Throughout the day we’ve been providing the latest updates on the Hawks scandal that will spark an ownership change in Atlanta and lead to sanctions against General Manager Danny Ferry. Here are some of today’s reactions to the biggest story in the NBA this week..
- The NBA waited until Donald Sterling lost any shot, however remote, of reacquiring the Clippers before letting word of the Levenson email leak out, writes Michael McCann of Sports Illustrated.
- In a piece for Time.com, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explained that he doesn’t view Bruce Levenson as a racist but rather as a business man who was trying to better cater his product towards his targeted demo. While the Hall of Famer admits that some of what Levenson wrote was cringe-worthy, he feels that he was ultimately just trying to do what was best for his business.
- Not everyone sees things Kareem’s way. Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution points out the franchise’s shortcomings in recent years and says that the team’s lack of ticket sales has nothing to do with the racial makeup of the crowd. In fact, he argues that Atlanta has as many, if not more, affluent African-Americans as most cities in America and a lot of them don’t go to Hawks games either.
- The NBA has an issue and putting more African-Americans in charge of teams could help, writes J.A. Adande of ESPN.com. However, Adande doesn’t see many African-Americans out there with the kind of wealth to buy a team for somewhere between $500MM and $2 billion.
- While Levenson’s statements were harsh and stereotypical, it’s ridiculous to assume that he’s the only NBA or professional sports owner to discuss racial demographics regarding attendance, writes Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe.