Episode 262: Wretched Robert Sarver
In this episode, Lindsay Gibbs, Shireen Ahmed and Jessica Luther break down the recent report on the behavior of Robert Sarver, owner of the Phoenix Mercury and Phoenix Suns basketball teams. But first, they talk about the retirement of tennis great Roger Federer.
Then, they dig into a report released by a law firm and commissioned by the NBA to look into allegations of of Robert Sarver's sexist and racist violations of common work place standards. The NBA responded by fining Sarver $10 million and suspending him for one year. The team talks about the damning results including statements from over 100 individuals that witnessed many accounts of sexist, vulgar, and racist behavior by Sarver as well as how Sarver uses the WNBA team the Mercury as a shield for his actions. They also discuss reactions from players, sponsors, and the league, as well as comparable cases of deplorable owners, like Donald Sterling, in recent years.
Following this discussion, they preview a special Patreon segment about NBA commissioner Adam Silver's disappointing reaction to the report on Sarver, saying team owners are held to different standards than everyone else. Then, you'll here a preview of this week's interview with Sabreena Merchant, basketball writer for SB Nation, on a WNBA finals recap and budding off season storylines.
Next, they burn some of the worst in sports this summer on the Burn Pile. Then, they celebrate those shining light, including Torchbearers of the Week, the Las Vegas Aces, who won the franchise's first WNBA title over the Connecticut Sun. They wrap up the show with What's Good and What We're Watching In Sports this week.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Lindsay: Hello, and welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you both want and need. My name is Lindsay Gibbs, I am the host of today's show, and I am joined by Jessica Luther and Shireen Ahmed. Hi, friends.
Jessica: Good morning. Hello.
Shireen: Good morning.
Lindsay: Today, we've got a conversation on Robert Sarver and the NBA's report on his behavior and the fallout from it. We're gonna have most of that conversation in this episode, and then we're gonna have a little bit on Patreon. We have a lot of great Patreon content over the past few weeks. I'm especially excited about the discussion from Jessica, Amira and Brenda about being at the US Open and being able to see Serena and the buzz around Serena in her retirement tour. So, go check out patreon.com/burnitalldown for that. And speaking of retirements in tennis, we had another big one this week.
Roger Federer: The last 24 years on tour have been an incredible adventure. While it sometimes feel like it went by in 24 hours, it has also been so deep and magical that it seems as if I've already lived a full lifetime. I have laughed and cried, felt joy and pain. And most of all, I have felt incredibly alive. So I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart, to everyone around the world who has helped make the dreams of a young Swiss ball kid come true. Finally, to the game of tennis: I love you, and will never leave you.
Lindsay: Roger Federer announced that this week that Laver Cup will be his goodbye. He hasn't played in about a year. He's been dealing with injuries. I found myself surprised by how…It wasn't Serena level, but I definitely got a little bit emotional thinking about it. And I don't know. I wanted to ask, how are you all feeling? Jess?
Jessica: I thought that his thing he wrote and recorded was beautiful. “To tennis,” and like, how much it had given him. I got emotional listening to it was when it really hit me. It certainly didn't hit me like Serena. I think in part, because of like what you just said, he hasn't played in a very long…Like 14 months, and then he was really on and off before then. So it's felt like he's been gone in a different way than with Serena. I guess my favorite thing was Nadal's response. He wrote this beautiful message to Roger, and it started, “Dear Roger, my friend and rival,” which just, that alone hit me really hard. And the pictures were so sweet, and he had this great sentence in there where he said, “We will have many more moments to share together in the future. There are still lots of things to do together. We know that.”
And I just love the idea of these two great tennis players who have had some of the most amazing matches. I was pregnant in the summer of 2008 and bored outta my mind and hot, and I remember like the emotional roller coaster of that Wimbledon final. That was one of the greatest matches ever played. And here they are, like, BFFs in 2022. And I find that deeply sweet. I did wanna mention one thing about Federer that I find amazing. Christopher Clarey wrote about this in the New York Times piece on Roger's retirement, and he noted that Federer was never forced to stop playing a match he had started because of an injury, not once. And Roger said something like he played 1500 matches, an incredible athlete. Tennis will miss him. There's such a bright future, but dang.
Lindsay: Honestly, the video of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at the height of their rivalry, this video could probably get me to smile more than like any other video. They were advertising a charity match they were doing, and they could not stop giggling. [laughter]
Roger Federer: So Rafa, do you know what you're gonna get me for Christmas?
Rafael Nadal: You know what? I’m gonna come to Switzerland and play an exhibition match for your foundation. [laughter]
Roger Federer: So Rafa, do you… [laughter] He gives me the look, you know…
Rafael Nadal: I’m gonna start looking here.
Roger Federer: So, Rafa— [laughter]
Lindsay: You have these two titans of their sport, fierce rivals on the court. I mean, I cannot tell you how intense in tennis circles the Rafa versus Rogers stuff got. And they're just sitting there giggling like preteen boys. [laughter] Like, they keep cracking each other up, and it is the most…Like, every single person in the world would smile while watching this video. Like, you can't watch it and not laugh. It's amazing. I've talked on the show, I'm sure, before about how, you know, tennis is a big reason why I'm a sports fan, why I'm a sportswriter, and it was really Andy Roddick, my love for Andy Roddick that got me into the sport. And so of course, he could never really beat Federer on the biggest stages. And I hated Federer for a long time. But I've definitely grown to really have a fondness for Federer over the years. I think it's a true sign of how time changes everything. [laughter] Because like, you know, I hated him in the sports sense, right? But like off the court, you couldn't help but admire him and have a fondness for him. Shireen?
