Kareem Abdul-Jabbar And Bruce Levenson Disagree On Levenson's Racism

The NBA has had their share of issues with owners over the past few months.There was Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling first, and now Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is putting his stake in the team up for sale after writing a racially insensitive email two years ago. This only came to light after the Sterling incident and now Levenson is on his way out in Atlanta. [photo: Scott Cunningham/Getty]
There will be a point where these owners will learn that they can’t be saying things racially insensitive–even if Levenson is already getting some defense from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The former NBA superstar has just published a piece on the TIME website saying that Levenson’s biggest sin has a lot more to do with white guilt than white racism.
A microphone is always live and an email can always be kept. The team says that their investigation included 19 interviews and a review of over 24,000 documents, and Levenson looks even worse as one of the more outspoken against Sterling.
The league has found itself with another scandal, and the bad publicity train appears to keep rolling for the NBA. At some point in time, there will be owners who don’t make these kinds of comments at all. It isn’t going to happen in the next month though and now Commissioner Adam Silver had to deal with a new ownership problem in Atlanta.