Bruce Levenson

Hawks Notes: Silver, Ferry, Owners

September 22nd, 2014 at 4:45pm CST by Chuck Myron

It’s been more than two weeks since Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson announced his intention to sell his stake in the club stemming from an investigation that uncovered an email with racially charged statements that he’d written in 2012. GM Danny Ferry helped defuse the controversy when he agreed to take an indefinite leave of absence after his own racist statements became public, but the leadership of the Hawks remains in limbo. Here’s the latest:

A sitting NBA owner told Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Hawks will move to a new city “over my dead body,” casting further doubt on the notion that a new principal owner will move the franchise. Commissioner Adam Silver will meet Friday with Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed to discuss the state of Hawks ownership, as Vivlamore reports in the same piece.
Silver said today that he thought Ferry was wise to take his indefinite leave of absence, as Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal tweets. Silver said earlier this month that he doesn’t think Ferry committed any offense that should prompt the team to fire him.
Vivlamore’s piece also provides a breakdown of the Hawks ownership shares. Levenson owns 24% of the team, but his share combined with those of Ed Peskowitz and Todd Foreman total 50.1%, and all three are selling. Michael Gearon Sr. and Michael Gearon Jr. own approximately 42% of the team combined, while the rest of the club is in the hands of Rutherford Seydel, Beau Turner and a New York-based investment group that includes Steven Price.

Hawks Rumors: Friday

September 12th, 2014 at 5:03pm CST by Chuck Myron

It had been a quiet offseason for the Hawks, but they wound up making waves in undesirable fashion this week as racially charged language from controlling owner Bruce Levenson and GM Danny Ferry plunged the franchise into turmoil. We’ll track today’s developments here, and any additional updates will be added to the top.

5:03pm update:

Players union interim executive director Ron Klempner issued a statement acknowledging Ferry’s public apology to Deng. USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt provides a full transcript of the statement via Twitter. “The NBPA deplores the insensitive & thoroughly inappropriate remarks by Danny Ferry,” Klempner said in part. “We are pleased to learn that Ferry acknowledges his statements were offensive, has extended a personal apology to Luol Deng and the other Atlanta Hawks players and that the Hawks organization has determined that discipline of Ferry was warranted.”

3:49pm update:

Kyle Korver says Deng told him he doesn’t believe Ferry or anyone with the Hawks organization is a racist, and Korver also expressed his own support for the team in an interview with Vivlamore. “My thoughts are, when I got traded to the Hawks, I didn’t want to come here because all I knew was what I had heard, about bad culture and no fans and no excitement in the city,” Korver said in part. “So I didn’t want to come to Atlanta. At all. I was bummed to leave Chicago. But by the next summer, I chose to re-sign and come back to Atlanta. After a year of watching what Danny (Ferry) was doing and the people he was bringing in. Everything I saw, was so attractive to me and I really believed in it. I believed that he was going to turn things around. I saw that Atlanta was an incredible city, and that there was so much potential here to both raise my family and help build a great basketball culture.”
Ferry is taking an indefinite leave of absence, as we covered in a full story.

2:46pm update:

The copy of the scouting report, as hosted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that Ferry is to have read indicates that the information came from someone associated with the Cavs. “Con isn’t bad, but it’s there. African-like store front looks great but there’s a black market section in the back,” the report reads in part. It also attributes a “sense of entitlement” to Deng and suggests that Deng held back while with the Cavs last season to protect himself from injury before he hit free agency in the summer, and that Deng “treated Cleveland like a pit-stop.” Still, the report indicates that he’d be welcome to return to the Cavs.

1:17pm update:

The snippet of the report that Vivlamore has posted closely resembles some of what Ferry said on the recording of the conference call. “He is a good guy on the cover but he is an African. He has a little two-step in him = says what you want to hear but behind closed doors he could be killing you,” the report stated in part.

1:08pm update:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV in Atlanta have obtained a copy of the scouting report on Deng that Ferry is to have read during the conference call, Vivlamore tweets. So, that further confirms the report’s existence and casts doubt on the notion that Ferry came up with the disparaging remarks about Deng on his own. The report does reference Deng’s African heritage, according to Vivlamore, but it’s not clear exactly what the report said at this point.

