FROM: Suburban White Guy
TO: Atlanta Hawks Ownership
CC: Anyone Out There Even Dreaming of Buying Out Bruce Levenson
SUBJECT: Why I Don’t Go To Your Games
Having read a now infamous memo on the reasons the Hawks suffer at the gate, I felt compelled to write one of my own.
True, I don’t go to your games. Not unless I’m working.
Lately, though, I’ve considered about maybe, someday, going to one as a paying customer. It could happen.
Mike Budenholzer seems to be building a coherent system of basketball, something that resembles actual planned movement rather than the usual ants-on-a-sugar-cube approach. Since Josh Smith departed, I’ve caught many games on TV and haven’t thrown my shoe at the set even once.
I’d be a little more likely to go if you respected my ability to appreciate your product. When you try to blow me out of my seat with jet exhausts of music between every basket, it tells me you have more faith in your sound system than your players.
(And, no, the type of music doesn’t matter. I don’t go to a basketball game to be assaulted by either Lil Wayne or Wayne Newton. And, please, Braves and Falcons take note).
I don’t go because, apparently, I was working the day they handed out all the disposable income to the suburban white guys. Contrary to your corporate beliefs, we all don’t wear monocles and top hats.
I don’t go to Hawks games for the same reason I don’t eat truffles and don’t drink 18-year-old single malt. I’d rather pay my water bill.
And when you try to blame my absence on the fact that I am scared off by all the black people in the building, that is the weakest, laziest kind of rationalization. That lets you off the hook for all the years of trotting out a team that has been as compelling as unbuttered grits.
Just win, and I’ll happily sit next to anyone of any origin. Even Icelanders. And we all know how they can be.
No, what most scares me off from Hawks games is the idea of handing my money to fools.
About the Author
