# Bruce Levenson's racist e-mail



## ATLien

Reportedly, an e-mail he sent to GM Danny Ferry:



> From: Bruce Levenson
> To: Ferry, Danny
> CC: Foreman, Todd (ucg.com); Peskowitz, Ed (ucg.com)
> Sent: 8/25/2012 11:47:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Business/Game ops
> 
> 1. from day one i have been impressed with the friendliness and professionalism of the arena staff — food vendors, ushers, ticket takers, etc. in our early years when i would bring folks from dc they were blown away by the contrast between abe pollin’s arena and philips. some of this is attributable to southern hospital and manners but bob and his staff do a good job of training. To this day, I can not get the ushers to call me Bruce yet they insist on me calling them by their first names.
> 
> 2. the non-premium area food is better than most arenas, though that is not saying much. i think there is room for improvement and creativity. Levy is our food vendor so we don’t have much control but they have been good partners. i have wished we had some inconic offereing like boog’s barbeque at the baseball stadium in balt.
> 
> 3. our new restaurant, red, just opened so too early for me to give you my thoughts.
> 
> 4. Regarding game ops, i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn’t much focus on game ops. then one day a light bulb went off. when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can’t get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league. when i pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then i start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:
> 
> — it’s 70 pct black
> — the cheerleaders are black
> — the music is hip hop
> — at the bars it’s 90 pct black
> — there are few fathers and sons at the games
> — we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.
> 
> Then i start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience.
> 
> Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba’s urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.
> 
> *My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base.
> 
> Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don’t know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.*
> 
> *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 tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.*
> 
> Gradually things have changed. My unscientific guess is that our crowd is 40 pct black now, still four to five times all other teams. And my further guess is that 40 pct still feels like 70 pet to some whites at our games. Our bars are still overwhelmingly black.
> 
> This is obviously a sensitive topic, but sadly i think it is far and way the number one reason our season ticket base is so low.
> 
> And many of our black fans don’t have the spendable income which explains why our f&b and merchandise sales are so low. At all white thrasher games sales were nearly triple what they are at hawks games (the extra intermission explains some of that but not all).
> 
> Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league. It often looks and sounds empty when the team takes the floor.
> In the past two years, we have created a section of rowdy college students that has been a big plus. And we do a lot of very clever stuff during time outs to entertain the crowd. Our kiss cam is better done than any in the league.
> We have all the same halftime acts that other arenas have but i question whether they make sense. people are on their cell phones during half time. i wonder if flashing on the scoreboard “$2 off on hot dogs during halftime tonight” just as the half ends would be a better use of our halftime dollars and make the fans happier.
> 
> We do all the usual giveways and the fans are usually their loudest when our spirit crew takes the floor to give away t-shirts. It pisses me off that they will yell louder for a t-shirt then for our players.
> 
> Our player intro is flat. We manufacture a lot of noise but because of the late arriving crowd and the fact that a lot of blacks dont seem to go as crazy cheering (another one of my theories) as whites, it is not great. Even when we have just returned from winnng four straight on the road, i am one of the few people in the arena standing and cheering when our team takes the floor. Bob has kicked around ideas like having the starters coming down aisles rather than off the bench during intros. Sounds cool but may highlight all the empty seats at the start of games.
> 
> Not enough of our fans wear hawks jerseys to games. i have just begun to push for ideas like discount food lines for folks wearing jerseys, special entrances, etc. I think we need a committed and perhaps incentivized fan club. We need to realize atl is simply different than every other city. Just adopting nba best practices is not enough. we have to create our own.
> 
> I am rambling and could probably go on forever. If you have any specific areas you would like my thoughts on, let me know.
> 
> Best,
> Bruce
> 
> ps — I have cc’d todd and ed so they can chime in with additional or different thoughts.


Reportedly, he's been told he has to sell his share in the team.


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## Diable

He's a dumbass to put that down on paper. It seems to me that the problem with the Hawks fanbase is that they just aren't going to support a mediocre product.


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## BlakeJesus

Interesting that the email is dated over two years ago.