12:34pm update:

An NBA investigator has seen the report from which Ferry is to have read the remarks about Luol Deng that touched off the controversy, a source tells USA Today’s Sam Amick. The league isn’t punishing Ferry, whom the Hawks have already disciplined, and commissioner Adam Silver has said he doesn’t think Ferry deserves to be fired. Thursday’s release of the audio from the conference call in which Ferry recited insults with racial overtones about Deng prompted widespread speculation that Ferry made the comments off the cuff, and that he wasn’t reading from a scouting report. The investigator also heard the audio before it became public, Amick reports.
Levenson sent a sharply worded response to a letter that co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. sent to him in June in which Gearon called for Ferry’s ouster, as Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution documents within a timeline of the controversy. Levenson cited “false and misleading comments” within Gearon’s letter, and Levenson expressed reservations about continuing his partnership with Gearon. Levenson announced this past weekend that he’s selling his stake in the team.
Boris Diaw, Channing Frye, Pau Gasol, Greg Monroe and Thabo Sefolosha were among the other players the Hawks discussed during that conference call, as Vivlamore notes in the same piece. Of those names, Sefolosha was the only one who signed with the Hawks.

Hawks Rumors: Thursday

September 11th, 2014 at 6:30pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Hawks scandal is in its fifth day, and revelations continue to surface. We’ll track today’s latest developments here, and any additional updates will be added to the top of the post:

6:30pm update:

Portions of the audio tape from the conference call during which Ferry’s comments were made have now been released, courtesy of Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/09/10/5165663/dominique-wilkins-reportedly-interested.html#.VBIo6mPa-Uk#storylink=cpy

2:34pm update:

Raptors GM Masai Ujiri penned a piece for The Globe and Mail in which he called upon people to “measure [Ferry’s] heart” and forgive him if they believe that he made “an honest and isolated error.” “I spoke to Danny myself about this,” Ujiri wrote in part. “He started off by apologizing to Luol. He apologized to me and apologized for any insult he’d offered to African people in general. He explained the incident as best he could to me. There are some things about that conversation I would like to keep between the two of us, but I came away feeling like I’d understood what he had to say.”

1:29pm update:

GM Danny Ferry‘s fateful remarks about Luol Deng weren’t the first racially charged statements attributed to Ferry, as SB Nation’s Tom Ziller details. Agent William Phillips told Marty McNeal of The Sacramento Bee in 2006 that Ferry, then a player for the Spurs, used an racist slur to insult Phillips client Bonzi Wells during a game in 2002, as McNeal reminded with a pair of tweets this week. Ferry called McNeal after the story ran to deny using the epithet. Commissioner Adam Silver cited Ferry’s clean track record when he said Wednesday that he didn’t think the Hawks should fire Ferry.
Ferry’s “smug manner” of dealing with some Hawks staffers rubbed co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. the wrong way, a source tells Michael Lee of The Washington Post. Gearon was reportedly an opponent of Ferry even before Ferry made his comments about Deng in June.
Steve Belkin’s departure from the Hawks ownership group a few years ago left Bruce Levenson with a stake representing close to 60% of the franchise, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge. That seems to conflict with a report we passed along Tuesday from Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution indicating that Levenson doesn’t own a majority of the team. Levenson was acting as the controlling owner of the Hawks until this past weekend, when he announced that he was selling his share after the revelation of a racially charged 2012 email.

And-Ones: Hawks, Lakers, Ayon, Collison

September 8th, 2014 at 9:54pm CST by Zachary Links

The NBA and its network partners expect to reach an agreement on new long-term media deals by the start of the regular season, sources tell John Lombardo and John Ourand of Sports Business Daily. The new deal would see the league’s annual rights fee more than double, with ESPN and Turner combining to pay more than $2 billion per year on average. As it stands, the NBA takes in $485MM per year from ESPN and $445MM from Turner, good for a little under $1 billion per year. Several sources say the new deal will be an eight-year pact but one source says it’ll be a nine-year deal. Here’s tonight’s look around the Association..

Hawks co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. wrote a letter to majority owner Bruce Levenson in June asking to get rid of GM Danny Ferry, writes Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Vivlamore also reprinted Gearon’s account of Ferry’s controversial comment.
The Lakers asked Byron Scott‘s opinion on their summer moves as they made them even before they hired the coach, who praised the team’s acquisitions of Carlos Boozer and Jeremy Lin in an interview with A. Martinez of 89.3 KPCC Public Radio.
Barcelona was also in on Gustavo Ayon before he landed with Real Madrid, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (on Twitter). We learned earlier today that the center signed with the Spanish club on a multi-year deal.
Offseason addition Darren Collison knows it won’t be easy, but he’s excited about the opportunity to help lead the Kings, writes Steven Wilson of Kings.com. “We have a relatively young team and there’s still going to be a lot to learn – there are going to be some road blocks and it’s not going to be easy where we want to go, but I’m excited to take on that role,” Collison said.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Reactions To Hawks Situation

September 8th, 2014 at 8:04pm CST by Zachary Links

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.

