Suns Owner Robert Sarver Hostile Work Environment Bomb Drops

Tetsujin

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#2
#2
Before the 2017-18 season, a tense front-office situation provided another glimpse into interactions with Sarver employees felt were racially insensitive. Late in the previous season, point guard Eric Bledsoe had been benched in a tanking effort led by Sarver, former basketball operations staffers said. Issues with the benching percolated into the offseason, when Bledsoe was eligible for a contract extension.

Contract talks eventually led Bledsoe's Klutch Sports agent, Rich Paul, to communicate directly with Sarver -- the Suns owner didn't want to extend Bledsoe's contract in part due to concerns about Bledsoe's durability, plus concerns that the team had performed poorly with him as the starting point guard, according to sources at the time. Paul responded to Sarver's remarks by saying that he knew basketball and that they "weren't talking about tennis," Sarver's childhood sport.

Sarver erupted at the dig, according to two people with knowledge of the interaction, telling Paul he was going to fire Watson as the team's head coach if Watson didn't sever ties with Klutch, which had been representing Watson, within 10 days - just after the start of the season.

Watson said that Sarver's ultimatum quickly reached him. He asked Sarver if he was serious.

"Yeah, I will f---ing fire you," Sarver told Watson. "You have 10 days to think about it. Don't wait too long."

Watson said he explained to Sarver the optics of a white owner asking a Black coach to fire an agency led by a Black agent, Paul.

"Yeah, I understand what race you two are," Sarver replied, according to Watson. "So I'm asking you, How bad do you want your job?"

Watson said he told Sarver that he wasn't going to fire Klutch.

"You can do whatever you want," Watson said he told Sarver. "You own this team, but my culture is not for sale. And I'm not for sale."

Through legal representation, Sarver said his issue with Klutch was solely due to a conflict of interest -- that a coach and a player could not be represented by the same agent. Sarver denied that the conversation had anything to do with race.

Watson, when told of Sarver's response, said: "Rich [Paul] was never my agent." Watson was represented by Klutch Sports, which is owned by Paul.
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Tetsujin

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#3
#3
Former Suns account executive David Bodzin said that in August 2014, Sarver pantsed him in front of more than 60 employees at the team's ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. A former senior basketball staffer and a former senior marketing employee confirmed this account to ESPN. In the aftermath, Bodzin said, an HR representative smirked and said, "Please don't sue us for sexual harassment."

"I had no idea what to say to that," Bodzin told ESPN. "What does a 25-year-old say in that situation? They say, 'OK.'

"I was shell-shocked. And as I've thought about it more, every year that it has gone by that I've thought about it, makes me angrier that I didn't come forward about it. ... My power was minimal in that had I said something as just an account executive, I felt that I would have been blacklisted from the industry."

Through his attorneys, Sarver said: "I would like to apologize directly to David Bodzin. I remember this incident from seven years ago. I never meant to cause any harm or offense -- and I certainly did not mean to embarrass Mr. Bodzin. At the time, I thought this was taken as a joke by everyone in the room. I understood, a short time later, that this was inappropriate. This was purely on me, and it was a misguided attempt at humor."
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LOL
something so effing stupid that Sarver couldn’t even attempt to legalese his way around it.
 
Tetsujin

Tetsujin

The Game Thread Dude
#4
#4
Sarver instituted unusual and frequent demands, former coaches and basketball operations staffers said, and during part of that 2018-19 season he told Kokoskov's staff that they shouldn't hold pens, papers, notebooks or anything in their hands on the sideline. They had to stand and cheer.

ESPN asked Sarver about his interactions with the team; the questions went unaddressed.

"It was a clown show," said one former basketball operations staffer. "Guys are jumping up and down looking ridiculous, and I'm getting texts from coaches around the league, like, 'What are you guys doing?'" Said another former basketball operations staffer, "It becomes more of a circus and, 'Let's stand up and clap and appease Robert as opposed to doing what our job actually is, which is trying to coach the basketball game.'" One clip of the coaching staff failing to fist-bump properly went viral.
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https://twitter.com/statuses/1066448057888374784
 
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