The end of Bruce Levenson’s tenure as controlling owner of the Atlanta Hawks was triggered by a remark made by team General Manager Danny Ferry that touched off an internal investigation. ADVERTISING The end of Bruce Levenson’s tenure as controlling
The end of Bruce Levenson’s tenure as controlling owner of the Atlanta Hawks was triggered by a remark made by team General Manager Danny Ferry that touched off an internal investigation.
Ferry said free-agent target Luol Deng had “some African in him” during a conference call in early July, according to multiple reports, prompting an internal examination that led to the disclosure of a Levenson email containing comments about Hawks home crowds being too black for his tastes.
Levenson pledged to sell his interest in the team Saturday after the public release of his 2-year-old email, which was forwarded to the NBA in July at a time when the league was attempting to strip Donald Sterling of his ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers over racially charged comments.
Hawks Chief Executive Steve Koonin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Ferry had received an undisclosed punishment but would retain his role as general manager.
Ferry made his remarks about Deng during a conference call with the team’s ownership group.
“He’s still a young guy overall,” Ferry told the group, according to Yahoo Sports, reading a report that had been compiled based on information from other sources. “He’s a good guy overall. But he’s not perfect. He’s got some African in him. And I don’t say that in a bad way.”
At least one of the team owners, offended by those remarks, called for an independent investigation into the organization’s operations related to race, Yahoo reported.
Ferry’s choice of words also sparked exasperation on social media Monday.
“What does still having ‘some African in him’ even mean!?&$/:!?” tweeted Stu Jackson, a former NBA executive who now works as an analyst for NBA TV. “For the record I have ‘some African’ in me too! “
Deng, who was born in Sudan, eventually signed a two-year, $19.8 million contract with the Miami Heat.
Hawks officials agreed to meet with civil rights leaders in Atlanta who wanted to discuss the team’s racial attitudes. “I want to hear what people have to say, and I want to address their concerns,” Koonin said Monday.
Levenson wrote in an August 2012 email sent to Ferry and other team co-owners that he noticed crowds at home games were 70 percent black, the cheerleaders were black and the music was hip-hop.
Levenson, seeking to boost interest in a team that historically has lagged near the bottom in NBA attendance, also wrote that he wanted more white cheerleaders and music to be played inside Philips Arena that was familiar to a 40-year-old white male that represented the target season-ticket demographic.
One high-profile figure came to Levenson’s defense Monday when NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote in an opinion piece for Time.com that the Hawks owner “is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats.”
“If his arena was filled mostly with whites and he wanted to attract blacks,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote, “wouldn’t he be asking how they could de-emphasize white culture and bias toward white contestants and cheerleaders? Don’t you think every corporation in America that is trying to attract a more diverse customer base is discussing how to feature more blacks or Asians or Latinos in their TV ads?”
Levenson has apologized for his remarks, calling them “inappropriate and offensive.”
Levenson figures to profit handsomely from the sale of the team he has owned since 2004. In its latest valuation, reached before the Clippers were sold to former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer for a record $2 billion in May, Forbes estimated the Hawks’ value at $425 million. The NBA is expected to take the lead on the sale of the team.
