IT LOOKS FOR all the world like a glorious, carefree day at the Silverleaf Country Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The setting for the charity golf tournament benefiting Phoenix Suns stars Chris Paul's and Devin Booker's foundations -- the private, Tom Weiskopf-designed course in the canyons of the McDowell Mountains -- is Phoenix high life at its finest.
Julius Erving is there. So are PGA pro Jon Rahm and former Cleveland Cavalier JR Smith. Golf carts buzz through the majestic Sonoran Desert. Don Julio 1942 trophies are handed out to the winning foursome, led by Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi. Paul and his wife, Jada, are seen dancing at the end of the night.
But pictures can tell only part of the story. Or, in this case, a reel viewed by more than 339,000 of Paul's 11.5 million Instagram followers.
There is no mention of the allegations around Suns and Mercury owner Robert Sarver. No acknowledgement of what they'd all learned that morning on the way to the golf course, that Sarver had reluctantly decided to sell his franchises in the wake of a 10-month NBA investigation into allegations of racism and misogyny within the organizations as published in a November 2021 ESPN article.
Not even a hint of the chaos that had been going on behind the scenes: a high-stakes, multibillion-dollar game of chicken -- one that Paul, Booker and various power brokers around the league had participated in, which finally convinced Sarver to sell his franchises instead of fight the one-year suspension levied on him by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
No, the reel Paul posted the following morning is mostly just a vibe: Paul and Booker enjoying one last carefree day before training camp opens and they have a chance to avenge their second-round playoff loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
But there is one hint at how Paul felt about the situation embedded within the post. The title of the song playing over all those happy photos?
"Detox," by Lil Baby.
THAT'S BEEN A theme in the NBA and in Paul's life since the last time he confronted a situation like this, as a member of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014, when former owner Donald Sterling was banned for life by commissioner Adam Silver after TMZ published a tape of him making racist remarks to a woman named V. Stiviano.
That scandal marked the beginning of what has become something of a reckoning in the NBA, where powerful people have been exposed and toppled by ugly behavior and thoughts that previously had gone unchecked.
In Sterling's case, the world heard him tell Stiviano not to bring Black people to Clippers games. She'd recorded him on her cellphone. There wasn't much for the investigators the NBA hired from Wachtell Lipton to do except authenticate it was Sterling's voice and confirm the tapes were not made illegally.
Sarver's case was far more complicated. There was no tape, no smoking gun. But there was a mountain of allegations in the ESPN story that the investigators from the same law firm confirmed and expounded upon over the course of some 320 interviews and a 43-page report the league made public on Sept. 13.
Silver had access to all of those interviews before he rendered his judgment of Sarver. He also used the Sterling case as a direct comparison, weighing the punishment for Sarver -- a one-year ban from the NBA and a $10 million fine -- with the lifetime ban Sterling received, sources with knowledge of the situation said.
Silver had justified his lifetime ban of Sterling, or rather, his authority to ban Sterling for life, by invoking a clause in the NBA constitution that gave him the power to act in the best interests of the game. Think of it as a president using an executive order to get around Congress for the sake of time or political expediency.
Nowhere in the constitution did he have the explicit right to ban an owner for life. Quite frankly, he made it up and dared anyone to challenge him. It was a hell of an introduction for Silver to the public stage, just months into his tenure as commissioner. It also set a hell of a precedent for future discipline.
When he contrasted the totality of Sarver's actions with Sterling's, Silver said at a Sept. 14 news conference that he believed they were "dramatically different" and didn't warrant the same punishment.
So he gave Sarver a year, and presumably a path back to the league one day.
That decision was met with swift criticism from both players and the public.
Just three hours after the news conference, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James tweeted:
Read through the Sarver stories a few times now. I gotta be honest...Our league definitely got this wrong. I don't need to explain why. Y'all read the stories and decide for yourself. I said it before and I'm gonna say it again, there is no place in this league for that kind of
— LeBron James (@KingJames) September 14, 2022
Paul followed shortly thereafter:
Like many others, I reviewed the report. I was and am horrified and disappointed by what I read. This conduct especially towards women is unacceptable and must never be repeated.