Shireen: I mean, everything about tennis for me comes in relation to Serena, because I'm not like someone with this expertise or knowledge, but I was really, really moved by her post. The two of them retiring like around the same time is a lot, you know, a huge shift for the sport itself and two iconic figures. But her selfie and her post that included the selfie of her and Federer when they played doubles was so, so sweet. I actually saw Nadal's tweet before I saw Serena's. Then I went back to go find hers, because I figured, I'm like, if he had said something, then she would’ve, and she did. And she talked about being inspired by him, and she talked about his friendship and how much that meant to her.
And I mean, particularly to be…And we've talked about this so much, to be her in that space, to have a friend like him, it would've meant the world. And I mean, there's things that I explore like that, like friendship. And not the word allyship per se, but the fact that they had such a respect for the way other played and them as athletes, but then to also be friends and have those moments of loveliness, and like, I guess normalcy? Like, you know, they're taking the selfie, we all take selfies, except they're at like center court of this major grand slam. So it's like elevated, but normal, you know? And like, I just love that. The words…One of the ways that you gauge how you've impacted is how your rivals speak of you, which is what Jess said, like, to have words of respect and just deference at this level, it just speaks to how impactful he was. And I mean, it makes me think, how are my rivals gonna talk about me when I retire? [laughter]
Lindsay: All right. That's a different segment for a different day. [laugher] Shireen did make this about her retirement somehow. I love that. But I will just say that I loved that Serena invited Federer into her retirement club in her post, which is like, Serena actually used the word retirement. Like, there's the power of Federer. [laughs] And I also love Venus being mad that Serena had more photos with Federer than Venus did. [Shireen laughs] Whereas if you look at Venus’s goodbye to Federer, it's literally her and Federer both at the Wimbledon champions' ball twice. It was like, Venus, you have your own flexes. Thank you very much. [laughs]
Jessica: That big sister energy.
Lindsay: Hi all, this is Lindsay, coming to you from Wednesday night. We recorded our episode on Tuesday, and a couple things have happened since then that I wanna update you on before you listen to our conversation. First of all, the WNBA players association, executive committee did release a statement saying WNBA and NBA commissioners missed the mark on meaningful accountability for Robert Sarver, and the union said, “It is never too late to do the right thing,” with respect to Sarver's involvement with the leagues. And then just a little bit after that, Robert Sarver, in a quite eye-opening letter, wrote, “Words that I deeply regret now overshadow nearly two decades of building organizations that brought people together through the unifying power of professional men's and women's basketball. As a man of faith, I believe in atonement and the path to forgiveness. I expected that the commissioner's one year suspension would provide the time for me to focus, make amends, and remove my personal controversy from the teams that I, and so many fans, love.”
“But, in our current unforgiving climate, it has become painfully clear that is no longer possible, that whatever good I have done or could still do is outweighed by things I have said in the past. And for those reasons, I am beginning the process of seeking buyers for the Suns and Mercury.” You know, it's important to note before you listen to our conversation that the NBA has not changed anything about their proposed suspension of Sarver, but that he has finally announced he is looking to sell the team. We did not know that before our conversation. And yet I think our conversation still holds up. Enjoy.
Lindsay: All right. Last November, Baxter Holmes at ESPN published a blockbuster investigation about allegations of sexism and racism by Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury owner Robert Sarver. The NBA responded by commissioning an independent investigation conducted by the law firm Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz. On Tuesday, last Tuesday, it was released, confirming Holmes’s reporting and then some. The report found that Sarver “has engaged in conduct that clearly violated common workplace standards, including the use of racially insensitive language, unequal treatment of female employees, sex related statements and conduct, and harsh treatment of employees that on occasion constituted bullying.”
Some specifics include saying the n-word at least five times, telling a pregnant employee she would not be able to do her job after becoming a mother, and frequently making crude or unwise inappropriate comments about the physical appearance and bodies of female employees and other women. The NBA responded by fining Sarver $10 million and suspending him for one year. [laughs] Lots to discuss as we get into this. First of all, I think it's really important, that summary, I think piques interest, but I really wanna get more into what the actual report said. So Jess, I'll kind of start with you. Did any nuggets of this report stand out? And I know, it's honestly hard to choose.
Jessica: It's really bad. I would suggest reading the report, for people, because it's just so much more than you even imagined. So I was like, part of…One of the things that stood out to me were the sheer numbers here. So, “Over 100 individuals witnessed Sarver’s statements or actions that violated applicable standards.” Over 100 individuals! “On at least 20 other occasions in workplace settings throughout his tenure, Sarver made crude references to sex or sexual anatomy or joking sexual analogies.” 20 other occasions! Like, that's in addition to the three or four they had listed before that. Just the numbers alone are just humongous.
One of the things that really struck me about Sarver in this report is he just sounds like a Joe Rogan-esque, like, internet troll. Like, witnesses said that Sarver’s workplace actions often seemed intended solely to provoke a reaction from employees. Sarver was erratic and unpredictable, that his sense of humor was sophomoric and awkward and inappropriate for the workplace. Witnesses said that Sarver believed workplace norms did not apply to him and viewed common conventions as to what language he should use and what conduct he should avoid as “a form of challenge.” Like, he just sounds horrific to be around. Like, you immediately can conjure up what this man is like, and he's exhausting and terrible.
And part of what was interesting to me, the Dallas Mavericks had a similar type of thing on the business side operations. I reported on that. And like, one of the things that they had found about the CEO of the Mavs back when he was first reported for sexual harassment in 1998 was that his behavior was boorish and juvenile, right? Like, this is a common thread that we're seeing with incredibly powerful men in big places. I was just like, do men do this all the time at work? Or is this just like a thing that, because we focus on sports? But like, the investigation collected documents in which Sarver forwarded to a small number of male Suns leaders joking pornographic material and crude emails, including emails containing photos of a nude woman and a video of two people having sex.
