Report: Feud between Hawks owners was impetus for Ferry-Levenson discoveries

When Danny Ferry read racially offensive remarks about Luol Deng on an Atlanta Hawks conference call in June, it was not necessarily the beginning of the tumult within the organization.

Rather, it was the smoking gun than co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. had been waiting for after several years of feuding with controlling owner Bruce Levenson, according to multiple reports.

According to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today Sports, Gearon had wanted Levenson to sell the team for some time, and Gearon has latched onto Ferry's comments, and the subsequently discovered email from Levenson that was also racially insensitive, as a means of forcing a sale.

From the report:

Within the past year, Atlanta Hawks co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. approached fellow co-owner Bruce Levenson about selling the franchise, two people familiar with the situation told USA TODAY Sports.

Levenson wasn't interested in selling but is going to do that now, and with (the) NBA now in a seller's market, Gearon will be in position to cash in on his investment — despite financial losses in the past decade.
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As soon as Ferry made his comments about Deng, Gearon seized an opportunity to do what he wanted to do: Get rid of Ferry. Ferry and Gearon never hit it off. Two years ago, Ferry had reservations about becoming the Hawks general manager because of Gearon, for whom Ferry was suspicious, three people told USA TODAY Sports.
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Gearon recorded the nearly hour-long call but only a brief snippet of the audio has been made available, and there is no full transcript of the call, three people familiar with those details told USA TODAY Sports. The league requested a full transcript, but one was not provided.

Last week, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, perhaps the most dialed-in insider in the sport, provided a similar report that did not cite specific sources but instead seemed a putting together of pieces:

As it turned out, Gearon had the perfect storm for the beginning of the end for the Atlanta Hawks’ two most powerful figures: Levenson and Ferry.
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And yet, for as quickly as Gearon fired off an indignant email to Levenson detailing the Deng comments on the call and demanding Ferry's dismissal, Gearon's immediate reaction to Levenson's 2012 email on race and the Hawks’ attendance problems inspired a far more matter-of-fact tone.
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Gearon's response – which came within an hour of the rambling Levenson email that will ultimately cost him ownership of the franchise – offers evidence that Gearon proceeded without the outrage regarding Levenson that existed in his aggressive pursuit of Ferry's removal. Between that August 2012 day and the investigation that re-discovered the Levenson email recently, there's no apparent evidence that Gearon made issue of his displeasure about the Levenson letter within the Hawks or the league office.

In all the twisted wreckage of these Hawks, make no mistake: Gearon is no whistle-blowing hero for racial justice, just as Ferry is no victim for falling into the trap.
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There are no heroes here, no winners – not even Michael Gearon, with whom the league office is livid. He had been hellbent on bringing down the power structure in Atlanta.

The picture that's beginning to be drawn makes nobody look good. Levenson still sent that email, and Ferry still read those remarks from a report, and the culture was such that both – and the person filing the report – felt comfortable using that kind of language. Now, it's just beginning to seem as if the reason it all came to attention wasn't altruistic.

As details continue to emerge about the organizational dysfunction, the city of Atlanta is taking an active role in the search for a new owner, with as many as six prospective buyers already speaking to city officials.