— Chris Paul (@CP3) September 15, 2022
Paul called Silver before issuing his statement and criticism of Silver's decision, sources with knowledge of the call said.
Silver explained his thinking but did not ask Paul to hold back his criticisms.
"That would've been hypocritical," one source said. "Give the players a voice, then ask them not to use it?"
Silver accepted the criticism from Paul, James and Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green, who called on the league's owners to hold an immediate vote on whether to strip Sarver of his franchise. He also took calls from players such as Stephen Curry, who said Sunday, "I think the outcome was exactly what should have happened."
Privately, Silver acknowledged to confidants that his calculation of a one-year ban for Sarver might have missed the mark. But he believed strongly that there were important differences in Sarver's and Sterling's cases, sources close to the situation said, and that it was his job to arbitrate those differences objectively, even if it was unpopular.
Silver also explained to the players he spoke to that he'd considered sending the matter to the league's board of governors when they met in New York in mid-September, sources said, but had opted against it in part because of legal concerns about the statute that outlines the process for owners to expel another owner from the league.
Article 13 of the NBA constitution gives possible reasons an owner can be expelled from the league by a vote of three-fourths of the other owners. Most deal with operational failures or conflicts of interest. None of them specifically pertain to an owner making offensive statements or engaging in behaviors that cast the league in a poor light.
Several owners had wanted to change the language in the statute after the Sterling case to mitigate future legal challenges, sources said. The current language was neither specific enough nor broad enough to be considered airtight against future litigation.
Perhaps the biggest mistake, then, was in failing to realize how often the issue would surface.
Following Sterling in 2014 and Bruce Levenson of the Atlanta Hawks in 2015, Sarver is the third NBA owner in the past eight years who has either sold or announced an intention to sell following allegations of misconduct.
ULTIMATELY, SARVER ANNOUNCED he would sell the team for many of the same reasons Shelly Sterling decided to sell the Clippers in 2014: Trying to maintain control wasn't worth the fight.
Both Sarver and Sterling could have contested the NBA's decision to suspend them and tied up the league and franchises in court for years. But their franchises would've suffered heavy financial losses in the meantime.
According to team sources, the Suns had nearly 30 sponsors up for renewal after this season, with those companies providing $11 million in revenue last season, led by PayPal at $3 million.
The team had been planning for the fallout from the NBA's investigation for weeks, sources close to the team said. On Sept. 9, Suns executive vice president and chief revenue officer Dan Costello contacted Melissa Goldenberg, the Suns' general counsel, and Jason Rowley, the team's president and CEO. The longtime Suns exec had created a list of companies he believed would require "additional attention and talking points."
That list included:
Footprint
Verizon Wireless
PayPal
Arizona Public Service
Kroger
Beam Suntory
CarMax
Opendoor
Kia
Rocket Mortgage
A week later, and three days after the report was released, the team's fears were quickly realized.
PayPal became the first major sponsor to distance itself from Sarver, as CEO Dan Schulman released a statement saying the company would not renew its deal with the franchise "should Robert Sarver remain involved with the Suns organization, after serving his suspension."
Schulman also serves on the board of directors for Verizon, which had begun signaling to the league and the Suns that it was going to be the next to take action, team sources said.
"The walls were closing in on [Sarver]," one source close to the process said. "A group of sponsors were all moving towards this common position."
Schulman called Silver after the statement was issued and asked for his reaction, sources said. Silver read through it, thanked him for his honesty and told Schulman it could prove helpful to the overall process of convincing Sarver to sell of his own volition.
Silver had been speaking directly to Sarver frequently since issuing the yearlong suspension, sources said, encouraging him to act in the best interest of his franchises and remove himself from the equation by selling both teams.
The owner had not taken the punishment well, sources said. He was angry and wanted to know why his punishment was more severe than Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban's after two firms -- Lowenstein Sandler and Krutoy Law -- had conducted a similar investigation into the corporate culture in 2018.
Silver explained the differences in the findings of the two investigations -- Cuban had presided over a poor organizational culture but had not been accused of misconduct himself.
It had become clear that pressure needed to be applied from many different entities to convince Sarver to sell.
