s absolutely not true here.
The Hawks’ failure hasn’t been their inability to draw enough whites but their inability to draw enough people. Every June, this paper runs the TV ratings from the NBA finals. Every year, Atlanta ranks among the top 10 viewing areas. Based in an NBA-ready city, the Hawks have failed to market their product to anyone’s satisfaction. (They ranked 28th among 30 teams in attendance last season.) It isn’t that Atlantans don’t like basketball; they just don’t care much for Hawks basketball.
Whether folks should care is a matter for debate. The Hawks have made the playoffs seven years running. They’ve had good teams but not great ones. They’ve had useful players but nary a star. This is where Ferry comes in. Hired in 2012 to redo a roster that couldn’t propel the Hawks beyond Round 2 of the playoffs, he has worked hard and mostly well. He hasn’t, however, untied the big knot. He hasn’t landed a superstar.
For the Hawks to break upward, they’ll need such a player, the supply for which is limited. Would a star who had other options agree to come work for a GM who has been disciplined by his employers — all of whom are white — for having been, at least on one occasion, racially insensitive in a basketball-related matter?
We don’t know why Ferry read/spoke those words. (He politely declined comment Monday afternoon.) It’s hard to fathom any NBA scout/evaluator committing “He’s got a lot of African in him” to print in the 21st Century. It’s impossible to regard those words as complimentary. Which makes you wonder: Why did the Hawks want Deng in the first place?
Perhaps it was mere coincidence that Deng signed instead with Miami. But how will it be the next time the Hawks make a pitch? Just when we thought they’d gotten past the ham-handed days of owners suing each other, one of those owners is selling under duress and the GM is being sanctioned for reading/speaking a sentence that shouldn’t cross the lips of an NBA executive.
Since June 2012, what credibility the Hawks possess has been tied solely to Danny Ferry. That credibility has been called into question. And so, yet again, has this franchise.
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