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## HKF

Hawks have never been to the conference finals since being in Atlanta. It's not a surprise the fans don't care. This was just dumb and insulting to black and white fans in Atlanta.


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## ATLien

BlakeJesus said:


> Interesting that the email is dated over two years ago.


Yes, the timing of this is very, very weird. Wouldn't be surprised if Levenson just wanted out anyways.


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## Mrs. Thang

Good example of how a little data can do a lot of harm in the wrong hands. He seems mainly concerned with money, which would make his motivations more cynical and greedy than "racist", and this was all probably triggered by some demographic data he got his hands on.

Most of his points and theories probably have some truth to them (particularly that southern white males are turned off by the "blackness" of basketball), but geez, at least express your concerns as a problem of "income-mix" (the real issue) at the games and not as a problem of "racial-mix".


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## ATLien

According to Koonin, Ferry will be disciplined for the incident. He met with representatives of the law firm Alston and Bird late Sunday afternoon and said the undisclosed discipline exceeded their recommendation.

“This is a discipline matter,” Koonin said. “He will be punished. It will remain private.”

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

http://www.myajc.com/news/sports/ba...sell-interest-in-hawks-after-inflammat/nhHfJ/


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## ATLien

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/508965770077147137
The background report came into question at a meeting in June about free agency among Hawks officials. Ferry read from the report that included a racist or insensitive remark. That raised questions among some in the meeting in wake of the Donald Sterling situation in Los Angeles. The Hawks launched an internal investigation which led to the discovery of Levenson's email to Ferry from 2012.


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## seifer0406

I don't see why he needs to sell his team because of this. His team has an attendance problem and he's trying to fix it. If he has legitimate reason and evidence to back up his theory then I don't see why it's wrong to even suggest it. It's dumb that he wrote it down and now the league looks bad because it leaked. But to make him sell the team is taking things over the top in my opinion.


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## Marcus13

Ohhh Im staying away from this one. Some definite negative racial tones to the e-mail, but at the same time I feel like he is trying to push diversity in his arena which isn't a bad thing. If another owner was saying he wanted to make his arena more black-friendly and push more of a hip-hop culture, nobody would have an issue with it


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## Basel

This isn't nearly as bad as some people are making it out to be.


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## Diable

What he wants are rich people. You think about what it costs to go to a game, get a couple of beers and some food and then buy the kids some jerseys at the fan shop. You're talking about a few hundred bucks if you bring the whole family and most people can't afford that. A season ticket holder is going to be going to a couple of game per week. He's looking for people who can come back over and over again with a big pile of cash in their pocket, but instead of saying that he talks about white guys


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## ATLien

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Levenson e-mail not racist

http://time.com/3296175/bruce-levenson-atlanta-hawks-racist-email-kareem-abdul-jabbar/



> The only problem is that Atlanta Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson is no Donald Sterling. Nor is his email racist. In fact, his worst crime is misguided white guilt.
> 
> I read Levenson’s email. Here’s what I concluded: Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats.


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## Bogg

seifer0406 said:


> I don't see why he needs to sell his team because of this. His team has an attendance problem and he's trying to fix it. If he has legitimate reason and evidence to back up his theory then I don't see why it's wrong to even suggest it. It's dumb that he wrote it down and now the league looks bad because it leaked. But to make him sell the team is taking things over the top in my opinion.


I heard a very convincing theory that, since Levenson's tried to sell the team before and the minority owners blocked the attempt, it was released by Levenson simply to pressure the rest of the owners into giving permission for a sale. If he makes himself a liability, while not doing something so bad that he becomes a social pariah, they're less likely to keep him locked into the team because it will hurt sales.


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## Milos.Djuric

Bogg said:


> I heard a very convincing theory that, since Levenson's tried to sell the team before and the minority owners blocked the attempt, it was released by Levenson simply to pressure the rest of the owners into giving permission for a sale. If he makes himself a liability, while not doing something so bad that he becomes a social pariah, they're less likely to keep him locked into the team because it will hurt sales.


