The comments that Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry made in relation to current Miami Heat forward Luol Deng have been thrown on the back burner due to the hot mess that the NFL has become over the past week or so.
But Ferry’s racist comments about a popular NBA player have not gone unnoticed within the Association itself.
New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony had some strong words for Ferry and the entire Hawks organization (via NY Post)
[There] ain’t nobody [who] would want to go there. At the end of the day, Atlanta … I think it puts Atlanta back even further now, from that standpoint.” …
As a player, as an athlete, we’re looking for a job, we’re trying to find a place where we can move our family, we can make our family comfortable, where we can be comfortable in a comfortable environment, but those comments right there, we would never look at. I’m speaking on behalf of all athletes. We would never look at a situation like that, I don’t care what it is.
It’s going to take a collective effort. That’s not going to change overnight. I don’t think that just happened overnight. That’s been an accumulation over the past couple years. A lot of people think that it just happened, but it’s been going on for the past two or three years now … these are conversations that have been ongoing.
In case you have been hiding under a rock recently, Ferry provided these racist comments regarding Deng.
These comments, which were just recently uncovered, prompted Hawks owner Bruce Levenson to put the team up for sale. In addition to this, Ferry has taken an indefinite leave of absence from the team (via ESPN).
On the heels of the whole Donald Sterling scandal, this is the last thing that the NBA and new commissioner Adam Silver needed. And Anthony, who isn’t the only player to come out firing about the situation in Atlanta, pretty much summed up the belief of others around the Association.
Photo: USA Today