Like, why is this a thing that keeps coming up? There was a dude in the Mavericks organization who watched porn on his computer. They moved him to a cubicle so that his screen didn't point outwards so that people didn't have to look at the fucking porn on his computer. Well, you talk about the Washington NFL team, and they were sending around like pornographic photos. I just…I don't know. Do you want me to just keep going? [laughs]
Lindsay: I do. Just, can you…You’re on a roll.
Jessica: [laughs] Okay.
Lindsay: But I would add, you talked in the beginning about how many numbers, and Jess, you’re an investigative reporter and you've done investigations like this. You always know that the number that you find or the number that you're willing to say–
Jessica: Is small.
Lindsay: Is so much smaller. [laughs] So the fact that they're saying over 20 occasions, you know, it's so much more than that.
Jessica: Yes. And part of it was they spoke to a ton of people, but they did have trouble speaking to specific people closest to these issues, right? Those are the ones who are actively harmed. Think of what they would've said. Okay. So, there's two sections I wanna draw attention to specifically because lots of people have not drawn attention to them. One was about…It was stuff that Sarver did, physical conduct that he engaged in that made mainly men uncomfortable. So, I'm just gonna quote it. “Sarver once unnecessarily dropped his underwear and exposed his genitals to a male employee who was on his knees in front of Sarver performing a fitness check that Sarver had requested and had undergone before.” And then this ridiculous sentence after that: “Past experience would've taught Sarver that dropping his underwear was unnecessary for the fitness check.” [Lindsay laughs] Which is like, is this a grown man? Like, what the fuck?
And then another one. “During an August 2014 ALS ice bucket challenge, Sarver pulled down the shorts of a male employee in front of a crowd of team employees.” This is like, a man who owns an NBA team. And then I wanna point out there's a section titled, “Comments about players’ sex lives, bodies, and sexual orientation.” That's a title of a section of this report. “When the Suns were recruiting a free agent in 2015, Sarver made a joke that the team should have players impregnate local Phoenix strippers so they would feel connected to the area, giving the Suns a potential edge in free agency recruitment.” “Sarver made crude comments about the size of Suns players’ genitalia and their sexual appetites. Sarver asked players about their personal grooming habits. In one instance, during the 2009-2010 season, Sarver entered the Suns training center and asked a player who was lifting weights at the time whether he shaved his testicles. One witness said that Sarver asked this question of each player, one by one.”
We're gonna talk more about how he treated women – horrible – on its own. But I do wanna draw attention. We so often gloss over what happens to men. He was shitty to his own players. Like, you know, most of them are Black men and he's talking to them about the size of their genitalia. Like, that's fucking racist shit, blatantly. So, the whole thing stood out to me, Linz, but this is like my edited down version of the things that like really, really hit me from all of my knowledge of how these things work. This is horrible shit from anyone, forget an incredibly powerful man that owns an NBA team – and WNBA team.
Lindsay: And WNBA team! [laughs] It’s really important. Like, it’s just…
Jessica: Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. Yeah.
Shireen: And I mean, trigger warning for everything through this whole episode for this type of racial abuse and sexual misconduct. One of the things that I wanted to sort of respond back to what Jessica was saying about how it's glossed over the way he made men feel in those spaces, and because of how homophobic we are as a society, and the shame allotted to about of men in this way, they may not have talked about it ever or disclosed it because of, you know, taboos associated with that. And how many layers of complication this is and how terrible it is, as Jess mentioned, the racism. But like, thank you for your very detailed analysis, Jess, [laughter] because it's just like, you know, a part of it is that this is not fun stuff to actually weed through. And so, you know, I really appreciate you being so detailed. Because I skimmed it, and I was like, I can't dive into this right now. And for me, I hear the use of the n-word and I'm like, you know, that's it for me. I just, as someone [Sarver] who freely uses that, I'm good. I don't think you should have a team. I just don’t.
And the use of that n-word, it wasn't just like a one time use. It was constant in vernacular, in professional communication to staff and players. You're using the n-word. And that'll never stop enraging me. But the kicker here is like the pants falling down, like from past experience, that that kind of idea is having to be told many, many times not to do it. And from the report that says as early as 2004, Sarver was made aware that he should not use the n-word even when repeating another person's use of it. Like, when you're constantly coaching the owner of a team not to use the n-word to know avail, that's a big red flag right there. The other thing that really really got me is…I saw this in an AZ Central story. He's actually said, “I hate diversity” to a coach in 2014. This is something this man has actually said publicly. He hates diversity.
Lindsay: Yeah. It says in the report that he told a Black coach and team executive in 2016 that he hated diversity because “if you have diversity, people don't agree.” Just… [laughs]
Jessica: Oh my goodness.
Shireen: I mean, it's not like there’s one red flag, there's many of them. And the other thing that really hit me was the way that he manipulated the power dynamic and was so abusive, like psychologically. The lunch with the Suns employees and bank employees, that was awful. Like, he basically berated a Suns staff person because he didn't like the way she prepared a video, and she started to cry. So then as a response to that, he was like, oh, I'm gonna get the Suns employees some women, take them for lunch with bank employees – where at the time he was serving his CEO – and have them sit down and see how steely and great the bank employees are, and the Suns ones are weak. Can you imagine being women at this lunch?
Lindsay: No!
Jessica: No.
Shireen: Like, all of this is so demeaning and so intentionally demeaning and so awful. Like, so fucking wretched. Oh god.
