By all accounts, the Atlanta Hawks are searching for and wide for their next president of basketball operations. In early May, Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported a number of interviewees for Atlanta's front office opening, including former Denver Nuggets executive Calvin Booth and former Sacramento Kings executive Monte McNair. The list is seemingly much larger than that, including names like Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Elton Brand, who reportedly withdrew his candidacy on Wednesday.
However, a report from Zach Klein of WSB-TV in Atlanta stirred the memories of many around Atlanta, as Klein pointed to former Hawks general manager Danny Ferry as a potential candidate for the position.
Danny Ferry's GM history
Ferry was hired as the general manager of the Hawks in June 2012, inking a six-year deal to run the team's basketball operations department. Less than a year later, Ferry hired Mike Budenholzer as the team's head coach and inked Paul Millsap to an exceptionally valuable two-year contract that paved the way to a tenure in which he made four All-Star teams in Atlanta.
All told, Ferry was credited by Hawks CEO Steve Koonin as the "principal architect of the Hawks’ success in Atlanta," and Ferry put together the most successful team in Hawks history when they won 60 games and reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2014-15.
However, Ferry's tenure ended in turmoil, and he has not held a permanent, high-level front office position in the NBA since his exit from Atlanta.
On June 22, 2015, it was announced by the team that Ferry would be stepping down from his position as general manager following an extended leave of absence that the team requested in September 2014. According to the team's official release when Ferry stepped down, "the leave was triggered by the unauthorized release of an audio recording containing a brief portion of a lengthy conference call with team ownership and others during which Ferry repeated and paraphrased language from a third-party scouting report that contained a culturally insensitive characterization of a player."
Though the Hawks also revealed in their announcement that an investigation "made clear that the offensive language was not Ferry's and none of Ferry’s remarks or behavior during the call were motivated by racial or ethnic animus, or by a person’s country of origin," the incident was the clear reason why his time as the general manager came to an end.
Prior to taking over in Atlanta, Ferry was the GM of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he also served as the interim GM of the New Orleans Pelicans after Dell Demps was fired in February 2019. However, Ferry has not ascended back to a top-level position, spending most of the last decade in advisory capacities with both the Pelicans and San Antonio Spurs.
The chances of a reunion
Of note, Ferry's potential candidacy has not been reported by any other platform to date, and Atlanta's "wide net" of candidates could leave this as a small footnote if he does not become a finalist or someone in serious consideration for the job. Still, Ferry's inclusion as even a potential candidate to run the Hawks was instantly met with mixed reaction.
Some cited his clear successes as a personnel executive with the Hawks, while others pointed to the way things ended as a reason to not re-explore a partnership with Ferry. From a basketball standpoint, Ferry did a tremendous job building a 60-win roster in Atlanta, particularly in finding talent on the margins with players like Millsap and DeMarre Carroll. At the same tiime, he also had a spotty record in the NBA Draft (drafting players like John Jenkins and Adreian Payne in the first round, etc.) and, in short, the NBA game has changed quite a bit over the last decade. At minimum, that changing basketball landscape would create uncertainty around a potential hire.
In many other cities, there could potentially be a clearer path to hiring Ferry in a prominent position, simply because the PR wounds would perhaps not be as fresh. For a reunion in Atlanta, a lot of memories would be sparked and, while the ultimate investigation into his 2015 behavior yielded a relatively positive report from the Hawks side, the way things ended would seemingly cast a shadow for some observers.