A day after James and Paul had issued their statements, Suns minority owner Jahm Najafi, the team's second-largest stakeholder, publicly called for Sarver to resign. A day after that, PayPal issued its statement and Tamika Tremaglio, the new head of the National Basketball Players Association, called for Sarver to be banned for life. Four days later, on Sept. 20, Draymond Green called for the owners to vote.
Eventually, the combination of public and private pressure, the prospect of deep financial consequences and the evaporation of the road back to the league one day finally moved him.
Sarver offered his own explanation in his final statement.
"I expected that the commissioner's one-year suspension would provide the time for me to focus, make amends and remove my personal controversy from the teams that I and so many fans love," Sarver said.
"But in our current unforgiving climate, it has become painfully clear that that is no longer possible -- that whatever good I have done, or could still do, is outweighed by things I have said in the past."
ON THE DAY Sarver announced he would sell, Suns president and CEO Jason Rowley led an all-employee videoconference. Rowley answered questions from staff, submitted through the team's human resources department. The first one centered on punishment for leaders of the organization employees believe were complicit in workplace misconduct. Rowley, who has been with the team since 2007-08, said there were items -- without naming specifics -- in the NBA's report that the team would be looking into, and that it would reach "corrective action" where appropriate.
Rowley told staff that it was important for the organization to "recognize some missteps" that it has had in the past, and he apologized to any current or former staffers who have had "an unpleasant experience" there.
"Leadership starts at the top," he added.
After the call, the reaction to Rowley's words was tepid at best, some staffers said. They believed he'd stuck to the company's talking points, which had been distributed to staffers soon after the NBA's investigation was released: That many findings focused on historical events that had already been addressed, that the team had made "tremendous" progress in recent years, that it strove to create a "best-in-class workplace."
Rowley and other Suns top executives did not take questions from the general public. That was left to general manager James Jones, coach Monty Williams, Paul, Booker, center Deandre Ayton and the rest of the Suns players who faced the tough questions Monday at media day.
"I don't think you can throw cliches and catch phrases on this one and be like, 'Let's move forward,'" Williams said Monday. "I think that's somewhat irresponsible.
"I don't believe you can just throw some goofy phrase that I've come up with over the past three years and say, 'Let's bring it in and move forward.' I don't think that's fair to the situation and certainly not sensitive to the people that have been affected."
Sarver is the fourth owner Williams has worked for in his eight years as an NBA head coach. He began in New Orleans with George Shinn, then led the team while the NBA operated the franchise during Shinn's bankruptcy proceedings, and stayed on after the Benson family bought the team. In Phoenix, he was hired by Sarver but will soon have a new owner to meet.
There will be no shortage of bidders for the team, with league sources predicting a franchise valuation of more than $3 billion now that revenue has rebounded following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and with a new television rights deal and CBA on the horizon. Sarver purchased the team for just over $400 million in 2004.
Phoenix made the playoffs only seven times in the 18 years Sarver owned the team. But the Suns made the Finals in 2021; they amassed their best regular season (64-18) in franchise history in 2022. Booker signed a four-year, $224 million max extension in July. Seventeen days later, after a contentious restricted free agency, Ayton signed a four-year, $133 million offer sheet with the Indiana Pacers, which the Suns matched instantly. And Chris Paul is doing everything possible to squeeze one last run out of his 37-year-old body.
Sitting at the lectern back in Phoenix on Monday, Williams leaned back, a coach tasked 11 months ago with holding together a group of 15 players fresh off an NBA Finals loss and a franchise reeling amid allegations of misconduct against the team's most powerful man.
With a horde of media members and current and past Suns employees hanging on his every word, he was asked for his reaction to the NBA's report and the chaos surrounding Sarver's ultimate decision to sell the team.
"There was a bit of shock. There was ... a moment where I was in disbelief, when you see the bullet points, when you go through it. You start to think about how these things impacted people."
He later added: "I try to teach [my children] to be open-minded in some areas but to be somewhat staunch in their beliefs in others -- and I think as it relates to respecting people, loving people, giving people a level of integrity, dignity for being human -- I think that's where you draw a hard line.
"I feel the same way about our team."