Atlanta Hawks Rebuff Civil Rights Leaders; NBA Legend Says Team Owner Not Racist

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As fallout over racially insensitive remarks made by the controlling owner of the Atlanta Hawks continues, civil rights leaders learned a meeting to discuss the NBA team’s issues was canceled and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar conditionally defended the owner.

Atlanta metro civil rights leaders were turned away on Wednesday when they tried to meet with representatives from the Atlanta Hawks; the organization had reached out the night before to postpone the session.

“We are obviously offended, but we’re not so offended that we’re willing to not converse. We still intend to meet,” the Rev. Markel Hutchins, who helped set up the meeting, told WSB-TV.

Hutchins wanted to hear from Hawks co-owner and CEO Steve Koonin personally that the meeting was postponed; when Koonin failed to contact him, Hutchins and his group attended anyway.

Race-Tinged Email Sets Off Furor

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the racially insensitive comments made in a 2012 email by Atlanta Hawks majority co-owner Bruce Levenson that only recently came to light. Organizers also wanted to address the more recent offensive statements of another Hawks co-owner, Daniel Ferry, about a forward for the Miami Heat, Luol Deng, a potential Hawks recruit who is a native of Sudan.

In his email, Levenson expresses discontent with the team’s predominantly black attendance and proposed several ways to increase the franchise’s appeal to white fans.

A portion of this email, released by ESPN.com, appears below:

“I think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority” and “I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while I don’t care what the color of the artist is, I want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season [tickets] demo. I have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some timeout contest is black. I have even [complained] that the kiss cam is too black.”

Levenson’s email harkens the $2.5 million fine and lifetime ban of former Los Angeles Clippers’ owner, Donald Sterling, in April after TMZ released a recording of racist comments he made. Levenson had been one of the most outspoken owners against Sterling’s actions.

NBA Legend Weighs In

Abdul-Jabbar, a six-time NBA champion and league MVP, published an editorial piece for TIME magazine on Monday that weighed in on this controversy.

“Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats,” Jabbar writes. “Businesspeople should have the right to wonder how to appeal to diverse groups in order to increase business. They should even be able to make minor insensitive gaffes if there is no obvious animosity or racist intent. This is a business email that is pretty harmless in terms of insulting anyone — and pretty fascinating in terms of seeing how the business of running a team really works.”

ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith came to a similar conclusion on ESPN’s Sept. 8 episode of “First Take.” “Regardless of how foolish, how incendiary and inflammatory Levenson sounds,” Smith explains, “it’s about business with him.”

Smith added that the Donald Sterling scandal has heightened the league’s sensitivity toward race. “If it were not for the Donald Sterling fiasco, I believe an apology and a press conference would have been more than enough for [Levenson] to get by this incident.”

In his article, Jabbar does not exonerate Levenson from the “cringe-worthy” content of his email, however. The former NBA player highlighted a specific statement from Levenson’s email as an example of its offensiveness: “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.”

A Ploy to Sell the NBA Team?

Nubyjas Wilborn, co-founder of ESPN’s blog HawksHoop, spoke with National Public Radio on Wednesday and suggested Levenson’s self-reported email was simply a way to sell his stake in the team before Ferry’s comments were leaked and became a larger controversy. Wilborn noted that the Hawks’ ownership had a deal in place to sell the team in 2011 that fell through and has since made unsuccessful attempts to rebrand the franchise.

“The most interesting thing is the Hawks didn’t actually do any of the things in the e-mail,” Wilborn said. “I go to the games all the time. The organist literally plays hip-hop organ. The cheerleaders are still majority black. Rapper 2 Chainz, for instance, sits with Bruce Levenson and the owners at a majority of the games. So for him to bring an e-mail out after the fact that he didn’t do any of it to me tells me that he wanted to get out in front of the Danny Ferry situation and/or wanted to sell anyway.”

As for who will buy Levenson’s controlling interest in the team, Koonin told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution in an interview that he has had no shortage of interested buyers and foresees no issue selling Levenson’s stake. The names of any potential buyers have not yet been released.

»Photo Credit: The Atlanta Hawks