Lindsay: It's really, really bad. I mean, I'm just gonna keep going. Okay. Just gonna keep going. He questioned and belittled female employees’ basketball knowledge and expertise, which is like one of the least offensive things in this report, but also like, he owns a women's basketball team. So I don't love that. It's how recent some of this stuff is too, that I think gets, you know…I mean, first of all, it's how longstanding it was. Like Shireen said, starting in 2004 – which he bought the team in 2004. So this is right when he came on, he told you cannot say the n-word, even if you're quoting someone else. And then he kept doing it as recently as a couple years ago. In a business meeting in 2021…So, for anyone who's like, things have changed post-Me Too. 2021 was post-Me Too, right? He told his whole business meeting about how he learned what a blowjob was as a child.
Jessica: I just…
Lindsay: 12 witnesses recalled Sarver making a reference at an all employee meeting between 2009 and 2011 to engaging in this specific sexual act, and then 19 witnesses recall him making a comment at an all employee meeting about the use of a certain type of condom.
Jessica: How does it…How!
Lindsay: What are we doing?
Jessica: What is this conversation…It's like, I just…How, how do you bring up condoms? I just, I don't know.
Shireen: You know how you do this? With impunity and power. And fucking money. Because who's gonna get mad at him? Who's gonna do anything, because he will fucking fire them. I'm so angry right now. This is… [groans]
Lindsay: And one of the things about the report that made me the most angry, at the end of all of this, he literally uses…So, in his response, which was crafted by a lawyer, he told the NBA, you know, he denied responsibility and he literally said in the second paragraph, “Mr. Sarver is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of his DNA. Mr. Sarver is one of the few NBA owners who continues to support and advance the development of women's professional basketball. He recently invested $7 million to provide the Phoenix Mercury with a state-of-the art training and practice facility.” So the very first reason he uses to prove why he's not sexist and racist is that he owns a WNBA team. He's literally trying to use his WNBA team as a fucking shield.
Couple of things about this that make this even worse than just like it is on face value. First of all, Ted Leonsis, who's the owner of the Washington Mystics and the Washington Wizards, told me in 2019 that he was the only NBA owner that physically attended WNBA owner meetings, which means Sarver did not. I reported that in 2019 and have had nobody deny that. And also, this state of the art training and practice facility that he touts and says he had put $7 million into – that practice facility actually costs $45 million privately funded by the Suns. It was for the Suns. [Jessica laughs] Like, this is a facility for the Suns. Some of the branding is Mercury, but the majority of it is for the Suns. He built this because he had to for the NBA team and he lets the WNBA team use it. So touting that as like this big perk is just bullshit.
$10 million and suspension for one year is the NBA's response to everything we've mentioned above. There's been a lot of outrage. LeBron James most notably called for Sarver to basically be banned for life. Chris Paul, who is a member of the Suns, said that the sanctions fell way short. The Suns minority owner, Jahm Najafi, has, you know, called for Sarver to step aside. You know, Howard Beck in a piece for Sports Illustrated wrote that reactions from NBA folks around the league are pretty outraged. Jess, any sponsor reactions?
Jessica: Yeah. So, a huge one was PayPal. I think they're uniform sponsor. Like, they're a big deal to the Suns. And I always think the money matters the most, the thing that will influence much more than even someone like LeBron James or Chris Paul speaking out. In this statement that PayPal put out, they wrote, “We have reviewed the report of the NBA league's independent investigation into Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver, and have found his conduct unacceptable and in conflict with our values.” And PayPal is like, if he is going to be a part of this team after his suspension, we will not be a part of this team anymore. Like, PayPal was willing to draw that line where the league itself is not. And, you know, we saw with the changing of the Washington NFL team's name that, you know, there were decades of protests. There were like immediate protests. And then it was when FedEx threatened to pull their money that Dan Snyder finally conceded. And so more sponsors should speak out about this. This is horrific stuff that the NBA seemingly is just like, oh, well, shrug about. And hopefully this will do something.
Lindsay: Yeah. Shireen, what has the union said?
Shireen: Well, I think it's really important here to say that the National Basketball Players Association wants him gone and they want him banned forever, which I think is important because a lifetime ban, there is something far more serious with a lifetime ban than a one year. It sort of feels like you can go and come back on this lovely hiatus.
Jessica: Yeah. He will come back in a year. [laughs] Yeah.
Shireen: He will come back in a year, and that doesn't address anything and no root causes of what's happening systemically, or even the harm that he's caused to the people there. So the executive director of the NBPA, Tamika Tremaglio, actually said in an interview with Malika Andrews that the players want him banned for life.
Malika Andrews: You issued a statement saying that you “strongly believe that Mr. Sarver should never hold a managerial position within our league again.” So, to be clear, are you calling for Robert Sarver to be banned for life from the NBA?
Tamika Tremaglio: Absolutely. We are absolutely calling for that. We do not want him to be in a position where he is managing or engaging with individuals who are engaging with our players, or our players themselves. We are absolutely clear from the findings that are in that report that we do not want him to be in that position.
Lindsay: Yeah. Thank you. I think I gotta say, I'm a little bit surprised by how silent a lot of WNBA players and the WNBA union has been in all this. Now, part of this is they're just finishing up the finals. They still have a player that's illegally detained in Russia. It's been quite the season for the league. And also like, let's not kid ourselves on who has the real power here, right? It's the NBA that's the bulk of, you know, the equity that he owns. And part of me just thinks like the W's like, let them deal with this shit. Do you know what I mean? Like, see if they can get him out. And especially with all the turmoil going on within the Mercury organization itself. But I still do wish like Diana Taurasi would come out and speak out against this. I think that would be really powerful. I wish we would have a stronger reaction in the WNBA, because I think it's important to look at what we've seen from other teams.
