Report: Danny Ferry won't return to the Hawks

Despite 60 win season, Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry will not return to the Atlanta Hawks

The Atlanta Hawks had the best regular season in team history, winning 60 games on the strength of a balanced starting five and reaching the conference finals.

But it wasn’t enough to save general manager Danny Ferry’s job. According to a report from Jeff Schultz of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ferry will not return to the team next season.

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Ferry has been on an indefinite leave of absence since September, when an audio recording of him discussing free-agent-to-be Luol Deng in June leaked to the press.

In the recording, Ferry says Deng is “a good guy overall but he’s not perfect. He’s got some African in him, and I don’t say that in a bad way.”

The sale of the team is soon to be completed, and they feel like they have a good structure in place without Ferry. The new owners won’t want to be answering uncomfortable questions about Ferry right as they take the helm, so they decided to act quickly.

According to Schultz, assistant general manager Wes Wilcox and head coach Mike Budenholzer will fill the power vacuum, as they have throughout the season.

He places the chances of Ferry’s return as “Powerball odds,” and says the most likely scenario is that Ferry will resign in order to save face.

Ferry was the architect of the current successful Hawks team, bringing in most of the starters, with the exception of Al Horford and Jeff Teague. Ferry took over a team stuck as a mid-level playoff contender, cleared out the dead weight (such as Joe Johnson’s contract, which the Nets amazingly took on voluntarily), and rebuilt a streamlined team better suited to contention.

Despite all this, the last thing the team wants under new ownership are accusations or whispers of racism among the team’s upper management, especially in such a visible role as GM. From a PR standpoint, the best thing to do is let Ferry go.

Ferry will probably land on his feet somewhere else, possibly after a year or so. Fans have short memories, especially when winning is concerned. Look how quickly everyone forgot (or at least stopped talking) about the rape charges on Ben Roethlisberger, or how Ron Artest returned to the Pacers just months after the “Malice at the Palace.” With Ferry’s track record of winning, we probably haven’t seen the last of him.

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Report: Danny Ferry won’t return to the Hawks

By Stanford Crissey | Jun 8, 2015

Despite 60 win season, Atlanta Hawks general manager Danny Ferry will not return to the Atlanta Hawks

More from Atlanta Hawks