Ferry opens up about year in exile: 'I'm going to be a better person going forward'

One of the dark undercurrents running through the Atlanta Hawks' feel-good season was the conspicuous absence of the team's chief architect: exiled and since-deposed president and general manager Danny Ferry.

Ferry took an indefinite leave of absence in September, after a recording of him making racist comments about Luol Deng on a conference call became public. Very little was heard from or about him during the season. The Hawks, who were also put up for sale due to the revelation of a racially insensitive email written by majority owner Bruce Levenson, looked to rehabilitate their image, hiring a chief diversity officer and doing their best to scrub Ferry's name from public consciousness.

Nobody was told when or if he'd return. When it came time to submit a candidate for Executive of the Year consideration, they put forth head coach and acting president Mike Budenholzer who, for all his excellent work on the sidelines, had made no executive decisions regarding the construction of the roster.

When the new ownership group officially took over last month, Ferry was bought out and Budenholzer officially took up his vacated post. With the whole sad ordeal finally over and done with, Ferry broke his near-yearlong radio silence, sitting down for an exclusive interview with David Aldridge for NBATV.

"This thing dragged on for me," Ferry told Aldridge. "I think it dragged on for everyone. I think it got to the point where everyone was kind of tired of it. And that's one of the reasons it's good it's resolved."

Asked his thoughts on the public perception of him, in the wake of the ugly scandal, Ferry sounded simultaneously resigned and optimistic:

I can't control what everyone out there believes. I think most people, if they've looked at this, they've heard people that have known me for 30 years, they've looked at my background, they've looked at my life, and hopefully used all that information when they make their decision. But I can't control what everyone looks at and how much they look at this whole story. And that hurts, that's sad to me, because I really am proud of being part of this melting pot of the NBA throughout my life – not just my career, but my life.

There's a lot of things that have humbled me through this whole thing. You know, how quickly things can change, and your world can change. But the fact that I had friends, I had players – our players – speak up and say, 'This isn't what we know, and we've never experienced this, and he's been good to us, and I know this person.' And that was humbling, because they didn't have to, and they did. And I'm forever appreciative.

As to whether he intends to return the NBA in some capacity, Ferry wasn't quite willing to go there.

"My career part is a working document that's going to be dictated by my family, in large part." he said, citing his four teenage daughters and eight-year-old son and what they've been put through in the past several months.

"Those first couple conversations, especially, were scary, scary for my wife and I. We didn't know what we were walking into and how this would all unfold. They knew that I made a mistake. There was anxiety for me, they saw how anxious I was, balled up on the couch for a few days after all this happened. But they've gotten through it pretty well because people have been good to them as well."

At the end of the day, Ferry concluded, he feels he's emerged with some positive takeaways:

"I do appreciate that I've learned a lot, and been in an experience that's hopefully made me grow as a person. And I'll be a better person. I'm not gonna be perfect going forward but I'm going to be a better person going forward."