Canceling the Atlanta Hawks’ ‘Magic City Monday’ Shows That Adam Silver Has Lost the Plot
Among the scandals the NBA faces, chicken wings and rap music were the least of the league’s worries.
By Carron J. Phillips
A strip club drew more scrutiny in the NBA than incidents of violence against women.
The Atlanta Hawks ruffled some feathers when they announced, for a March 16 game against the Orlando Magic, a “Magic City Monday” theme night to celebrate an iconic strip club that’s been embedded in the city’s culture for decades. This week, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver unclutched his pearls long enough to announce that he was shutting the party down.
“When we became aware of the Atlanta Hawks’ scheduled promotion, we reached out to Hawks leadership to better understand their plans and rationale,” Silver explained in a statement. “While we appreciate the team’s perspective and their desire to move forward, we have heard significant concerns from a broad array of league stakeholders, including fans, partners, and employees. I believe canceling this promotion is the right decision for the broader NBA community.”
Over the past few weeks, a discussion about the protection and esteem of women — as well as morality — took place after the Hawks announced their plans, in which world-famous chicken wings from the club will be served along with a halftime performance from Atlanta rapper T.I. The team had even started taking preorders on commemorative hoodies.
And despite nudity never being close to reaching the agenda, some were apparently overwhelmed by what could take place during a regular-season game at State Farm Arena.
“Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society,” San Antonio Spurs big man Luke Kornet wrote in a statement that Golden State Warriors center Al Horford — who played for the Hawks for nine seasons — co-signed.
As the conversation around the situation continued, the Hawks stood firm as ticket sales for the game spiked. Sports commentator Michelle Beadle defended the franchise while knocking Kornet, whom she sarcastically deemed a “White Knight,” on her podcast. “I’ve had enough of men telling us what we can and shouldn’t and what we should want and what we should need and how we should act.”
Beadle wasn’t alone in her defense of the Hawks. “I feel like this collaboration honestly is more celebratory energy than anything he was trying to make it seem like,” Yaya, a Magic City dancer, recently said about the proposed event.
Silver, Kornet, and Horford are performative allies. They are the neighbors who would report you to the homeowners’ association for missing shingles in the middle of a tornado. They lose sight of the bigger picture by being fixated on minutiae.
On one level, this is about Silver and others being unable to wrap their heads around the idea that an NBA franchise is connecting to the culture of its city by having a themed night in celebration of a legendary longtime member of its business community, despite the league not having an issue with it before the backlash.
But, at its core, this is about a commissioner who has been floundering at his job and is taking the easy way out by diverting attention from the real issues his league is facing. To make things worse, Kornet and Horford used this situation as a catalyst to discuss the “mistreatment of women,” when they’ve stayed mum about the men they’ve played against for years who have attacked and threatened to kill women.
A few examples:
2019: Former NBA All-Star DeMarcus Cousins was recorded on a phone call about his son’s attendance at his upcoming wedding telling the child’s mother, “I’m gonna make sure I put a bullet in your f*cking head,” after she denied his request. “Things didn’t work out the way I wanted it to for my day, I was upset,” he explained on a podcast. “I said some things I shouldn’t have said.”
2022: The NBA gathered information on former NBA All-Star Rajon Rondo after a woman was granted an emergency protective order after an ordeal with him in which he allegedly told her, “You’re dead.”
2023: Charlotte Hornets star Miles Bridges was suspended for 30 games by the league after he pleaded no contest to a felony domestic violence charge. Bridges’ ex-wife posted pictures of her injuries to social media.
2024: The NBA reopened an investigation into Los Angeles Lakers center Jaxson Hayes after TMZ released footage of an incident from 2021 between him and his former girlfriend. “I’m not going to let you hit me anymore,” the woman is heard saying in the video. “What the f*ck do I look like, a punching bag?”
Kornet has been in the NBA since 2017, and Horford entered the league almost two decades ago. Yet you won’t find a single public statement from either of them about any of the incidents listed above. However, because these two are so invested in the mistreatment of women, I’m sure they were happy when NBA legend Paul Pierce was fired from his analyst role at ESPN in 2021 for having strippers in the background of an Instagram Live video.
Their silence is deafening. But the hypocrisy is loud.
Kornet’s claim that Magic City Monday would “reflect poorly on us as an NBA community” was the most preposterous part of his argument, as Silver is facing multiple scandals that could crater his legacy.
In just the past two years, former player Jontay Porter was banned from the league for gambling, and that led to an ongoing FBI investigation that has uncovered alleged links between organized crime and coaches and players. The league’s bottom ten teams are said to be deliberately losing games, or tanking, to better their odds for this summer’s draft. And, most recently, sports investigative journalist and Contrarian contributor Pablo Torre might have produced the smoking gun that could prove that the Los Angeles Clippers allegedly circumvented the salary cap to pay star forward Kawhi Leonard an additional $28 million.
The irony is that Clippers owner Steve Ballmer bought the franchise after Silver forced the sale of it from former owner Donald Sterling, whom Silver banned from the league for being racist, in what was one of Silver’s first acts in his role.
Just three years ago, the NBA celebrated former Utah Jazz legend Karl Malone at the 2023 All-Star Game in Salt Lake City, as if he didn’t get a 13-year-old pregnant when he was 20. But lemon pepper wings, a rapper, and sweatshirt sales in Atlanta crossed the line?
Wow.
Let’s not forget that Jaxson Hayes and Miles Bridges are still being paid millions to play basketball in the NBA.
Somehow, a proposed theme night linked to an adult entertainment establishment at a basketball arena where they openly promote and sell adult beverages led to a couple of NBA players speaking up loud enough to prompt Silver to cancel the event.
The situation is so absurd that in this instance, Kornet and Horford have proved Republicans right: They need to shut up and dribble.
Carron J. Phillips is an award-winning journalist who writes on race, culture, social issues, politics, and sports. He hails from Saginaw, Michigan, and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Syracuse University. Follow his personal Substack to keep up with more of his work.
Seriously? This post is a bad take.
NBA decided strip club theme night is in poor taste.
Yes, they've been terrible to women in the past. And yes, they're being terrible to the WNBA players right now. But at least the NBA had enough sense to NOT say screw it, let's disregard our women and girls fans -who are here for great basketball- completely by having a theme night that highlights their potential as strippers rather than athletes.
Contrarian... are you trying to be edgy? What TF are you doing?
He has lost it. Don't forget that Kornet hails from sexist, racist and less than educated Tennessee. He was less than usless for the Celtics. And this may be the only way he gains ANY. attention while he is in the NBA. As a fellow MAGA one said (fellow to Kornet) Just shut up and dribble.