Because there's important things here, like, Donald Sterling, that's the example everyone brings up. He was banned for life from the NBA, but he was not actually forced to sell the team. There were mechanisms that went around that the owners…I think it's like three, four of the owners have to vote to like oust an owner. They never actually took that vote with Sterling. They've never actually kind of ousted someone in that way. A lot of times with this, what we see is like public pressure forcing an owner of a team to sell their team. And there's no doubt about it, they make a lot of money when they do sell the team, right? But you know, we just had recently in the WNBA, Kelly Loeffler, of course, who was a senator who decided to go full MAGA and use her WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream, to amplify her racist views. And there was no allegations about her mistreating her players or anything directly, but obviously there was so much outrage over her Senate campaign that it simply became an untenable situation.
But there was never a vote. She was never ousted in that way. She kind of agreed behind the scenes to sell the team, and did. And that's kind of typically how we see this stuff work, if we see anything, right? We see other allegations with like a Dan Snyder, let's say, in the NFL, where there's been lots of reports about misconduct within the Washington organization – less directly from Dan Snyder himself than we have in the Sarver report about Sarver himself. And he's just fine. And he's stayed on board, and “less” is a very subjective term. Jess, you did a big report, a big investigation into the Mavs' front office, the Dallas Mavericks’ front office, a couple years ago with Sports Illustrated. What do you remember about that and kind of like the fallout from that? And why is that – if it is – different than this?
Jessica: Four years ago, four and a half years ago.
Lindsay: Oh my god.
Jessica: Isn’t that wild? Jon Wertheim and I did a big piece at Sports Illustrated, and I went back and prepped for this and re-read the Mavs’ investigation. So after a report came out, they also had a law firm look into it and released a 46 page report. It was very similar. And there is so much overlap. The big thing for me is the toxic workplace culture, the sexism that was just like endemic in both of these places. And both had massive failures in human resources in HR. Like, there was nowhere to go with this information. And one of the things that post-Mavericks, they were supposed…I think the NBA created some kind of phone line where you could call stuff in and complain. And like, that seems obviously not to be the answer here.
But the fact that there's only so many teams, and the fact that we have now had multiple teams with very similar issues with this kind of toxic culture where people are working, the NBA needs to take a hard look here. The one huge difference is that Cuban, the owner of the Mavs, was never really implicated in the way that Sarver obviously is here. Ultimately, the NBA with the Mavericks, Cuban agreed that he would donate $10 million to organizations to help those affected by domestic violence and would encourage hiring women in leadership roles, which he went on to do. Cuban did tell ESPN that Silver never discussed with him about selling the team and that Cuban didn't consider it in the wake of the reporting that had come out. And so there's definitely differences here. But the things that are the same are like so shockingly the same that it makes me really wonder, like, what's going on in the other offices of other NBA teams?
Lindsay: And I think that’s what's important. Like, I was listening to ESPN Daily podcast this morning with Brian Windhorst and Pablo Torre, you know, they were talking about how, like the other owners don't wanna set a precedent of what gets you, you know, thrown out. Like, right now, the bar is Donald Sterling, and they're afraid to make it anything different than that. Shireen, can you remind us what exactly happened with Donald Sterling?
Shireen: Donald Sterling, folks. On April 25th, 2014, TMZ released a recording on tape for a racist tirade that Donald Sterling had at his Black Latina girlfriend, V. Stiviano. And the follow up from the story eventually led to him selling the team to Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, and I’m getting this from a Vox article. Speaking to his mixed race girlfriend, Sterling said, “It bothers me a lot that you wanna broadcast that you're associated with Black people. I'm just saying, in your lousy fucking Instagrams, you don't have to have yourself walking with Black people. And also, you can sleep with Black people. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it and to not bring them to my games.” This is what he said. Sterling has also been accused of many things, of atrocious behaviors, starting from racist rental practices – because he owns a lot of property in Los Angeles – to sexual harassment of his employees.
And he's privately settled a lot of these cases and actually admitted nothing. No culpability. But as the Vox article mentions, between court depositions and public accusations, there's a lot there. I just wanted to say that I feel bad for Chris Paul. He was actually there with both teams when this happened. He was with the Clippers with Sterling, and he's at the Suns. And I love Chris Paul. CP3 is a great guy. I love his commercials with his kids. This is shitty. This is shitty. I'm sorry this is happening to you, Chris Paul. Hopefully one day you’ll play for a team that doesn't have an atrocious, deplorable man as an owner. I do actually wanna say that at the time this happened with Sterling, the player reaction, and this is really important, was that players would take off their jerseys and wear them inside out for practice. They would take off their shooting jerseys and throw them in center court because they were so upset about this when it happened with Donald Sterling.
Jessica: Well, it'll be interesting with this when the season starts.
Shireen: When the season starts, of course, because that was in season. Yeah, it was in April.
Jessica: Yeah, the timing is friendly to the NBA. In that sense.
Shireen: Yeah. So we are not seeing the same amount of response because the season hasn't started yet. So just keep that in mind that, you know, when people are comparing a lot of rehashing about Donald Sterling, there's some things that are different here.
Lindsay: Totally. I mean, Donald Sterling is basically on tape saying “I hate Black people.” So what is this line that the NBA is kind of trying to parse?
Jessica: Yeah, it sucks. In the report, it happens over and over again. There's like this very specific sentence that they keep writing. They're trying to – the investigators, I guess – were trying to suss out the intention or motivation of Sarver, whether or not he did these things because he is racist and sexist. And they kept finding that no, in fact, he did not do these things because he is racist and sexist. He's just a shithead. But I wanna give one example of how this reads in the report, because I think it's really telling. So, “The investigation finds that these incidents occurred, and that the Black coaches involved believed in each instance, that the confrontation had a racial dimension. However, the investigation does not find that Sarver's conduct in any of these instances was motivated by racial animus.”
