For NBA team owner Sarver, a $10M US fine is the cost of a public lesson in how not to treat people
CBC
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A heads-up to my future former white friends: Never say the N-word if you don't like consequences.
Seems like a self-evident truth, but periodically we see public figures learn it first-hand. These are bitter, embarrassing, job-jeopardizing lessons about how to talk to, about, and around people. Cale Gundy, an assistant football coach at the University of Oklahoma thought he could shame one of his Black players by reading the teenager's text messages aloud — unredacted N-words and all — in a team meeting this summer. The stunt went public, and now Gundy is a former assistant coach at OU.
More than 300 interviews later, the investigators corroborated the original allegations, and the NBA levied its penalty.
"Regardless of position, power or intent, we all need to recognize the corrosive and hurtful impact of racially insensitive and demeaning language and behaviour," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement published on Tuesday. "On behalf of the entire NBA, I apologize to all of those impacted by the misconduct outlined in the investigators' report. We must do better."
The $10 million fine is between-the-couch-cushion change for a billionaire NBA team owner, but the stiffest financial penalty the league allows. The 12-month suspension could have been longer, but Silver told ESPN's Tim Bontemps that Sarver showed "complete remorse" over his bad workplace behaviour.
Are those sanctions stiff enough to drive home the lesson to Sarver?
Like the NBA's punishment options, and Sarver's grasp of the etiquette regulating the use of inflammatory language, it's unclear.
The league, for example, has endured some criticism for not punishing Sarver more harshly. When former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded using racist language to describe Magic Johnson, the league banned him for life and forced him to sell his franchise. Sarver, in contrast, was penalized a sum equal to a single year of Danny Green's contract.
"Fining a billionaire $10 billion is the equivalent of a speeding ticket," said NAACP president Derrick Johnson in a statement criticizing the fine and suspension.
But consider that before Sterling slurred Magic Johnson, Forbes valued the Clippers at $430 million.
After the scandal, Sterling's wife, Shelly, sold the franchise to Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.
An order for Sarver to sell the Suns would also have been an invitation for him to collect a premium for doing some other billionaire the favour of allowing them into an exclusive club. And any attempt to prove that racism doesn't pay would get lost in the overnight ballooning of franchise value.
Still, Sarver says he has learned from his transgressions, and the punishment they triggered.