Hawks Rumors: Monday

September 8th, 2014 at 4:46pm CST by Chuck Myron

The revelation that Hawks owner Bruce Levenson has decided to sell the team because of a racially charged email that he sent is sending ripples throughout the league. We rounded up Sunday evening’s dispatches related to Levenson in this post, and we’ll track the latest developments throughout today right here, with additional updates at the top:

4:46pm update:

NBPA acting director Ron Klempner issued a statement on the Hawks situation to reporters, including USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt (on Twitter). The statement reads: “We’ve had continuing discussions with the league office about the incidents of disturbing statements attributed to representatives of the Atlanta Hawks’ franchise. We recognize that there is an ongoing investigation regarding the circumstances, and we will continue to monitor these events and take any action we deem appropriate.”
Meanwhile, Zillgitt hears (link) that the comments read by Ferry on the Deng background report were the extent of his comments on the player’s race.

11:55am update:

The NBA does not plan to give Ferry additional punishment on top of what the Hawks are already doling out, Vivlamore reports (on Twitter).

11:53am update:

Ferry made contact with Ron Shade, one of Deng’s agents, to apologize, and he’s reached out to Deng, too, Wojnarowski tweets.

11:48am update:

Ferry met with Hawks coaches and players Sunday and apologized as he told them what he said about Deng, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. A source disclosed Ferry’s statement about Deng to Wojnarowski. “He’s still a young guy overall,” Ferry said of Deng, according to Wojnarowski’s source. “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.”
The NBA and officials from the Hawks helped convince Levenson to sell the team, Wojnarowski writes, which seems to conflict with Windhorst’s report that Levenson chose to sell the team on his own volition.

11:07am update:

The Hawks are set to discipline Ferry, but it’s unclear if the NBA will also levy a punishment against the GM, Vivlamore reports. A person involved tells Vivlamore that they had “never heard a comment as offensive” as the one directed at Deng. The person who wrote the report that Ferry read was not with the Hawks organization, as Koonin says to Vivlamore.

9:06am update:

The NBA isn’t interested in having the Hawks move to Seattle or elsewhere, Mannix hears (Twitter link). The team’s lease at the arena in Atlanta, which runs through 2017/18 as Windhorst pointed out in his story, would also help forestall a move, Mannix says.

8:59am update:

Luol Deng is the player who was the subject of the background report that contained an offensive and racist remark that Hawks GM Danny Ferry read, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). That report sparked the investigation that uncovered Levenson’s email.
Ferry faces discipline, but he will remain GM of the team, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com hears.
Prospective buyers are already inundating Hawks CEO Steve Koonin with calls, as he tells Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I had over seven phone calls directly today from multi-billionaires,” Koonin said. “It blew my mind some of the people who wrote me today.” The league, rather than Levenson, will take the lead in conducting the sale, as Windhorst writes in his piece. It’s unclear how much of a role Koonin, who owns a share of the Hawks and who has been placed in charge of the team in Levenson’s stead, will play in finding a new controlling owner.
Levenson made the choice to sell on his own, believing that his racially charged email would become public and that it would hurt business if he continued as owner, Windhorst writes. But an executive for another team tells Chris Mannix of SI.com that he believes Levenson is using the affair as an excuse to cash in on skyrocketing franchise values.
Players and people around the league generally liked Levenson prior to Sunday’s revelation, according to Windhorst. However, Koonin told CNN’s Martin Savidge that he was “morified and angry” about the email, and that when he met with Hawks players Sunday night, “It was like walking into a funeral,” as CNN’s Eliott C. McLaughlin and Holly Yan pass along. “These are young men who wear our city’s name and our logo on their chest,” Koonin said. “They play for a team, and they are supposed to be supported by their ownership. And ownership failed in supporting them.”

Latest On Hawks, Bruce Levenson

September 7th, 2014 at 9:30pm CST by Zachary Links

9:30pm: In an interview with Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin said there will be other disciplinary actions taken, including actions against GM Danny Ferry. It turns out the internal review that unearthed Levenson’s email was actually prompted by an incident involving the GM.

When the Hawks held a meeting in early June to discuss free agency, a player was being discussed and Ferry cited a background report that included an “offensive and racist” remark. “Instead of editing it, he said the comment,” Koonin told Vivlamore.

“I support Steve’s leadership and greatly appreciate his support,” Ferry said. “I look to learn from this situation and help us become a better organization.”

6:35pm: Not far removed from the Donald Sterling ordeal, another NBA owner is on his way out of the league thanks to a racial scandal. Hawks owner Bruce Levenson has agreed to sell his team after an inflammatory email from 2012 came to the surface. When word of the email first broke, the identity of the owner was unknown, which left many to wonder if they were the one caught in the crosshairs, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.

More than one owner wondered if they were busted for saying something off-color and team executives asked others if it was their club’s owner that was in trouble. Before Levenson’s identity was revealed, Wojnarowski writes, several people around the league were bracing for a severe punishment.

