To quote Yogi Berra, “it’s deja vu all over again:”
For the second time this year, the owner of a professional basketball team will sell his controlling interest of a franchise after his racially insensitive views were made public.
Bruce Levenson, who has led the ownership group of the Atlanta Hawks since 2004, informed N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver on Saturday that he intended to sell the team, effectively cutting short a league investigation into an email that Mr. Levenson sent two years ago to fellow Hawks executives detailing his thoughts on how the team could attract more white fans…
‘I think Southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority,’ Mr. Levenson said in his email, pointing out that he had earlier told the executive team that he wanted ‘some white cheerleaders’ and ‘music familiar to a 40-year-old white guy,’ and that he thought ‘the kiss cam is too black.’
(New York Times, September 7, 2014)
As it happens, I was so convinced this would be the case that I wrote the following in my original commentary on the first owner of a professional Basketball team who was forced to sell his franchise after his racially insensitive views were made public:
Let me hasten to clarify that the takeaway from this story should not be Sterling’s pathetic, hypocritical, misogynistic, chauvinistic, and racist admonition to his girlfriend. It should be what his admonition betrays about the insidious strain of covert racism that runs so blithely through this ostensibly non-racist White man … and others like him (We have to wonder now, don’t we?).
(“NBA Owner to GF: Your Photos with Blacks, Including Magic, Embarrass Me,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 27, 2014)
Well, now we know.
To be fair, though, Levenson is really “angry” about all this:
‘If you’re angry about what I wrote, you should be,’ he said. ‘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.’
(New York Times, September 7, 2014)
Nonetheless, like Sterling, Levenson will reinforce the legacy of Whites profiting off their racist misdeeds by selling his team now for, well, a king’s ransom.
Except that, as plainly racist and disqualifying as Sterling’s remarks were, I got the impression that he genuinely loved being an NBA owner and, more to the point, that he would have turned down $4 billion if it meant he could keep his team.
By contrast, even though Levenson might be less racist, which granted is rather like being less pregnant, I get the impression that he’s quite eager to sell – even if his “racist” email becomes the de facto pretext for his windfall:
When (emotional) bidding inflates the value of the Clippers to well over $1 billion, all owners will be guided by their vested interest in ensuring that the sale goes through. After all, if the Clippers were sold for $1 billion, even the Mavericks would have to be valued at $1.5 billion … at least.
(“NBA Commissioner Gives Racist Sterling the Death Penalty,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 30, 2014)
Clearly there’s no way of knowing what truly motivated Levenson to “self-report.” But this is very telling:
The deal to sell the Atlanta Hawks to California businessman Alex Meruelo died its eventual death in a quiet press release on Friday afternoon…
‘The Atlanta Hawks are no longer for sale,’ Hawks co-owner Bruce Levenson said in the 4:53 p.m. press release shortly after Meruelo and the Spirit terminated their sale agreement…
[T]ry as they might, the city of Atlanta just can’t rid itself of the least honest ownership group in North American professional sports that has been a model of how not to own a professional sports team since buying the Hawks…
(The Examiner, November 4, 2011)
What’s more, in its January 22, 2014 edition, Forbes valued the Clippers at $575 million. Sterling sold for $2 billion. Therefore, Levenson could be forgiven for calculating – given that Forbes valued his team at $425 million – that he could sell for at least $1.5 billion.
In any event, it’ll be interesting to see what additional “punishment” the NBA metes out to Levenson (e.g., Will he receive a lifetime ban from the NBA too?). But the real challenge will come if/when an NBA owner is exposed not as the kind of Sterling racist everybody finds reprehensible, but as the kind of Levenson racist many people find sympathetic and who, like Sterling, does not want to sell.
After all, no less a person than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar defended Levenson in TIME yesterday by pleading that, even though his remarks are “cringeworthy,” he clearly made them only to facilitate an entirely “reasonable” discussion on ways to grow/diversify his franchise.
Meanwhile, the irony is that both of these NBA owners are Jews who you’d think would be more sensitized about racial matters. But, when jealousy (in Sterling’s case) and greed (in Levenson’s) are involved, I suppose there’s no place for sensitivity … about anything.
Related commentaries:
NBA owner to GF…
Sterling gets death penalty…
NBA closes sale…