The NBA has another controversy on its hands, just weeks after the Donald Sterling saga seemed to be over. On Sunday, the Atlanta Hawks announced that majority owner Bruce Levenson would be selling the team after an offensive email surfaced.
Levenson revealed that he sent a letter that addressed his concerns about game attendance in 2012, which featured insensitive comments about the black fans at his games.
“If you're angry about what I wrote, you should be. I'm angry at myself, too,” Levenson wrote Sunday. “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.”
He said that he voluntarily released the email to the NBA and it was also made available to the public.
“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,” he added.
In the letter in question, Levenson broke down his fanbase by race and even suggested that the mostly black audience was scaring away affluent white fans.
“My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant [sic] season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean [sic] 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,” the letter reads in part.
NBA commissioner Alan Silver commended Levenson for making the letter public and voluntarily selling the team. Silver said that Levenson notified the league about the letter in July. At that point, the NBA started an independent investigation. While the investigation was underway, Levenson told Silver about his plan to sell the team.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin has said that more disciplinary action will be taken, since the investigation uncovered other insensitive remarks from general manager Danny Ferry, one of the recipients of the 2012 email.
Ferry reportedly held a meeting in early July about free agency and read aloud a racist remark made about one player written by a scout. That specific incident sparked the investigation, which ultimately lead to Levenson releasing the email and telling the NBA about it. The team hired a law firm to look through 24,000 documents and uncovered the Levenson email.
Koonin later spoke with the AJC Sunday night and revealed that several multi-billionaires are interested in the team.
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