In 1994, then-Atlanta Hawks owner Ted Turner announced plans to build a new arena for the team in the suburbs, replacing the ramshackle downtown Omni. The city and Fulton County stepped up with tens of millions in incentives and a rental car tax, and Turner reversed course and kept the team downtown as part of an attempt to revitalize the area in conjunction with the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Originally dubbed the "Highlight Factory," the resulting Philips Arena has instead become known around the NBA as the "No-Show Factory." Often half-empty at tipoff and beyond, the arena has come to symbolize the longtime struggle for Atlanta sports teams to engage the fan base. The problem has not been exclusive to the Hawks. Even during a 15-year run of dominance that began in the early 1990s, baseball's Braves often entertained to empty seats -- first, at Fulton County Stadium and then at its downtown replacement, Turner Field.
The reasons behind all of this are complicated. They're rooted in Atlanta's diverse population, including a healthy number of transplants from the Northeast, Midwest and other regions. (The Hawks routinely draw more Knicks, Celtics, Bulls and Lakers fans than Hawks fans when those teams come to town. Sometimes, they draw more Bucks fans than the Bucks.)
They're linked to the metropolitan area's unchecked, poorly managed and uncoordinated suburban sprawl. The resulting, legendary highway traffic, along with inadequate public transportation, have combined to at least partially explain why the Hawks have such late-arriving (or, in many cases, non-arriving) crowds for their games.
In truth, these issues also cut along racial lines. Distrust among the metro area's endless municipalities and ongoing racial tensions have contributed to the inadequate expansion of MARTA, the city's commuter rail system. I take MARTA every time I attend a Hawks game. As infrequent as that is, I still take MARTA more than anyone I know who lives in the city's suburbs. (I live in New York; my mother and brother have lived in the Atlanta suburbs since 1989.)
The Hawks' struggle to establish and engage a fan base downtown has been tied to all of these issues. But in a 2012 email to other team officials about fan demographics and paltry season-ticket sales, controlling owner Bruce Levenson chose to focus nearly exclusively on race. And, as NBA officials became aware in July when Levenson self-reported the insensitive email, he did so in an offensive way, regurgitating harmful racial stereotypes and pitting the team's black fans vs. its white fans.
Levenson went so far as to point out that "the cheerleaders are black" and "the music is hip hop," suggesting that white fans don't come to the games because they don't like either.
"I have even [complained] that the Kiss Cam is too black," Levenson wrote.
"My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base," Levenson wrote in the email, which was sent to general manager Danny Ferry and copied to partners Ed Peskowitz and Todd Foreman.
Upon being notified by Levenson of his email's offensive content, the NBA commenced an investigation. In the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal, this is the zero-tolerance era for racial bias in the sport, now under the leadership of commissioner Adam Silver. It was Silver who in April banned Sterling for life and oversaw the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers in the wake of racially offensive remarks made by the former owner.
Levenson notified Silver on Saturday night of his intention to sell his controlling interest in the team.
"If you're angry about what I wrote, you should be," Levenson said in a statement. "I'm angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. ... I'm truly embarrassed by my words."
In a statement from the league office, Silver said: "As Mr. Levenson acknowledged, the views he expressed are entirely unacceptable and are in stark contrast to the core principles of the National Basketball Association."
No insensitive responses were uncovered with respect to the executives to whom Levenson sent the email, according to a league executive familiar with the probe. However, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday that the probe that led to discovery of Levenson's email began after Ferry repeated an "offensive and racist" remark included in a player background check during a free-agent briefing in July. The Hawks will impose undisclosed discipline on Ferry, who will remain the team's general manager, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin told the paper.
During a conference call with seven members of the Hawks' ownership group, Ferry read from a background check prepared for him that free agent Luol Deng has "got some African in him," Yahoo Sports reported. Deng was born in the Sudan; he ultimately signed with the Miami Heat. After the meeting in which Ferry repeated the remark, the Hawks hired a law firm that conducted 19 interviews and reviewed 24,000 documents, the AJC reported. Levenson's 2012 email was discovered during that probe.
The removal of Levenson won't do anything to fix the social and political issues that have stood in the way of Atlanta becoming a more connected, coordinated metropolitan area. The aforementioned Braves, by the way, have abandoned downtown for a new, taxpayer-subsidized stadium in suburban Cobb County -- which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 66 percent white. (Fulton County, where the city of Atlanta resides, is 45 percent black.)
But in attempting to explore and explain these demographics, Levenson's rant quickly and badly went off the rails. To stereotype the city's entire black population as poor and relegated to downtown, and its entire white population as affluent and living in the suburbs, is not only offensive and antiquated, but false. It will be up to the next owner to delve more thoughtfully into the many issues that have left the Hawks -- who've made the playoffs seven consecutive seasons -- lagging near the bottom of the NBA's metrics for attendance and fan engagement.
But the issue also points to the important, and perhaps yet incomplete fallout from the ouster of Sterling as owner of the Clippers. Sterling had been sued multiple times and accused of racial discrimination in his housing empire over the course of his 30 years owning the team, but the NBA did nothing about it. But once Silver acted on Sterling's comments, recorded by an associate and leaked to the gossip site TMZ, the communication of everyone in the league -- past, present, future, verbal and written -- is now fair game.
Whether that is appropriate or Orwellian is going to be decided as the NBA walks a perilous tightrope between privacy and core values. What's clear now is that this is a different world in the post-Sterling NBA, and everyone in a position of power in the league must be held to the same standard.