Those are two back to back written sentences in the report where you have Black coaches saying they felt that what Sarver did was racist, and then these two investigators saying we did not find that it was racist. And it matters so much because Silver used this as an excuse for why he did not force on Sarver the same kind of pressure that he did with Sterling. He said, “I think if they had made findings that in fact his conduct was motivated by racial animus” – there's that exact term – “absolutely. That would've had an impact on the ultimate outcome here, but that's not what they found.” And so, I don't know how they did not find that. I don't read that in the report. I read racism, I read sexism. But Silver is relying heavily on this language in the report to say that he didn't need to do more. And that sucks. This is a shitty thing that the NBA is doing right now,
Shireen: As somebody who has received and receives racist abuse, truly, who is the person that gets to decide that? I would like to have a conversation with the people, the investigators, that get to decide the intentionality behind someone's racist actions. Like, it does not compute in my head. It actually doesn't. And I think this whole thing is so fucking offensive. This process is so...And for Adam Silver to rely on that, who is not a racialized person, to say he's relying on that. Like, this whole thing is fucked up.
Lindsay: So this week, we wanna get farther into Adam Silver's particular response to this and what we want from team owners and what should be expected from team owners. We're gonna have that conversation over on patreon.com/burnitalldown.
Lindsay: All right. This week for our interview, which was released on Tuesday, I spoke with Sabreena Merchant, the WNBA writer for SB Nation, about the WNBA finals and the big offseason storylines in the WNBA. Sabreena is in LA and I especially loved our conversation about the Los Angeles Sparks.
Sabreena Merchant: And when your GM is out and there's no assistant GM to replace him, like, I mean, I assume the WNBA front offices have more than two people involved, but like, other than Kari Korver who just sort of comes around and, as I can tell, like gives coffee to the players before the start of the game, like, I don't know who's really working there. It's a bare bones operation in Los Angeles right now. [laughs] And I don't know where they go from here.
Lindsay: It is time for everyone's favorite segment, the burn pile. I'm gonna get us started with a couple of consecutive NFL related burns. First of all, in a memo – that was written in English, I should say – but entitled NFL Por La Cultura, the NFL announced that it was gonna celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by updating the logo of the NFL shield. And they're doing that by adding a little tilde, a little making the “N” an “Ñ” in NFL. It's like a bright yellow eñe. An official press release. This was tweeted by the NFL, a statement that went through so many layers, I'm sure, of approval. [laughs] So many layers. It said, “This shield integrates unmistakable Latin flavor…” Unmistakable Latin flavor! “And is fundamental to our always-on, 365 day initiative. The electric brush stroke of the eñe is filled with an infectious personality that is carried out through the rest of the look and feel.” [lauhgter]
Jessica: It's so bad. It's it's so bad.
Lindsay: It’s so bad. There's a meme from the office where Ryan Howard, BJ Novak's character, literally to, I think maybe it's Cinco de Mayo or some sort of party they're given, he makes the “n” in lemonade an eñe! [laughs]
Jessica: With a Sharpie. [laughter]
Lindsay: With a Sharpie. And people are like, this is literally what the NFL just did, except consultants got paid millions of dollars for this. Like, it's so embarrassing. And Julissa Arce, an author, wrote, “This is embarrassing. There is no eñe in the word nacional. We don’t say Eñe F L we say NFL.” [laughter] So like, on top of everything, the word nacional in Spanish does not have an eñe in it!
Jessica: It's it's another letter. It’s a different letter!
Shireen: Can we actually start calling it ÑFL on the show now? [laughs]
Lindsay: Yeah. Burñ. [laughter] I love everyone just adding the eñes to their like name and stuff. Everyone was adding “unmistakable Latin flavor” to their profiles. Anyways. Burn. And then also on a more serious but just equally just fucking what are we doing note, Cleveland Browns in their first home game of the regular season since signing Deshaun Watson, there was a tailgate of Browns fans. They had a massage table with a mannequin and a towel over this mannequin's crotch where there is a simulated erection. There was a tip jar there, and a big sign saying “happy endings are not illegal.” Obviously all just mocking the allegations, the serious sexual assault allegations against Deshaun Watson, who is suspended right now, but who will be their quarterback before the season is over. Because I like karma, I wanna say that the Browns, with a minute and 55 seconds left to go, they had a 99.9% chance of winning, but they lost to the Jets, led by Joe Flacco.
Jessica: The Jets!?
Lindsay: [laughs] And so, you know, burn, for the NFL’s Hispanic Heritage Month, for Cleveland Browns fans. 1, 2, 3, burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: So much to burñ. [Lindsay laughs] You know, so much to so little time. Yeah. I just have a baby burñ. I just wanted to draw attention to Matthew Ross's fatphobic comments. He is a host of Weekend Game Plan, a TSN radio show in Montreal. And he was mocking Alejandro Kirk, who is the Blue Jays catcher, who is running, rounding bases. And he's basically like, “it's embarrassing for the sport.” Now, Alejandro Kirk is 5’8” and 245 pounds and he's running and he's a great part of the Blue Jays. And for Ross to do that was unacceptable. He caught the ire of Alek Manoah, who is the pitcher, who said, “What's actually embarrassing for the sport is people that go by the name of Matthew who have never played a day in the big leagues and think they can control the narrative and stereotypes. Go ahead and tell that eight year old kid who is 10 pounds overweight that he should quit now.”
