Danny Ferry reflects on his departure from Atlanta, following his ‘totally inappropriate’ comments
The Atlanta Hawks and Danny Ferry are officially done. The chief architect of the team that compiled the best record in the Eastern Conference last season is out as the head personnel chief, following a season spent in purgatory following the leak of his re-telling of racist comments directed at potential Hawk free agent signing Luol Deng.
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With the team set to be sold and Ferry still working in absentia with two years left on his contract, the franchise smartly thought it best to reach a buyout agreement with Ferry, moving head coach Mike Budenholzer to the head of basketball operations while promoting Wes Wilcox to the general manager role. After an investigation, it was found that Ferry bore no “racial animus” toward Deng while quoting a former Cleveland Cavaliers employee about his feelings toward the former All-Star, but that hardly matters.
Ferry showed a lack of leadership in thinking that those comments somehow mattered in team-building discussion. This is why he sat last season out, despite his sound work in turning around a predictable and at times moribund Hawk roster. This is also why, despite support from many, Ferry will have a tough time convincing another right-thinking ownership group and fan-base that he is fit to lead a team from the top of the totem.
In an interview with Chris Vivlamore at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ferry went on record about his semi-dismissal from 2014, and his frustrations regarding a silent defense that only recently came to light:
The team asked me to take a leave in September. I agreed to do so because, at the time, emotions were running very high externally—and even more so internally because of the ownership dispute. As time went on, the Hawks asked me to remain on the sidelines until the team was sold. I had no idea it would take as long as it did. I wanted the focus to be on the team and the players. If that meant I had to stay in the background until the team was willing to release the results of the [Bernard] Taylor investigation, then that is what I had to do.
[…]
I’ve been asking the Hawks for many months to release the results of the Taylor investigation because I wanted everyone to have those facts. For whatever reason, the team refused to release the results until after the season ended. The Taylor investigation included 19 interviews of Hawks owners and employees, and a review of 24,000 emails—including every one I wrote and received as general manager. Both the Taylor investigation and a parallel but independent investigation by the NBA found no negative information about me and not a single incident where I exhibited racial bias during my tenure. Now, does that make my comments about Luol okay? Absolutely not. The words I used from the scouting report came out of my mouth and they were totally inappropriate. I am deeply sorry and take full responsibility.
It is true that the Bernard Taylor investigation, looking into Ferry’s past and the context surrounding the meetings held to discuss a possible free agent offer to Luol Deng, did clear him of “racial animus.”
This was never the point, though.
Nobody in basketball ever accused Danny Ferry of being racist, or being prone to bias regarding the racial makeup of the players he attempted to employ. Other African-American NBA general managers, rightfully, came to Danny Ferry’s defense in the wake of the disclosure that Ferry told a group of Hawks owners that Luol Deng “had a little African in him,” a disparaging remark meant to infer that Deng could be duplicitous in dealing with the media off the record.
When you sit at the head of the table, even reading reports from a third-party source, you have to know what information is valuable, what information is pertinent, and what information won’t offend. To conclude that Deng’s alleged off-record remarks about a Chicago Bulls organization that sold him out while he lay in a hospital bed, or a disastrous old regime in Cleveland (that apparently also included the employment of the third-party source) is akin to having “a little African” in a person is degrading to its very core.
Ferry thought it was cool to pass that along to team owners, even while arguing for his team to sign Luol Deng to an eight-figure contract. This is an absence of leadership.
Danny Ferry is not a racist. Danny Ferry, however, failed as a lead executive with the Atlanta Hawks. He will rightfully, at some point, earn another gig working with an NBA team in a high-ranking personnel position, and despite his fitful time running (kind of ruining, if we’re honest, through little fault of his own) LeBron James’ first go-round with the Cavaliers, his work in Atlanta speaks for itself.
His comments about Luol Deng also speak volumes, even if he didn’t come up with the words himself. Thankfully, Danny Ferry is quite aware of this. This unfortunate, teachable, moment.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
