Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is drawing most of the headlines, but general manager Danny Ferry is also embroiled in the Atlanta scandal.
Ferry trigged the investigation when another owner heard him, reading a report written by someone else, saying of Luol Deng “He’s got some African in him.”
The Hawks will discipline Ferry internally, but Adam Silver could also take action against the GM. It appears he won’t, though.
Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
The NBA has no plans to discipline Hawks GM Danny Ferry above and beyond undisclosed team sanction. #ATLHawks
— Chris Vivlamore (@CVivlamoreAJC) September 8, 2014
Ferry – potentially – is getting off without any significant punishment. We don’t know and might never know what the Hawks are doing, and barring a new revelation, the league will do nothing
Which might be OK.
I don’t even know what “he’s got some African in him” is even supposed to mean. Plus, Ferry was just reading words on a paper. That doesn’t make him repeating any phrase OK, but it is a mitigating circumstance.
Really, whether Ferry’s fate is viewed as sufficient will come down to the players. They were reportedly considering boycotting during the playoffs when Donald Sterling’s audio tape first surfaced, a move I would have found unnecessary. The purpose of the boycott would have been to bring attention to the issue, but everyone already knew about Sterling and was in the process of determining the best way to remove him.
Ferry, on the other hand, is flying on the radar. If there’s a time a boycott would be effective, this is it.
I’m just not sure his strange reading warrants the trouble.