When Sterling’s scandal broke and the NBA was deliberating how to handle the situation, Mavs owner Mark Cuban expressed concern that ousting the then-Clippers owner would set a dangerous precedent going forward. While others didn’t speak out on the issue, Wojnarowski hears that Cuban was not alone in his sentiments.

“Adam [Silver] had far less support on Sterling than anyone knows,” a league source who is in frequent contact with the commissioner told Wojnarowski.

Meanwhile, that same source says that the NBA’s claim that Levenson blew the whistle on himself is simply a matter of semantics. It’s not clear when Levenson truly gave the NBA his mea culpa, but it’s clear that there could be more owners in trouble going forward.

Bruce Levenson To Sell Hawks

September 7th, 2014 at 3:21pm CST by Eddie Scarito

3:21pm: NBA spokesman Mike Bass issued a statement to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports (on Twitter). “Any claim that Mr. Levenson did not self-report his email is categorically false,” Bass said.

12:14pm: A high-ranking league official disputes that Levenson self-reported the e-mail to the league, Wojnarowski reports (Twitter link).

11:00am: The full e-mail that Levenson sent, which led to his intent to sell the team, can be read in its entirety here (courtesy of Adi Joseph of USA Today).

10:36am: Hawks owner Bruce Levenson intends to sell his interest in the team, Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (Twitter link). This comes in direct response to the revelation of an alleged racist e-mail that Levenson had sent back in 2012, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Hawks CEO Steve Koonin will oversee team operations while the league begins the process of selling the franchise in conjunction with Levenson, Ken Berger of CBSSports.com tweets.

The existence of the e-mail was self-reported by Levenson to the league, Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal reports (Twitter link). During the Donald Sterling affair, Levenson had advocated for a zero tolerance policy, Ben Golliver of SI.com notes (Twitter link). Levenson has been Atlanta’s managing partner since 2004.

Levenson released a statement which read (courtesy of NBA.com):

“Over the past several years, I’ve spent a lot of time grappling with low attendance at our games and the need for the Hawks to attract more season ticket holders and corporate sponsors. Over that time, I’ve talked with team executives about the need for the Hawks to build a more diverse fan base that includes more suburban whites, and I shared my thoughts on why our efforts to bridge Atlanta’s racial sports divide seemed to be failing.

In trying to address those issues, I wrote an e-mail two years ago that was inappropriate and offensive. I trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests (i.e. hip hop vs. country, white vs. black cheerleaders, etc.) and by stereotyping their perceptions of one another (i.e. that white fans might be afraid of our black fans). By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans.

If you’re angry about what I wrote, you should be. I’m angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. We all may have subtle biases and preconceptions when it comes to race, but my role as a leader is to challenge them, not to validate or accommodate those who might hold them.

I have said repeatedly that the NBA should have zero tolerance for racism, and I strongly believe that to be true. That is why I voluntarily reported my inappropriate e-mail to the NBA.

After much long and difficult contemplation, I have decided that it is in the best interests of the team, the Atlanta community, and the NBA to sell my controlling interest in the Hawks franchise.

Hawks CEO Steve Koonin will oversee all team operations and take all organizational reports as we proceed with the sale process.

I’m truly embarrassed by my words in that e-mail, and I apologize to the members of the Hawks family and all of our fans.

To the Hawks family and its fans, you have my deepest gratitude for the past ten years. Working with this team and its extraordinary executives, coaching staff, and players has been one of the highlights of my life. I am proud of our diverse, passionate, and growing legion of Hawks fans, and I will continue to join you in cheering for the best team in the NBA.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver responded to the news by releasing a statement (courtesy of Basketball Insiders), in which he said:

“Following Bruce Levenson notifying the league office this July of his August 2012 email, the NBA commenced an independent investigation regarding the circumstances of Mr. Levenson’s comments.

Prior to the completion of the investigation, Mr. Levenson notified me last evening that he had decided to sell his controlling interest in the Atlanta Hawks. As Mr. Levenson acknowledged, the views he expressed are entirely unacceptable and are in stark contrast to the core principles of the National Basketball Association. He shared with me how truly remorseful he is for using those hurtful words and how apologetic he is to the entire NBA family – fans, players, team employees, business partners and fellow team owners – for having diverted attention away from our game.

I commend Mr. Levenson for self-reporting to the league office, for being fully cooperative with the league and its independent investigator, and for putting the best interests of the Hawks, the Atlanta community, and the NBA first.

We will be working with the Hawks ownership group on the appropriate process for the sale of the team and I have offered our full support to Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, who will now oversee all team operations.

The NBA and its teams have long had in place anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies in order to facilitate respectful and diverse workplaces. Earlier this summer, the league re-doubled its efforts by, among other things, making it mandatory for all league and team personnel to receive annual training on these issues.”