Around the League: September

[INFORMER]

I would love to know from either Ferry or the scout what those comments were based on.

[Cap]

Ferry and others were in process of evaluating Deng, including his character. It's like evaluating a candidate for a job. The scout's comments were over-the-top ridiculous. A wiser man would have dismissed those comments and not dignify them by repeating them. Instead, Ferry included them as part of the evaluation.
Maybe Ferry isn't a racist, but he exercised extremely bad judgment in vetting a player's character. Ferry isn't some hack off the street; NBA blood runs in his veins. He and his dad both played in the NBA and both were executives. Danny has worked with three teams; he should know better.

To illustrate how ridiculous the character comments were: Luol Deng is from a well-regarded Sudanese family. His father, Aldo, was elected to the Sudanese parliament in 1967. Between 1967 to 1989, Aldo Deng was a provincial governor, deputy speaker, minister of culture, minister of irrigration, minister of transportation, and deputy prime minister.

Yes, the comment was ridiculous. And in his role as GM, I grant that he should have taken proactive measures to let the scout know that this stuff was not appropriate, disciplined him, and maybe encouraged him to withdraw the report and submit a new one. I have no problem with him being disciplined for failing to show leadership in this situation as soon as it arose.

But let's not pretend he repeated the comment as if it were his own. Calls for his dismissal are over the top. Like I said, this was a business call, and the other participants in the call were people who had every right to know what was going on with their scouts.

[SDC]

thank god for jason whitlock.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11493 ... anta-hawks

[SDC]

I would love to know from either Ferry or the scout what those comments were based on.

let's review the quote. and let's include cap's version/recollection of events too.

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “He's a good guy overall. But he's not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way."

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.

I think what Ferry/scout meant by "African" is that he's not african american. ie deng's a foreign player from africa, not native born.

the store/counterfeit stuff i believe is a basketball critique of luol deng, and not about africans in general.

do you see it now, LL?

[SDC]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/sport ... -sale.html

Sterling’s lawyer Bobby Samini said that Adam Silver

… has established a precedent and the precedent is this: If you have any information that’s damaging to an N.B.A. team, it’s worth something. It’s probably part of some shakedown scheme.

could not have happened to a nicer bunch of people.

[Mori Chu]

Oh man. Paul George posted a series of tweets that were sympathetic/defensive to Ray Rice. Then he deleted all of them after the internet exploded.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-bas ... apologizes

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11506 ... ive-tweets

[carey]

Oh man. Paul George posted a series of tweets that were sympathetic/defensive to Ray Rice. Then he deleted all of them after the internet exploded.

There's strangely been a lot of support by male athletes for Rice. Mayweather just had to come out and apologize for supporting him too.

[Mori Chu]

Have all of the athletes who came out in support of Rice been African-American? I wonder if there is an element of that, where it's not so much about defending his actions as it is defending another black man, since black men often feel that the justice system isn't very fair to them.

[The Bobster]

Or perhaps they're all just idiots.

[Wally_West]

I would love to know from either Ferry or the scout what those comments were based on.

let's review the quote. and let's include cap's version/recollection of events too.

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “He's a good guy overall. But he's not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way."

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.

I think what Ferry/scout meant by "African" is that he's not african american. ie deng's a foreign player from africa, not native born.

the store/counterfeit stuff i believe is a basketball critique of luol deng, and not about africans in general.

do you see it now, LL?

A basketball critique? That makes no sense at all.

[In2ition]

I thought they were talking about the type of character and character traits he had. I don't know what "African" means though and dislike commenting on these stories.

[Mori Chu]

Here's supposedly the audio of the Ferry conference call:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/atlanta-hawk ... ence-call/

It sounds really damning. He talks a bunch of trash about Deng's character and says he's got "African in him" and that he's the kind of guy who would run a store but sell counterfeit goods out of the back. Then he says that Deng is the kind of guy who would be really nice to your face but leak stories and talk trash about you behind your back.

Honestly I don't even get it. How is that an "African" thing to do? What kind of racist ignorant crap is that to say in a meeting about NBA players? It sure doesn't sound like Ferry is just quoting some scouting report; it sounds like those are his own words straight out of his mouth and from his own mind.

Side note: How do we have audio of this? Is somebody covertly recording every conference call made by the Atlanta GMs and scouts? Seems pretty bizarre to me.

[Shabazz]

It's pretty apparent that Michael Gearon Jr. is trying hard to get him fired, as was reported by Woj.

[Wally_West]

Wow, that is really bad. From the audio it basically sounds like this is how Ferry feels about Deng. Maybe it does still turns out that he was in fact repeating what he read from a scouting report, but so far it is starting look like BS.

[Shabazz]

He's definitely not reading. It sounds like he's ad-libbing it, but even in his best possible defense, that he was repeating second had information, how does he not filter out the "African" comment?

[Wally_West]

He's definitely not reading. It sounds like he's ad-libbing it, but even in his best possible defense, that he was repeating second had information, how does he not filter out the "African" comment?

Absolutely, I agree. I never believed that story anyways, I would think if that was true then something would have came out about that scout already. Personally, I don’t see how anyone can defend Ferry at this point but that is just me.

[In2ition]

I'm not a big fan of Ferry and his stints as GM, although I thought he did a good job shedding a lot of crap off the Hawks roster and I liked his picks last year. They haven't turned into anything yet though. This is Duke on Duke crime.

[Cap]

Did Ferry not know the call was recorded? Why did he tell the "I was just relaying a report" story if he knew the recording was out there? Faulty memory?

[SDC]

I would love to know from either Ferry or the scout what those comments were based on.

let's review the quote. and let's include cap's version/recollection of events too.

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “He's a good guy overall. But he's not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way."

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.

I think what Ferry/scout meant by "African" is that he's not african american. ie deng's a foreign player from africa, not native born.

the store/counterfeit stuff i believe is a basketball critique of luol deng, and not about africans in general.

do you see it now, LL?

A basketball critique? That makes no sense at all.

it's either a basketball critique (he's a superficially good player) or a character critique (ie untrustworthy person).

because i've heard a lot of ugly stereotypes, but i've never heard of this one before about african born people.

[SDC]

Here's supposedly the audio of the Ferry conference call:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/atlanta-hawk ... ence-call/

It sounds really damning. He talks a bunch of trash about Deng's character and says he's got "African in him" and that he's the kind of guy who would run a store but sell counterfeit goods out of the back. Then he says that Deng is the kind of guy who would be really nice to your face but leak stories and talk trash about you behind your back

and now we know what the store/counterfeit analogy meant.

seems like ferry doesnt like deng much.

and it's ironic that it seems like the most positive thing ferry said about deng is that he's "african".

"He's still a young guy overall," Ferry said, league sources with direct knowledge of the probe told Yahoo. “He's a good guy overall. But he's not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way."

african born immigrants tend to do be more successful in the USA and have higher education than african americans.

maybe instead of saying "he's got some african in him" he should have said he's an african born immigrant or foreigner or something...