Atlanta Hawks: Dumbest. Tampering. Ever.
By Phil Watson
The Atlanta Hawks have the cap space this summer to make a run at free agents Dwight Howard (above) and Chris Paul. (Photo via DeviantArt user angelmaker666)
The Atlanta Hawks may have run afoul of the NBA’s tampering policy with regards to free-agents-to-be Dwight Howard of the Los Angeles Lakers and Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers.
So how could such a thing happen?
Did new Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer get caught surreptitiously Instagramming play diagrams to Paul?
Was general manager Danny Ferry observed wining and dining Howard at Bacchanalia on Atlanta’s Westside?
No, it was nothing like that.
Instead, it was an overzealous marketing employee in the team’s ticket office that may have damaged Atlanta’s chance of landing the two premier catches on this year’s market.
As first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and later followed up by ESPN.com, a sales letter aimed at potential ticket buyers—and goodness knows the Hawks could use more of those—mentioned Paul and Howard by name.
Club president Bob Williams acknowledged the sales letter and called the incident an “unfortunate” mistake.
Paul and Howard will become unrestricted free agents on July 1 and the Hawks, with cap space aplenty, are expected to aggressively pursue both All-Stars.
But until July 1, teams are prohibited from contacting any potential free agents and certainly mentioning them by name in a sales campaign steps well across the line of prudence.
The sales letter, printed on a team letterhead, includes the headline: “Hot New Player news: Chris Paul and Dwight Howard.” The letter goes on to claim that player interest in coming to Atlanta is “skyrocketing.”
Because, hey, who wouldn’t want to come to a team that seems stuck in a rut of 42 to 48 victories a season and an early playoff exit, particularly when said team ranks 25th in the NBA by having nearly 16 percent of the fans in the arena cleverly disguised as empty seats (per ESPN.com), right?
Williams issued a statement that claimed the sales pitch was not, in fact, tampering, but rather that the “specific reference clearly does not represent how our basketball operations or our business staff have communicated about free agency.”
The letter was certainly ambitious. According to the AJC, the letter said in part:
"The buzz around our offseason is more than heating up. With massive cap space, 4 draft picks, and free agency rapidly approaching, we sit in the best position in the NBA. Player interest is skyrocketing as the possibilities of landing Chris Paul & Dwight Howard become more and more of a reality.This is your opportunity to get on board before its [sic] too late. Once we solidify our signings there will be no seats left."
Misused words aside, it gives the Hawks organization every outward appearance of being amateur hour at its finest, with a business operation moving forward with marketing plans without getting any type of green light from the basketball side of the house. That would seem to be a pretty good idea, what since the marketing campaign included the genius idea of naming names almost a month before the free agents are actually … well … free.
According to the crunchology blog, there have been 11 fines issued for tampering violations in the NBA since 2003.
There was a bevy of tampering activity in the spring of 2010, all of its related to the pending free agency of LeBron James, then of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was slapped with a $100,000 fine, Hawks owner Michael Gearon was fined $25,000 and then-Phoenix Suns general manager Steve Kerr was levied a $10,000 penalty for discussing James prior to the free-agency deadline in 2010.
The NBA hasn’t commented on the letter. But it’s a pretty fair bet that it will, sooner rather than later.