Like, it’s terrible that this happens. And Matthew Ross has since apologized and was like, oh, I just thought there would be a clip that would lead to more jokes about the sport, that wasn't anything else. Like, that's the type of apology he issued, which, I think, is atrocious and terrible and subpar standards from journalists in this industry. I do wanna point to a bigger burn that…This caught my attention and you may or may not have seen it. So, basically Shane Beamer, who is the head coach of the South Carolina football team, was caught on camera yelling at young women athletes who were brought on after the first quarter in recognition of Title IX.
The athletes were brought on, the young women, to stand there to have a moment, to be cheered on by everybody in the stadium. And you see Beamer shouting at them to get off the field and being like, “Fuck!” And because he was in this heated moment, cetera, et cetera. And this actually went viral because Jyllissa Harris, who is a soccer player on the women's soccer team, who said that all female students were asked to come to the game to recognize 50 years of Title IX, and we're on the field for 15 seconds and then screamed at to get off. And she said, “If you wanna honor female students, then do that, not this.”
And if you want an actual, very specific model of how sexism is ingrained and even how people can be performative while trying to pretend in institutions here. So awful. Beamer again later apologized and said, “I support women's sports.” He has two daughters that play sports.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Of course he does.
Shireen: I thought it was important that everybody understand that Beamer has daughters that play sports. But you know, Harris actually did not criticize him specifically, but there's no doubt there was a miscommunication. There's no doubt that the institution, whoever organized this, didn't communicate effectively. But the point here is to say, if you're gonna do something like this, dot your i’s, cross your t’s, and make sure that the athletes, the women athletes, are really truly respected. I hate it, all of this. Can I get a burñ?
All: [laughter] Burn.
Lindsay: Jess?
Jessica: I will be speaking briefly about suicide in my burn, FYI. On September 15th, Tina Thorsen, a former soccer player at the University of Illinois, Chicago, UIC, tagged, Burn It All Down, along with a bunch of other people, in an Instagram post about her experience at UIC as an athlete. In the caption of the post, Thorsen writes that she is angry about her time at UIC because, “for many of my teammates, those years consisted of sitting on the sideline, waiting for answers to our health. It was years of asking administration for help. It was nagging emails to athletic directors, doctors, medical directors, calling nurses every day. It was Zoom calls with doctors to make sure we had protocols to ensure our safety that were never followed. It was a constant fight, for years.”
She doesn't go into a lot of detail in the post about what specifically happened during her time at UIC, but she does say, “The school has contributed to the deterioration of my physical health and the absolute abomination of my mental health. I watched too many people around me go through surgeries that could have been prevented had we been protected. I've watched the women around me completely lose a grip on their mental health.” She does imply at the end of the post that she's going to tell her story, and I do look forward to hearing it. But she also makes a broader point about college athletics that I want to highlight.
Thorsen writes, “There's a part of college athletics that seems to be muted. It's the part where a lot of us physically, emotionally and mentally are not protected in any way, shape or form. The part that we only talk about a few times a year when a student athlete takes their life, and we talk for a few weeks about how things need to get better, just for the conversation to die out and for nothing to change. I truly believe a lot of athletes have experienced what my teammates and I did. But by the time graduation comes around and athletes leave their school, they are so ready to move on and heal from those years.”
Tina is so right that one of the most useful things for people within college athletics to maintain the status quo and to resist any kind of change is the fact that students are constantly coming and going. The churn is unending. It makes it so easy to move on from a problem when an athlete leaves and takes their story with them, even if the structure or the people who harmed them or contributed to their harm, or simply looked the other way when that harm happened, they remain. So, I want to burn the harm that so many college athletes, especially female athletes, keep articulating to us, and what happened specifically to Thorsen. I hope her words and her story do make waves for UIC and that the athletes coming up behind her benefit from the fact that she is speaking out now. Burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: All right. After all that burning, we wanna lift up some of the heroes of the week in our torchbearers section. Honorable mentions, Jess?
Jessica: Alyssa Thomas of the Connecticut Sun made history in the WNBA finals with back to back triple doubles. That means she's the first player to tally a triple double in a finals game, the first player to get two triple doubles in the same final series, the first player to notch two triple doubles in back to back games – regular season or playoffs – and the first player to amass four triple doubles in a single season in WNBA history. She will be first team for us here at Burn It All Down. Amazing.
Lindsay: Amazing. In Chicago, two Black women high school varsity football coaches, Fenger’s Jouscelyn Mayfield and DuSable’s Konesha Rhea, made history when their teams faced off last Friday. The Illinois high school association believes that the contest was the first ever varsity high school football game featuring two female head coaches. I love that.
Jessica: Me too.
Lindsay: Shireen?
Shireen: Last week, Major League Baseball Players Association announced it had collected cards from the majority of the 5,500 players in minor league baseball, meaning that at long last minor league baseball players have formed a union.
Lindsay: Yay. I love this so much! [laughs] We love unions. Jess?
Jessica: The Boston Marathon has created a non-binary division, allowing non-binary athletes to compete in the race without having to register as male or female. This follows similar moves from the New York City and Chicago marathons, and spurred the London and Berlin marathons to add a non-binary category as well. That's five of the six big marathons – Tokyo’s the other one – that now have a non-binary division. We love to see inclusivity.
Lindsay: All right, can I get a drumroll, please? Who is torchbearer gonna be?
[drumroll]
Jessica: [laughs] I feel like we’re not drunk enough to announce this.
