The stakes are higher than ever in a post Donald Sterling world. Used to anonymity, the upper management disciples of the NBA are struggling to find the appropriate tone. How to say what they mean but not be offensive, how to be critical but not racist, how to be accepting but not an enabler. Every business school grad is familiar with pretense for the public good. It goes something like this. Bury the audience with statistics until their eyes are blurry. Repeat how many minorities the NBA employs on the court and in the front offices and in support capacities. Pretend there is one world when there are two. There is the private world behind closed doors where racial and ethnic stereotypes are the way upper management lashes out at personnel. There is the public world where everything appears to be fair.
Mar 25, 2014; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers forward Luol Deng (9) against the Toronto Raptors during the second quarter at Quicken Loans Arena. Mandatory Credit: Ron Schwane-USA TODAY Sports
Danny Ferry did everyone a favor; he pierced the illusion, the one that marries the NBA with equality. Ferry, one of the privileged, a graduate of the holy institution Duke University, is an example of someone who could not edit himself in a corporate setting because he did not have to. In front of him was a report with an ethnic slur; why was Ferry supposed to self-regulate his thoughts on Luol Deng when his inner office memo refused such basic decency. He followed his peers and what Ferry wants you to believe is in that moment his intellect froze and he had no other option than to repeat what he was reading. But if you listen to the audiotape it is clear his words are self-created as he tries to express a particular point about free agent Luol Deng. There is an absence of stress and a comfort level to his language as if he has said all this before.
We chide athletes all the time about not understanding time and place. That Danny Ferry tried to hang on to his job spoke volumes about his geographical awareness. Atlanta is a city densely populated by African Americans. To be brief: many are native to Georgia and many come to Atlanta for college and stay and many are corporate professionals transferred from northern companies. Atlanta is the birthplace of Martin Luther King. It is the city that was burned down in the civil war as northerners murdered southerners on behalf of anti-slavery. Atlanta is a city that cannot tolerate a man like Ferry, a man who seems to imply one thing in his job as a general manager but in his office his duplicity is such that he can no longer be trusted.
Make no mistake about this “leave of absence”. It is a formality. Ferry can never work in the city of Atlanta again. The new owner will want nothing to do with Danny Ferry, a man who didn’t have the decency or grace, regardless of his Duke education, to not repeat statements in a professional setting that made him appear, if nothing else, racist. There is no way a general manager can be an effective curator of talent and at the same time disparage his work force by believing cultural untruths.
But like all things, nothing about this saga is cut and dried. The Hawks ownership group is at war against themselves. They have their alliances and they have their prisoners. The public nature of this wretched episode has political footprints. And yet none of that is an alibi Danny Ferry can embrace as a reason for this unpardonable mark on his career.
As an athlete Danny Ferry is remembered as the lottery pick who refused to play for the Clippers and went to Italy. As an executive his reputation is of someone who has been difficult to work with at times. The Cavs and Lebron James and the Spurs and Tim Duncan have erased the flaws in Danny Ferry’s front office career. Leave it to Luol Deng to raise the curtain on Danny Ferry’s prejudice.
His prejudice- one he didn’t know he had- or one he knew he had but was flippant about, will seek reconstruction. Danny Ferry will spend these next few months in sensitivity training. But sensitivity is not taught, it is learned by repetition, by what you see and what you know. Awareness, on the other hand, is taught. Awareness training for Danny Ferry is his punishment for not recognizing his own flaws.
He may, in these months without a job, learn not to denigrate others in public. He may learn to be more cautious of what he says from now on. He may be less casual in his approach to players’ evaluations and learn that many of his assumptions are based on lies. But Danny Ferry cannot be taught to unravel Danny Ferry, to exile his assumptions and stereotypes, to judge without an absence of malice. He views the world one way, and certain people in the world he marginalizes or criminalizes. Which leads us back to the issue of sensitivity training. If you are Danny Ferry’s age, if you have been educated at Duke, if you have been a part of a predominately African American league, if you have been an executive involved in signing players from a wide range of backgrounds and yet you still cling to stereotypes, there is no medicine to help you. Nothing to swallow, no book to read, no group sessions for enlightenment.
This is a story about Danny Ferry to be sure but it is also a story about the powerful and entitled men that run the NBA. It only took four months for three executives to suffer public wrath because of something racially offensive they either said or wrote believing they were speaking with their peers who shared their same views. If the NFL has a problem with their players then the NBA has a problem with their infrastructure, their owners and upper managers are reckless. Can a league prosper if those in power exhibit private disdain for the people who sell their product. It goes back to Donald Sterling and his plantation ethic and how the NBA spent so many man hours trying to frame Sterling’s particular values as outdated and archaic. But what if they are homogenous? What if they are more the norm than not?
Apr 6, 2014; Miami, FL, USA; New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony (7) takes a shot against the Miami Heat during the first half at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
In any other year the punishment of Danny Ferry would have been like this. He would have been reprimanded publicly. ESPN would have a story for a day or two and then business as usual. Carmelo Anthony took it down a more torturous path when he said free agents may bypass Atlanta. He was referring to the stars who have choices in where they play. Did Danny Ferry put the Hawks into a no-man’s land bind?
Had Donald Sterling not been Donald Sterling, Danny Ferry would have received a small slap on the wrist, a token bruise. He would have been forced to make a public apology that no one really believed. And all parties would have moved on. The narrative would spin in his favor: Danny Ferry is a good guy.
But the NBA went through a bruising race war with Donald Sterling after years of entitlement and looking the other way. The Sterling disaster had its culprits: the NBA owners who tolerated him, the commissioner who maneuvered around him, the league whose obsession with profit overruled any level of morality and dignity regarding racism and discrimination. The fact is the governing body of the NBA are the privileged who have a particular lens that distorts their own reality. It is the most important lesson of Danny Ferry.
Some men have no concept of where the line is in this multi-cultural, diverse world. They are the ones who will be exiled.