In his long association with the NBA, Danny Ferry has been a lot of things. He has been defiant. The Los Angeles Clippers drafted him and he refused to play for them, fleeing to Europe. He has been average. Not particularly athletic but a good scorer off the bench for the Cavaliers, Ferry drilled open shots but was a disappointment for a player selected number two in the NBA draft. He has been skilled. As a valued member of the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs front office, he helped build organizations into NBA contenders.
Add one more adjective to Danny Ferry. He is sad. Being forced into a position he doesn’t want, that of the unemployed, Ferry is reviewing how his life took this precipitous turn because of one careless thing.
In an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Ferry took full responsibility for his role in the Luol Deng scouting report/conference call fiasco. Almost a year has passed since that moment that Ferry rewinds in his mind. In his first on-air comments about the incident, Ferry appeared tired and fatigued and unsure of what is going to happen to him next. On the one hand, the team he built won 60 games. On the other hand, he was an outsider for all of it, unable to experience the euphoria at what happened this year and unable to revel in the disappointment too. In a very cruel way, Danny Ferry is out on an island, a man all alone.
He was quick to acknowledge to Ramona Shelbourne his mistakes. Not once did he hesitate to self-reflect. 1. He should NOT have repeated what a scout wrote in a report about Loul Deng. 2. As he was reading it, once he heard the stereotypes, he should have stopped.
This will haunt him for a long time, mistakes that became so egregious they changed the course of his destiny.
Professional sports is one of those enterprises in which out of sight, out of mind is a significant reality. How often was Danny Ferry mentioned during the Hawks post-season run? The Paul Millsap free agent melodrama was a familiar cry, but when did you hear someone say Ferry brought Millsap here? How many so-called experts pointed out that the back-up point guard, Dennis Schroder, was Danny Ferry insight?
We forget what we don’t see. Danny Ferry was the invisible man for much of this season. And it ended quietly too, with a buyout and the back door closing with Ferry on the other side. In a couple of days, new owners will begin their tenure, charged with taking what Danny Ferry built and molding it into something far greater, even greater then a 60 win season.
But it is not as easy as it sounds. Good general managers are hard to come by and Ferry was very good. But, he was working in a city with a majority African Amercian population, a specific fan base familiar with implied racial biases and overt prejudicial gestures. It was a zero sum game for Danny Ferry. He was not going to be able to survive it.
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This too: Danny Ferry could have done more. He waited too long to come out publicly and express his remorse. He told Ramona Shelburne he didn’t want to be a distraction for the team. But to the average fan, a suspension is viewed as punishment attached to guilt. Ferry ignored the basic rule of crises intervention: get in front of the story, control the narrative. He didn’t. And so the narrative was written by everyone who didn’t know him. He was called a racist and he was called a good guy and a lot of what he was called was in the middle of both of those things.
After a year, Ferry wants to make amends. He was particularly remorseful when talking about the damage to Luol Deng; his sincerity appeared genuine. But his sadness in June of 2015 should have been his screams from the rooftops in September of 2014.
It is all so very ironic one year later. Like the Atlanta Hawks, who won 60 games this year, Danny Ferry missed a huge opportunity. And now his career hangs in the balance.
Next: Kyle Korver's Extraordinary Season