Lindsay: [laughs] We’re not nearly drunk enough. The Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA champions beat the Connecticut Sun 3-1 in a five game series to win the first championship in franchise history. The franchise started as the Utah Stars in '97 when the WNBA made its debut league. It’s been in San Antonio and then it moved to Vegas. So, quite the journey. Congratulations to coach of the year, Becky Hammon, who of course this is her first season as a WNBA head coach. Congratulations to MVP and defensive player of the year A’ja Wilson, who was phenomenal in these playoffs. Big congrats to Chelsea Gray, who was the finals MVP, and just such a special passing of the torch moment for this to be Sue Bird's last playoffs and then Chelsea Gray really emerging as the best point guard in the league. And congratulations to all of us who are getting to witness the Aces’ celebration, [laughs] because they're having fun and I'm living vicariously through them. I absolutely love it.
Lindsay: We're here. We're here. What's good, Jess?
Jessica: I haven't been on for a long time, so I'm gonna like Shireen this. So, I went to the US Open. That was amazing. All of that. We did the Patreon on it. Aaron and I went to Toronto and saw Shireen and met Mark. And that was great. And we saw Pearl Jam and they played Aaron's very favorite song as the opener. So that was wonderful. I, unfortunately though, got COVID in the wake of that, but I'm a week out from when I tested positive, I'm now testing negative. I'm feeling so much better. So that feels good at this point. And we just had what I call birthday week in my family. My son and husband both had birthdays four days apart. So that actually means we had birthday cake week. And so that is always good. Shoutout to Sugar Mama’s, once again, local Austin bakery that makes Aaron's birthday cake. It's this chocolate cake with the best peanut butter frosting, like, just it's so fluffy and so peanut buttery, and I have to special request it now. It's not like one of their regulars, but they make it for me every year, and it's just, oh god, so good. I'm so happy thinking about it.
And during my COVID stupor of last week, I watched a show on Hulu called This Way Up. It's British. So there's two seasons right now, six episodes. You can just blow through this thing. It's hilarious. It's one of the best things I've seen on mental health in a long time. And I loved it so much that I have rewatched it with Aaron because I needed him to know my references when I was going to reference This Way Up. So, huge shoutout to that show for bringing me some joy while I was really down with COVID. So, Yeah. That's what's good.
Lindsay: Woo! I will go quick. WNBA playoffs were a blast. I really enjoyed those. They brought a lot of happiness into my life. I'm excited, by the time you all listen to this, I'm excited that Bachelorette finale is tonight. [laughter] I have not loved this season, so I'm really excited that now it's Bachelor in Paradise time, which just always delivers. So, you know.
Jessica: Love this for you.
Lindsay: But I will be watching the finale tonight, so I'm sure I'll tweet some opinions, and it doesn't actually interfere with a WNBA game, which is nice. Let's see, what else? I just got a lot of people sending me love after our Patreon episode we did a few weeks ago where I kind of shared some of my struggles from the summer. And I do just wanna share that I have been feeling stronger and better the past couple of weeks. And yeah, I just wanna thank everybody for their support and, you know, anyone else who's on the ups and downs of a mental health journey, it's sometimes hard to recognize when you're feeling better, which is a weird thing. [laughs] Like, you don't even, you're so used to feeling miserable, you don't even notice. And so I have felt better. So I wanna say thank you for the support, and for everyone else, there are better days, which is good. Shireen?
Shireen: I wanna start off by saying thank you, Lindsay Gibbs, for letting me call her and ask her about random things this past couple weeks. [laughter] And also giving me choice quotes for my columns, because she's awesome and an expert. Also, your glasses were hot yesterday, in her pre-productions. Just to talk about something, Mo Amer – I've been watching this series Mo with Mark on Netflix, and I really love it. Like, it's really difficult, but we're starting to see depictions of Muslims who are not monolithic characters and who are complicated and live in places and struggle with things. It's really, really nice to see it. We're enjoying the series so much. Autumn leaves. I love fall. Y'all know I love fall. I have scheduled my apple picking trip, and it's good. You'll hear all about it. And it's Macintosh apples most definitely. Obviously.
Jessica: I never know what's gonna come outta your mouth. The way that you just said “autumn leaves.” [laughter] I just wasn’t…I wasn't prepared. [laughter] Go ahead. Sorry. I'm happy for you.
Shireen: You know how much I love fall. You'll get all those photos. I am going to Portland to on the invitation of our dear friend, Dr. Jules Boykoff, to do a keynote at Pacific U. So I'm very excited about that. To flip to something a little more serious, we know that Puerto Rico has no power, and Pakistan remains underwater. So, some joy that unexpectedly came was me and a bunch of women, Pakistani Canadian journalists, got together informed a media collective for Pakistan climate disaster aid. I'm adding that in. I do not report on climate change, so I am very comfortable sharing this information with everybody. Also, there'll be links in the show notes to places to donate to Puerto Rico from grassroots activists in Puerto Rico. I would like to remind everybody that this is something that affects us all. And if you please keep those two places that do not get as much fucking attention as they need. And I would like to keep amplifying that, and you'll hear that from me in the next coming weeks as well, and possibly forever.
Lindsay: All right. This week, we're gonna be watching: women's basketball's, not done. There's no breaks. The FIBA world championships, the world cup for women's basketball starts this week in Australia. It's gonna be on ESPN+. I'm actually very excited. I can't believe I don't need a break because that's how exciting these matchups are. So, NWSL and MLS are both winding up their regular seasons. The NWSL playoff push is incredibly tight. Of course we got NFL, we got college football. I'm pretty sure there's some baseball going on as well.
Jessica: I've heard, I've heard.
Lindsay: I know volleyball and soccer are back for college, and so, lots of fun things to keep us occupied. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe, rate on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. We have show links and transcripts on our website, burnitalldownpod.com, where you'll also find a link to merch at our Bonfire store. And if you wanna become a sustaining donor to our show, patreon.com/burnitalldown. To quote our dear Brenda: burn on, not out.