NBA 2013-2014 Thread

[shel311]

Ty Lawson goes hard!

[LetsGoPeay]

Ty Lawson goes hard!

Holy crap that's great

[Cnasty]

So the Atlanta Hawks owner is Donald Sterlingish too huh?

Long but an entertaining read from the owner of the Hawks to the top brass of the organization:

From: Bruce Levenson

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

[DRiccio21]

we all know i'm the defender of all things race/equality relations.

with that said, i read it briefly yesterday and it seems like something that is spoken about in just about every marketing meeting that discusses demographics. demographics are certainly a part of running a business.

the part about the 'whites being scared of the blacks' is certainly out of bounds language tho.

he spends a pretty good portion of the email bashing racists and trying to figure out ways to make it work. he suggests adding entertainment for white and black ticket holders.

i have a hard time believing this is the whole story. he either wanted to sell and this was an out for him or they have more on him and this is the easiest fall for him to take.

[Cnasty]

I didnt want to be George'd but he made plenty of good marketing/demographic points as Dave stated.

He saw Donald Stirling get $2billion and wanted a piece of that pie! Even though he wont sniff that for the Hawks.

[shel311]

Yea, while not in good taste, it's hard to think this would be something worth losing your team over.

he either wanted to sell and this was an out for him or they have more on him and this is the easiest fall for him to take.

Do you need an out to sell your team? Why would you incriminate yourself like that, couldn't you just sell your team because you wanted to?

[shel311]

And by the way, Corey with the terrible timing, not allowing us to soak in the greatness of that Ty Lawson pic.

[GeorgesGoons]

I heard about the story on CNN and they made it out to sound as if he was dropping a bunch of N bombs. I think he was over analyzing the crowd a little bit. But if the demographics across the league is 35-50 White for season ticket holders why wouldn't you want to cater to them a little more, that is where the money is right (season ticket holders)? I don't think this is anywhere close to Sterling's rant.

[GeorgesGoons]

I didnt want to be George'd

you are a big boy, you can take it. And I promise I am not a racist.

[DRiccio21]

Yea, while not in good taste, it's hard to think this would be something worth losing your team over.

he either wanted to sell and this was an out for him or they have more on him and this is the easiest fall for him to take.

Do you need an out to sell your team? Why would you incriminate yourself like that, couldn't you just sell your team because you wanted to?

maybe, maybe not. i'm not saying its likely he incriminated himself to sell the team, but i've seen crazier shit happen.

its a way to create a market for your team that otherwise might not have existed. suddenly every billionaire who wants to own a team knows the Hawks are available and they just saw the hero's welcome that Ballmer had in LA. if he simply said 'i'm selling the Hawks, you get the questions of 'why are you selling', 'whats wrong with them' etc.

as a simple example, think about a home that's up for sale. you see the house and you check it out and it looks great and its in an up and coming area and suddenly the guy is selling it and moving out. you start to ask 'why would he be selling?' 'is there mold' 'do the neighbors suck' etc? now think about if the realtor tells you that the old owners just found a job in a different state and are 'motivated sellers'. you suddenly think you're getting a deal on a house they don't want to sell and a bunch of people start to check out the house thinking they are 'getting a deal' and they start to compete to bid for the house. its the same premise potentially here. it happens quite a bit in business with different wrinkles.

its a really interesting case because the NBA or most professional sports teams have a built in bid that regardless of what you did as an owner, the team is going to have the value the league created (sterling being the obvious example... he couldn't have done worse). the drumming up of interest can potentially cause a bidding war if there are multiple parties interested in taking over the team.

[Cnasty]

Good point and that makes a lot of sense.

Top 3 potential owners:
Outkast
Ludacris
Urrrsher

[shel311]

as a simple example, think about a home that's up for sale

I'm right in the middle of the frustrating process o selling 1 home and buying another, why would you want to make me do that, of all things!!!!

Dave has no soul!!!

[nick]

I didnt want to be George'd but he made plenty of good marketing/demographic points as Dave stated.

He saw Donald Stirling get $2billion and wanted a piece of that pie! Even though he wont sniff that for the Hawks.

[shel311]

European reporter to Demarcus Cousins: Do you know where Slovenia is on a map?

Cousins to European reporter: No. Do you know where Alabama is?

Well played.

[nick]

apparently it stemmed from a scouting report

Atlanta Hawks' Danny Ferry read from a report that stated Luol Deng has 'some African in him.'

Via Wojnarowski:

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “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."

[shel311]

Via Wojnarowski:

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “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."

Now that's different than the email. The insinuation there is getting into racist territory.

[DRiccio21]

maybe i'm reading that wrong, Ferry said that?

so he's gone too?

[shel311]

I could be 100% wrong, but what I recall, is Ferry was reading the owner's scouting report or something like that, perhaps? And instead of cleaning it up or whatever, he read it verbatim.

[nick]

https://sports.yahoo.com/news/sources-- ... 01096.html

The trigger of events that led to the toppling of Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson began with general manager Danny Ferry referring to free agent Luol Deng as still having "some African in him" on an organizational conference call, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo Sports.

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “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."

View photo
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Luol Deng, considered one of the highest character players in the NBA, was born in the Sudan.

Luol Deng, considered one of the highest character players in the NBA, was born in the Sudan.
Deng, considered one of the highest character players in the NBA, was born in the Sudan.

The call with the ownership group had been set up to inform them of free-agent options on the market in July.

Ferry met with the Hawks coaches and players on Sunday and disclosed those comments with an apology, sources told Yahoo Sports.

Ferry reached out to Deng and Deng's agent, Ron Shade, on Monday, Shade told Yahoo Sports. Ferry hadn't yet spoken to Deng, but he did talk to Shade, a Chicago-based agent. "I have no reaction, but we've spoken," Shade told Yahoo.

Ferry was on the phone with seven Hawks owners and was reading off a report in which the information, Ferry said, had been gathered through a network of scouts, officials, players, coaches and others around basketball.

Hawks CEO Steve Koonin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Ferry had received an undisclosed punishment, but would remain as GM.

The disparaging racial reference to Deng triggered at least one team owner on the call to pursue an independent investigation into how the organization operated in regard to race. The search uncovered the 2012 email that Levenson sent to Ferry and two minority owners that ultimately led to Levenson's decision, under pressure, to sell his stake in the Hawks.

Commissioner Adam Silver met with a senior committee of owners late last week in New York, and NBA investigators outlined the findings on the probe in Atlanta, sources told Yahoo Sports. The NBA and Hawks officials helped convince Levenson to sell his majority share of the Hawks.

Ferry and Deng both played basketball at Duke University. Deng signed a free-agent deal with the Miami Heat this offseason. Atlanta did discuss a deal with him, but hadn't come close to meeting his contractual demands.

Atlanta hired Ferry as its general manager in 2012. He had served as an assistant GM twice in San Antonio, and was the GM of the Cleveland Cavaliers for five years. There had never previously been a suggestion that he had been insensitive or intolerant on issues of race.

[shel311]

Or not...Ferry's gone.