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Section of email sent by Hawks owner to GM Damny Ferry in 2012:



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 *****ed 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).

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guy saw what happened with sterling and said..'hey im racist..now it's time to get paid'

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How is self-reporting the violation going to help him? If he wants to sell....just sell. If he wants to create a big faux controversy that generates heavy interest and a massive sale price like what happened with the Clippers, then he should have the email leaked to an Al Sharpton type group and sit back and watch.

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If he's trying to make it racial for the big cash out then why self-report on NFL opening weekend? That's a horrible strategy for publicity. Have the email secretly leaked to TMZ or some Civil rights group when the season begins - then you would see the real fireworks. It doesn't add up.

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The other thought could be, release it now before anyone releases it ahead of him. He may have known that someone may have had this and was threatening to use it. Release it and let the chips fall where they fall.

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Danny Ferry didn't report that email to anyone, either. wtf wasn't he punished?

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Truth hurts black America

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Truth hurts black America

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Truth hurts southern whites who live in Atlanta. That's how I read it.

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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.

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ATLANTA Sports Director Zach Klein obtained 2-page letter from June 12 sent from Hawks minority owner Michael Gearon to Bruce Levenson.

In the letter, Gearon is quoted as saying "We are calling on you, as majority owner and NBA governor, to take swift and severe action against general manager Danny Ferry. Our advisors tell us there is no other choice to ask for Ferry's resignation and if he refuses, to terminate him for cause under his employment contract."

It was letter that started an internal investigation that eventually revealed the 2012 email from Leveson and the inappropriate and offense comments regarding African-Americans who attend games at Philips Arena.

Gearon wrote the letter after Ferry, on a conference call with management and ownership, described free agent target Luol Deng "he has a little African in him, not in a bad way, but he's a guy who would have a nice store out front, but sell you counterfeit stuff out of the back."

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"He's a good guy on the cover but he's an African. He has a little two-step in him = says what you like to hear, but behind closed doors he could be killing you. Con isn't bad but it's there. African-like, store front looks great but there's a black market section in the back. Chicago thought he was good for their culture but an outlier. Teammates liked him but he...less impact on the locker room than you would think. He complained about things like not enough team jerseys in the team store or that his bobble head was last during the year...has some con and a sense of entitlement. Luol kind of treated Cleveland like a pit-stop after the trade, where he probably became more protective of his body and focused on the contract because he didn't know his long term plan. He said some things privately to media but denied them publicly and said it wasn't him. He's not terrible but you've got to know that stuff is there with him.

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