Bruce Levenson got a bad rap. He was asked an important question, which he answered just as truthfully and conscientious as possible, but it is very difficult in this day and age to say much of anything without offending someone… somewhere.
Levenson was asked why young white basketball fans were not coming out to the Atlanta Hawk’s games, he told it like he saw it and what he had to say was perfectly logical, unless someone was looking to take offense.
The cry was that Levenson’s email in answer to the query was racially insensitive, however, considering the subject involved, how was he supposed to reply truthfully and not say what he said?
Even the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has come out in defense of Mr. Levenson. While acknowledging that what the Hawk’s owner had to say was not exactly pleasant to listen to, Jabbar says that Levenson only asked a few ‘entirely reasonable’ questions.
The whole thing got started when the Hawk’s General Manager Danny Ferry made what some deemed to be controversial remarks. While looking into that situation, the now infamous email from Bruce Levenson came to light and Ferry’s remarks were pretty much forgotten.
Running a major professional sports franchise is a serious business. Analyzing a team’s crowd demographics is an important part of the overall scheme of things and every professional team’s front office is involved with it to a certain extent. Kareem added, “Business people should have the right to wonder how to appeal to diverse groups in order to increase business.”
When asked why young white basketball fans were not coming out to the Hawk’s game in significant numbers, Levenson wondered if the overwhelming emphasis on hip-hop and gospel music, the fact that the cheerleaders are black, that the bars are usually filled with 90% black folks, etc., etc. might be what is keeping the white fans away from the games.
Perhaps he was a bit blunt, but the email was intended to be an internal communication only and was not written for public consumption. The questions raised by Levenson seem quite reasonable under the circumstances.
Perhaps what really set off the outspoken critics of Bruce Levenson was his personal theory of how the current situation evolved. Levenson wrote, “My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base.”
Ouch! But the truth is not always easy to take and sometimes hurts.
