Bruce Levenson is a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks. He's selling his stake in the company after some emails he's sent out have revealed some racist sentiments he's had regarding the Atlanta Hawks fanbase. That doesn't even scratch the surface as remarks by Hawks general manager Danny Ferry have come out that are arguably worse. There is not a question as to if Levenson's email remarks were racist. And the mental gymnastics required for his theory are remarkable considering the data.

Here is a link to Levenson's full email.

Here's the basic logic:

• The Hawks aren't selling enough season tickets.
• The primary demographic that buys these are 35-55 white males.
• The Hawks arena is primarily filled with black fans and panders to them.
• Thus, the black fans and culture are scaring away the white fans.

Here are some gem quotes from the email:

when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can’t get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league.

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base.

I'm going to repeat that:

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base.

 

Now, that was truly depressing, and I'll say that Levenson's decision to sell his share is one of the only ways to handle this. And to anyone arguing Levenson maybe had a point, the problem is that much simpler explanation with very easy to acquire data tells a different story.

Let's put a little more data out there. The Hawks reside in the 11th "largest" metropolitan area. While not a terrible market (Oklahoma City, seriously?), it is mediocre in regard to other NBA teams. Eleven NBA teams are in bigger markets. And according to recent census data 54% of Atlanta is African American.

Alright, data in hand, let's try again. The economic analysis says the biggest driver for attendance in NBA games is winning games. Noting that the Hawks attendance has pretty much followed their win-loss trajectory. Since their brief blip of excellence in 2010, the Hawks have been on a downward slide and attendance has followed.

With a bad team, the Hawks had one other chance. Fans do like watching star players on the opposing team. But when we look at the Hawks' strength of schedule, we see the Hawks have had a poor set of opponents.

So let's wrap up this analysis, which took me all of twenty minutes to look up on publicly available NBA sites. The Hawks attendance has been dropping. The Hawks have progressively been getting worse. Their opponents have been subpar (man the Eastern conference has been bad!) What's more, the Hawks are in a "smaller" market that is primarily African American.

The simple conclusion a "reasonable businessman" would come to is - we need to get a better team to attract more fans. Levenson literally jumped to "I think our black fans and black culture in our entertainment are scaring away white fans." This is pretty much the definition of racism. And the lesson I hope everyone to take away is whenever we see race come up as a simple explanation, that we make sure to check the data before taking it at face value.