N-word? Lewd acts? Misogyny? No problem. NBA slaps Suns owner Robert Sarver on wrist

He should have been forced to sell, like Donald Sterling of the Clippers.

Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver has been suspended for one year and fined $10 million after an investigation found that he had engaged in what the league called “workplace misconduct and organizational deficiencies."Read moreRoss D. Franklin / AP

Published Sept. 13, 2022, 5:50 p.m. ET

In today’s NBA, when fans use a racial slur in the NBA stands, they get banned indefinitely.

When an owner uses the N-word in the executive offices, he gets a one-year furlough and his lunch money taken away.

In the latest installment of billionaires gone bad, an independent investigation confirmed a 2021 ESPN report that painted Phoenix Suns majority owner Robert Sarver as a misogynistic racist. An independent investigation confirmed that the portrait was accurate.

The punishment seemed simple: Force Sarver to sell, much the same as the NBA forced Donald Sterling to sell the Los Angeles Clippers when his decades of racism came to a head in 2014, after he told his mistress that she could sleep with Black men, but she couldn’t bring them to his games.

Further, the NBA should have taken away two first-round draft picks as discipline to the rest of the organization that allowed his behavior to fester for 17 years.

Somehow, Sarver survived.

He was suspended for just one year. He was fined $10 million, the maximum allowed ... but about 0.5% of the Suns’ $2 billion valuation, or about three home games worth of revenue. The Suns — who issued a statement before the story’s publication that said the story was a pack of lies, and who let Sarver poison the workplace for almost two decades — lost no draft picks.

To review: Call a Black man “boy” in the stands and you’re gone for good.

Use the N-word? Expose yourself to an employee? Treat women like livestock? See you next season!

Read the report and it’s inarguable: Sarver just needs to go away for good.

Sarver used the N-word at least five times between 2004 and 2017.
Sarver e-mailed pornography to employees.
Sarver danced provocatively with a male employee at a company party.
Sarver discussed sex acts and condoms during business meetings.
Sarver told a pregnant employee she would be pulled from a project because of her impending delivery.
Sarver told a female employee, “You’ve never seen anything this big” when preparing for a shower at a team facility.
Finally, and most disturbingly, Sarver exposed himself to a male employee during a fitness check.

The investigation damned Sarver beyond redemption. Consider that the bank Sarver helped found, Western Alliance Bancorporation, forced him out in April. If you find your standards lower than a $65 billion bank, you’re on the wrong side of history.

Sarver will be required to undergo sensitivity training before he returns, but if you’re a female Suns employee, or if you’re a player for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, which Sarver also owns, what hope do you have that your workplace will be decent when he returns? The NBA player pool usually is about 75% Black, and the league’s ranks of coaches and executives are more diverse than any major league’s. In the report, Sarver, in 2016, told a Black coach and a Black executive, “I hate diversity!”

There is no gray area here. Sarver issued a statement Tuesday — “I disagree with some of the particulars of the NBA’s report” — but offered no real defense or denial. He has been found to be racist, misogynist, offensive, and pretty gross.

If this doesn’t paint a picture of a man unfit to run a $2 billion organization that sets behavior policy for the employees and owners of the league’s 30 teams, well, you and the NBA agree.

And you’re both wrong.