NBA Fines and Suspends Phoenix Suns Owner Robert Sarver

Witnesses recalled Sarver saying that the employee would be busy “breastfeeding” and that a “baby needs their mom, not their father.” The employee cried in response to Sarver’s comments, according to the report. Sarver later asked why women “cry so much.”

Sarver also “repeated the N-word when recounting the statements of others,” according to the report. Sarver was in the presence of players, coaches and members of the front office when he used the word during a team-building exercise during the 2012-13 season. He also used the word after a 2016 game when he complained to one of the Suns’ coaches that a Black player on an opposing team had been allowed to use the word without receiving a technical foul. Even after the Suns coach “admonished” Sarver for using the word, according to the report, Sarver loudly repeated it several times. He later used a version of the word in an email to the N.B.A.

According to the report, Sarver made crude sexual references on at least 20 occasions, and he pulled down the shorts of another male employee in front of team employees. Though the employee was not fully exposed, he was embarrassed.

And in 2015, according to the report, he made a joke that the team should have players “impregnate local strippers so they would feel connected to the area, giving the Suns a potential edge in free agency recruitment.”

During the investigation, Sarver sought to defend himself by citing his contributions to social and racial justice causes, and by pointing to the Suns’ record of hiring a league-high percentage of people of color in its basketball operations department.

A total of 320 people were interviewed over the course of the investigation, including 202 current employees, 100 former employees, 12 minority owners of the team and Sarver. Investigators said they reviewed 80,000 pages of emails, text messages and other documents, and 51 videos of employee meetings.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/sports/basketball/phoenix-suns-robert-sarver-suspended.html