Another NBA owner goes down

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Skippa
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Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Skippa »

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11481 ... lling-team
Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is selling his controlling interest in the team, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Sunday.

In July, Levenson self-reported an email he wrote to the team's co-owners and general manager Danny Ferry in August 2012 that he called "inappropriate and offensive." The league commenced an independent investigation after being made aware of the comments.


Levenson writes in a statement that the racially offensive comments came as he pondered ways to bridge Atlanta's racial sports divide and increase fan attendance at Hawks' games.

"In trying to address those issues, I wrote an e-mail two years ago that was inappropriate and offensive," he said. "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," Levenson continued in the statement. "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."

Levenson notified Silver on Saturday night of his intentions to sell.

"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," Silver said in a statement.

Levenson had presided over the Hawks' ownership group since 2004. Over the past decade, the team has never ranked higher than 18th in attendance and is largely overlooked in a market that also has the NFL, Major League Baseball and a passion for college football.

Atlanta CEO Steve Koonin will now oversee all team operations.

The Hawks become the second NBA team to hit the market this year. The Los Angeles Clippers were sold for an unprecedented $2 billion earlier this summer to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer after former owner Donald Sterling was banned for life by the league after his racist rant to a woman became public.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

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This is the "offensive" e-mail :lol:
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.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by AbdiJohnson »

He wants an overvaluation and he's not going to get it

I am,

Abdi "He's not very bright" Johnson
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by original dervish »

I don't see why he has to go. :?
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by anzeloti »

Drowning in irony. Bruce Levenson in April: "Sterling ... should be given the maximum penalty for his comments." :lol:
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by SultanOrder »

Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league.
:dead:
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by HusseinHassan »

:snoop:
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Hodan94 »

lmao these jews are unbelievable.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Basra- »

Skippa wrote:'

"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," Silver said in a statement.
]
' :? Who believes that CRAP??? No human being will 'Self Report' themselves! R u kidding me? If u believe that, then u don't even have an ounce of cynical blood in your system, and that would be sad to survive in this world. :lol: No doubt, he was blackmailed by someone, so he thought he should go on the offence rather than later go for a weak defense. :eat:
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Skippa »

Basra- wrote:
' :? Who believes that CRAP??? No human being will 'Self Report' themselves! R u kidding me? If u believe that, then u don't even have an ounce of cynical blood in your system, and that would be sad to survive in this world. :lol: No doubt, he was blackmailed by someone, so he thought he should go on the offence rather than later go for a weak defense. :eat:
That's what Mr Silver said...whether he believes it is another story...I agree with you though, I suspect Donald Sterling had someone dig up dirt on other NBA owners to shore up his defense and this guy sought to preempt it.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by unstoppablefade »

Did anyone of you dumbfucks even read the email or did you jus give your shitty knee jerked reaction after reading the title.

Sure he did mention some unsavoury stereotypes but most what he said is true, he just didn't say in a politically correct way. It's quite clear that this guy wasn't Tryna be intentionally racist. But of course the media will blow this up and portray him as the second coming of Donald Sterling.

The dude just legimately wanted to raise ticket sales and revenue. I see more racist and hateful shit on this website every f-king day.
Last edited by unstoppablefade on Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Basra- »

:dj: Skippa

I just saw the story on my Tele---CNN. I observed the face of the Jew looking team owner. I don't think this is a black mail pre-empt move. Walaahi, I do believe this is a set up. BY garning some attention due to the subject, 'Racial' division, u garner lots of attention, and that creates the value of the team. Therefore, he can sell it after being on the media for a while due to its celebrity status, albeit 15 minutes. (which is all the time u need to close a deal) :o Brilliant! Brilliant!


:( But sadly, at the expense of offending black people. Alaaah black people baa iskaa baa'eh! :stylin: This is worst than even Donald Sterling thing! Before the scandal with Donald Sterling--his team was worth 700 million. After the scandal which was only two weeks--the price sky rocketed to 2 billion. Now that is just crazy. That's like 290% price jump! :o
Last edited by Basra- on Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Another NBA owner goes down

Post by Skippa »

Basra- wrote::dj: Skippa

I just saw the story on my Tele---CNN. I observed the face of the Jew looking team owner. I don't think this is a black mail pre-empt move. Walaahi, I do believe this is a set up. BY garning some attention due to the subject, 'Racial' division, u garner lots of attention, and that creates the value of the team. Therefore, he can sell it after being on the media for a while due to its celebrity status, albeit 15 minutes. (which is all the time u need to close a deal) :o Brilliant! Brilliant!

:lol: :lol: True...it could be that too
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