Another NBA Executive In Trouble For A Racial Slur

Donald Sterling was right about one thing, he wasn’t the only owner that said things that would embarrass the NBA.  Atlanta Hawks  owner Bruce Levenson is next:

In a statement, Levenson announced his intent to sell his controlling stake in the team and apologized for a 2012 e-mail regarding the Hawks’ attendance problems and inability to attract suburban whites that included “inappropriate and offensive” comments.

“My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base,” Levenson wrote in the e-mail, which also claimed that the Hawks were attracting an “overwhelming black audience” and noted that “there are few fathers and sons at the games.”

…and now the Hawks general manager Danny Ferry is in trouble, too, describing free agent forward Luol Deng:

The team’s chief executive officer, Steve Koonin, told the Hawks’ flagship radio station Tuesday that he made the decision to discipline Ferry but allowed him to keep his job. He did not say what the punishment was, but noted that he relied on a law firm’s three-month investigation of Ferry, and his description of Deng as someone who “has a little African in him.” . . .

A letter from the Hawks’ co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. recommended that Ferry resign or be fired. His June 12 letter to the co-owner Bruce Levenson said Ferry went on to say, describing Deng,  “Not in a bad way, but he’s like a guy who would have a nice store out front and sell you counterfeit stuff out of the back.”

Gearon added: “Ferry completed the racial slur by describing the player (and impliedly all persons of African descent) as a two-faced liar and cheat.”

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.