Sarver is said to have made racist and sexist comments and treated nonprofessional basketball team employees for years. This penalty was felt by many players in the league to be too lenient. NBA superstar LeBron James has also publicly complained.
Sell ”The Best Solution”
The sale was the “best solution”, although he originally hoped to be able to retain control of the franchises. “But in our current unforgiving climate, it has become clear that this is no longer possible — any good I have done or may do is far beyond what I have said in the past,” Sarver wrote in a statement. “For these reasons, I started looking for buyers for Suns and Mercury.”
Sarver bought the NBA (Suns) and the women’s professional league WNBA (Mercury) in July 2004 for about $ 400 million. Recently, Forbes magazine estimated the price of Sun at 1.8 billion dollars.
NBA boss Adam Silver described Sarver’s punishment as harsh but appropriate and pointed out that he knows more about the results of the investigation than the general public. He also emphasized that there are high constitutional hurdles in the United States for taking someone’s property – and Sarver was not an employee or director.
Phoenix Suns vice president Jahm Najafi asked Sarver to resign last week. Now he has reacted to the sales announcement.