What's Bruce Levenson's real motivation for selling the Hawks?

Sports Illustrated ^ | September 8, 2014 | Chris Mannix

[EveningStar]

... “I think what happened was he saw how much teams were going for and wanted to make some money,” a rival team executive said. “What he said was wrong but to me it seems like an excuse to sell.” ...

[EveningStar]

I posted the money quote, but feel free to read the rest.

However, the writer says the usual leftist PC crap about Levenson's comments being reprehensible ignorant, racially insensitive, when in fact Levenson was just expressing concerns from a business standpoint.

[A_Former_Democrat]

I wondered too why he’d self report, esp knowing the hypocritical phony “outrage” at what seemed to be pretty tame remarks.

He saw what Sterling got and said, hey I want some of that!

[EveningStar]

You called it yesterday. :)

[ColdOne]

Of course it is about the money.

[Dan(9698)]

He wanted all the free publicity that was given the last time.

He thought it would drive the price up.

[AU72]

I saw how much Sterling got for his ‘fire sale’.

[dfwgator]

Pretty soon we’re going to be seeing a bunch of owners writing racist emails to try to cash in.

[dfwgator]

[Obadiah]

LOL!

[Waryone]

First thing I thought when I heard about this was that he saw the 2 billion dollar payment for the Clippers and wanted some of that action. Without all the racial controversy, there would be no attempt by Steve Ballmer to bribe Sterling to give up the team, so no one would have paid 2 billion for the Clippers.

[Cyman]

Sterling has his PI’s digging up cr@p about each and every owner in basketball(and it will soon spread to the other sports..goodbye Jerry Jones, Jim Haslam etc). There will be a whole bunch of professional sports franchises available and Levenson’s move is brilliant.....there are not a lot of overpaying billionaires out there and he needs to line up his token schmuck so he can cash out while it is a seller's market.

[Blueflag]

The Hawks are uninteresting to 84% of the greater Atlanta metro population. They are barely covered in the 10 o’clock local news.

As a long time Atlanta area resident I can tell you the franchise is far from what it used to be.

[EveningStar]

Here is the full text of Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson's email.

[rdcbn]

No, they were just lucky to have rube willing to pay 2 billion to be a member of the club.

I think there were some tax advantages to a forced sale due to league action

[onedoug]

Getting out while he can.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He saw what Sterling got and said, hey I want some of that!

In the unlikely case Levenson gets his billions, expect several owners to out themselves as racist as well.

[joshua c]

i think the joke was after seeing Sterling get $2B for his team, other NBA owners were tweeting the N-word.

[Zenjitsuman]

Second Jew forced to sell for something that had nothing to do with his running his team.

Political correctness, or Antisemitism?

ADL should investigate. AA hate Jews more than any other group, and it seems AA want to take over teams owned by Jews.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

Well, gee-whiz, Lew Alcindor agrees with the owner! /sarc

[Baynative]

I think any black player who has used the “N”-word should be forced to retire.