Danny Ferry's comments regarding Luol Deng

In before the "I dont see how this is racist" crowd comes in here

 

And posters on this board complain about the way Morey treats the Rockets players......

Seriously though, what the hell was Ferry even talking about?? Was he saying that as a justification to not go after him in free agency?? I don't even understand how he could slip that into conversation when they're discussing BASKETBALL personnel. What an ass.

 

It's not a surprise. In Ferry's younger days, he was violated by a very prominent African American:

 

That was much worse than I was expecting. Ferry will soon be unemployed. Koonin will likely follow him out the door.

That was not just reading a scouting report. Maybe the scouting report says African in it, but sounds like Ferry was expounding in what he believes it means. And what he meant by it is really not something you can say in polite society. It will be impossible for Ferry to be effective at his job now that this has leaked. And Koonin is going to have a very hard time defending his decision to not fire Ferry at the time.

 

I'm with you. I guess you'd need to hear it in context. I'm not sure if I need to be outraged or say "lol wut". Either way he needs to be fired. His job is to bring in the best players possible. This will impair his ability to do so.

 

The investigation says he was reading it, so maybe he was. Maybe the conversational tone is from the scout and the minority owner's letter makes it sound like Ferry's own words. Even so, I don't see how Ferry can be effective now with the news out. ATL would need some great spin to explain why it was necessary for Ferry to say that aloud.

 

Solid trip advice when going to africa. You never know what you're buying.

 

It might not be racist to some but everyone in the corporate world knows that you can't make those kinds of statements and expect zero reaction. I think Ferry's lack of tact and Koonin's inability to grasp that lack of tactfulness (and further making it worse by backing Ferry) are good enough reasons for both to go.

 

I think the term he was looking for is Ariza'ed but didn't know the word actually existed so instead had to make up a story with a bad tangent.

 

Maybe to make amends, Ferry should have to sell something shady out the back of the stadium.

 

Yeah, the Hawks have this cool looking arena with shiny things inside but sell disappointing teams and mediocrity as the product. Maybe he meant Deng would fit in great?

 

This is slightly more asinine than the ESPN article which wrote about Jeremy Lin and the chink in the armor.

 

Now THAT is funny.

 

imo, only Mods should try to say "I think this needs its own thread." That's because Mods can not only split out J.R.s posts but also all the responses to them.

Instead, we restart a conversation J.R.'s new already started, now not knowing where to post. Those who have been following the main thread have to restate all our posts here???

And the OP, ferrari77, didn't even comment on the news. He just thought we should talk about it in his thread.

Please don't try to be a Mod and split out people's posts into new threads. I think this is a bad trend that we are seeing more.

 

Please trade us Milsap.

 

Yeah but what's up with morey callingour players asset???? WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?!

 

Pretty amazing that a guy who spent most of his life working in a majority black sport could say something so retrograde. Actually, pretty amazing anybody would say something like that in this day and age. Sounds like something out of the 1960s.

It would be like saying "Marcin Gortat is great but he's got a little Pollack in him. Hard working but stupid."

 

I read his comments more as regional bias than overt racism.

Kind of like, "you can take the person out of X, but you can't take the X out of the person."

More culturally offensive than racially. (And there is truly a range of races in Africa, but that's too complicated for sports media, or media in general these days).

But whatever he was saying, ... it was really, REALLY weird.