It's possible NBA owners shouldn't use email anymore. After Bruce Levenson of the Atlanta Hawks decided to sell his share of the team following a racially insensitive and offensive email, we've got a much milder but still avoidable situation with an owner and email. Golden State Warriors' co-owner Peter Guber is in a bit of hot water after he typed the word "hoodish" instead of "Yiddish" in an email joke about languages he needed to learn.
The Warriors' PR department forwarded an email from the NBA about the international imprint on the league's rosters to people in the Warriors' organization. The forwarded email mentioned the international players the Warriors had on their roster with Andrew Bogut (Australia), Leandro Barbosa (Brazil), Festus Ezeli (Nigeria), Ognjen Kuzmic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Nemanja Nedovic (Serbia). Guber replied to the email on his iPhone saying he was going to learn "Hungarian Serbian Australian swahili and hoodish This year." From Yahoo:
Guber responded to the email by writing, "I’m taking rosetta stone to learn Hungarian Serbian Australian swahili and hoodish This year. But it's nice."
Guber's initial email was sent throughout the franchise and construed as "offensive" by at least one team employee. Late Monday, Guber sent a follow-up email saying he mistakenly typed "hoodish" and regretted the error.
"Someone just brought to my attention that an email I responded to earlier contains the word 'hoodish,' which I don't even think Is a Word, and certainly not the one I intended to use," Guber wrote in the email. "I intended to type Yiddish. Either my mobile fone [sic] autocorrected or it was typed wrong. In any event I regret if anyone was unintendedly [sic] offended."
Aside from Australian not being a language and English being the national language of Nigeria, this does seem like an honest mistake. When I typed "Yiddish" into my phone, there wasn't an autocorrect that came up. When I typed "hoodish" into my phone, "hooding" and "hoodies" were the two autocorrect possibilities that came up, but that can be different based on your history of typing. More than likely, it was simply mistyped and not some deep seeded racially insensitive comment.
However, in today's age of the NBA and especially following the events involving owners and executives from Donald Sterling during the playoffs to Danny Ferry's comments on a conference call that came to light this offseason, any little slip-up, intentional or not, is going to be met with immediate reaction. Guber's mistake seems to be innocent but that won't stop people from questioning and investigating to find out if another member of the NBA has to be removed or reprimanded for racially insensitive thoughts or actions.