My thoughts exactly. If somebody wants out badly enough they wouldn't have a problem "falling" to this level.


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## ATLien

Don't even know what this means.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/509027376122982400


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## Marcus13

ATLien said:


> Don't even know what this means.
> 
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/509027376122982400


That statement comes across as more racist then ANYTHING in that e-mail.


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## Mrs. Thang

One of the things I hate about twitter: I don't know what that statement is supposed to mean, it obviously demands context, and is probably irresponsible to even report without it.


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## seifer0406

Can someone explain to me what Danny Ferry is referring to specifically? I really don't understand the expression "some African in him." As far as I know Luol Deng hasn't been involved in any off court trouble and on the court he's a good player.


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## ATLien

seifer0406 said:


> Can someone explain to me what Danny Ferry is referring to specifically? I really don't understand the expression "some African in him." As far as I know Luol Deng hasn't been involved in any off court trouble and on the court he's a good player.


In the call, which was recorded by Gearon Jr., Ferry was discussing positives and negatives of Deng and said “He has a little African in him. Not in a bad way, but he’s like a guy who would have a nice store out front but sell you counterfeit stuff out of the back.” The letter states the Ferry completed the slur by describing the player as “a two-faced liar and cheat.”

It sure sounds like Gearon Jr. is the one who is leaking everything, probably wants to be GM again.


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## ATLien

Woj with more details on the story:

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/an-exc...nny-ferry-s-fateful-phone-call-180253404.html



> Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry had been cornered where no NBA executive wants to be: a late afternoon, Friday conference call with the limited ownership partners. For all the contract language that dictated that Ferry had only to report to owner Bruce Levenson, these information calls remained an obligation of his duties.
> 
> One of the owners on the line in June, Michael Gearon Jr., had once been a far greater power player within the franchise. No more. Levenson and Ferry had neutralized him, and Gearon's days of input into basketball decisions had been long gone. He disdained Ferry, and told people often inside and outside the organization: He longed for Ferry's ouster as GM.
> 
> So now, Gearon had a notoriously impatient general manager on a conference call on a Friday afternoon, with owners whom sources say he didn't respect or like; or in some cases, both. As it turned out, Gearon had the perfect storm for the beginning of the end for the Atlanta Hawks’ two most powerful figures: Levenson and Ferry.


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## Tom

Maybe, Ferry means he isn't a good spokesperson for the team...I don't know. Am I missing a broader context to the Quotes attributed to Ferry? He could be racist, but just putting out quotes and saying he is doomed seems odd.


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## Dornado

Well, here's the audio:

http://deadspin.com/heres-audio-of-hawks-gm-danny-ferrys-racist-remarks-abo-1633758262

Danny Ferry basically uses "African" to mean "duplicitous" or "two-faced", then elaborates at decent length about how Luol Deng has those characteristics (he has a great reputation overall but might do things like leak things to the press, be the coaches best friend but a locker room lawyer when he's not around, etc...). Anyway, **** Danny Ferry.


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## ATLien

The Levenson stuff is so mild in comparison to Ferry's comments, but everyone's got to get fired now.


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## Pablo5

He dont want the team anymore. There was nothing wrong with that letter. The PC police is out of control in this country.


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## Mrs. Thang

Is "the duplicitous African" even a stereotype? This seems like the kind of thing that you pull him aside after the meeting and say "hey, I understand what you meant, but be mindful of your environment."

I mean, it's totally benign right? It's like if I said "That Tony Parker, he's a good guy but, you know, he's got that Frenchman in him so you've got to wonder about his focus and proclivity for flights of fancy."


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## ATLien

Scouting report: http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/news/documents/2014/09/12/LuolDeng.pdf


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## ATLien

Danny Ferry to take an indefinite leave of absence. Coach Mike Budenholzer will assume basketball operation duties.


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## BlakeJesus

*Luol Deng forgives Danny Ferry*

http://espn.go.com/nba/truehoop/miamiheat/story/_/id/11594963/luol-deng-miami-heat-forgives-atlanta-hawks-gm-danny-racist-comments


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