"Racism" now a standard line-item in the business plan.

[Epoetker]

Sterling was born in Chicago and grew up in Los Angeles. He's not Southern.

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[fm93]

Sterling was born in Chicago and grew up in Los Angeles. He's not Southern.

[Epoetker]

Levenson is a clueless owner who both centers his plans and blames his failings on race. He and the rest of the Atlanta Spirit group hardly made any effort to market the team. They basically sat back and reasoned "A lot of black people live here. Black people like basketball. Therefore, a lot of black people will come to our basketball team's games. Easy!", as if there was some genetic magnet that naturally compelled black people to attend basketball games. It evidently never occurred to Levenson and co. to do things like construct a watchable and competent product on the court or instill a vision and sense of direction for the team. Instead, they allowed the team to fester in mediocrity to downright ineptitude year after year without giving the impression that they had a rebuilding plan or idea for the future. Consequently, they alienated many fans and drove them to stay home or root for other teams.

So, when you ignore the parts of your response that were basically from someone who's never had to run any business of value and has no relevant data on the region, what you're basically saying is "they were coasting on the rent-seeking privilege of running a basketball team, but found that the audience they attracted couldn't maintain their profit margins, because, surprise surprise, one of the points of going to public games is to be around the public, and thus that public is part of the product, correct?

In this current incident, one major problem is that Levenson acknowledges the possibility of racism, denounces racism, but then goes out of his way to cater to possible racists. As he himself points out, black people make up a majority of the paying customers--yet he rewards them by wanting to de-emphasize their presence.

When and where did you get the idea that votes=monetary value?

Talk about shamelessly ignoring one's conscience for the sake of profits.

Religious objections noted. Given that leftist religious indoctrination in the schools is designed to compromise your conscience to fit with the leftist agenda, it's absolutely no surprise at all that the first step toward real success in this world is silencing the still, small voice inside that's taking orders from Cthulu rather than Christ.

Not to mention, his hypotheses are wrong. Black people constitute a large portion of the sellout crowds at the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome for Falcons football games. (So do white people, who apparently have no issue with sharing a stadium with so many people of another race.) It's highly unlikely that the struggles to fill the 18,000-seat Philips Arena are related to Atlanta's black people having a lack of spendable income.

Did you or did you not read the line I highlighted and annotated in the article? Here it is again:

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.

Of course, these sad race-driven marketing attempts also go the other way. Back when the group owned the Thrashers (whom they later shamelessly sold to Winnipeg), they deliberately signed as many black players as possible, thinking that the mere presence of someone of the same skin color on the team would entice black people to attend hockey games.

Are you trying to say that pro sports isn't about mock tribal warfare and hero worship?

Is there a reason why you keep going out of your way to point out that he is Jewish and refer to him as the Jew? Is that relevant somehow?

The last RACIST SOUTHERN WHITE NBA TEAM OWNER, Donald Tokowicz Sterling, was Jewish, too, though most of the audience whose opinions he cared about were the Koreans who lived in his apartments. It's a relevantly felt enough ethnic difference on their side that they seem to feel comfortable discussing both whites and blacks as the "other," despite how much they resemble them racially or grammatically. Nevertheless, appreciation of the truth your lying eyes and quarterly reports are telling you is always welcome.

[KingsGambit]

Is there a reason why you keep going out of your way to point out that he is Jewish and refer to him as the Jew? Is that relevant somehow?

[fm93]

Levenson is a clueless owner who both centers his plans and blames his failings on race. He and the rest of the Atlanta Spirit group hardly made any effort to market the team. They basically sat back and reasoned "A lot of black people live here. Black people like basketball. Therefore, a lot of black people will come to our basketball team's games. Easy!", as if there was some genetic magnet that naturally compelled black people to attend basketball games. It evidently never occurred to Levenson and co. to do things like construct a watchable and competent product on the court or instill a vision and sense of direction for the team. Instead, they allowed the team to fester in mediocrity to downright ineptitude year after year without giving the impression that they had a rebuilding plan or idea for the future. Consequently, they alienated many fans and drove them to stay home or root for other teams.

In this current incident, one major problem is that Levenson acknowledges the possibility of racism, denounces racism, but then goes out of his way to cater to possible racists. As he himself points out, black people make up a majority of the paying customers--yet he rewards them by wanting to de-emphasize their presence. Talk about shamelessly ignoring one's conscience for the sake of profits. Not to mention, his hypotheses are wrong. Black people constitute a large portion of the sellout crowds at the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome for Falcons football games. (So do white people, who apparently have no issue with sharing a stadium with so many people of another race.) It's highly unlikely that the struggles to fill the 18,000-seat Philips Arena are related to Atlanta's black people having a lack of spendable income.

Of course, these sad race-driven marketing attempts also go the other way. Back when the group owned the Thrashers (whom they later shamelessly sold to Winnipeg), they deliberately signed as many black players as possible, thinking that the mere presence of someone of the same skin color on the team would entice black people to attend hockey games.

[Epoetker]

And now that the Social Justice Warrior brigades are known to be automatically deployable against all HATE INCIDENTS, you can start generating them as a sneaky way of getting rid of business liabilities:

That a racial issue came to the fore in Atlanta, long been seen [black writer detected] as a center of black culture, is particularly striking.

Atlanta, hmmm? It strikes me that Mr. Levenson definitely wouldn't be the first "white" guy owning property in that region to have its values destroyed by black people...but back to the NYT article:

It was Mr. Levenson himself, according to the N.B.A., who made the league aware of the existence of the email two months ago — a fact that raised more questions than it answered as the situation became public on Sunday. It was not clear what motivated Mr. Levenson to self-report, though the disclosure apparently came around the time that Mr. Sterling said he had hired private investigators to dig up information that would show that his behavior was not out of line with that of other N.B.A. owners.

Sure, sure. What could have POSSIBLY motivated a Jew to divest himself of a failing investment?

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 [YOUR FIRST MISTAKE, EVIL CRIMETHINKER -ed] 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. [Is it a mystery to you? It's not a mystery to me! -ed]

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 [this is just getting shameful, he HAS been hanging around black people too long], 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 ****** 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. [I'm shocked and appalled that the NBA has not found a way to make their jerseys redeemable via EBT.] 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).

Regardless of what time a game starts, we have the latest arriving crowd in the league. It often looks and sounds empty when the team takes the floor.

Give the Jew credit for having the chutzpah to say that last line aloud! Seems that whether they're talking about Koreans or white people being uncomfortable around blacks, when it comes to their businesses, they're nobody's fools. Sadly, this fine realtalker's team may be a bit too regional to qualify for the Ballmer Bailout-anyone know if Larry or Sergey have a fondness for gravy biscuits?