NBA, NFL Address Toxic Cultures Differently

Recent incidents in the NBA and NFL highlight good and not-so-good approaches to changing toxic organizational cultures.

The National Basketball Association and the National Football League both encountered situations that exposed institutional cultures that threaten the integrity of their respective brands.  In each case, there are lessons to be learned about how to protect a brand and shift an organization’s culture.

Adam Silver

In the NBA, revelations about two owners turned attention to racist attitudes of those at the highest levels of the industry, and to the perception of bigotry in a game dominated by white owners and black players.  

Bruce Levenson (John Bazemore, AP)

Less than a year after Donald Sterling was forced by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to sell his interest in the Los Angeles Clippers and banned for life from the NBA after remarks he made to, and recorded by, his daughter, an inflammatory email written by Atlanta Hawks principal owner Bruce Levenson became public.  Levenson announced he will voluntarily step aside (and pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in doing so when the transfer of ownership is completed).   Silver addressed the Sterling incident quickly and unequivocally, setting a no-tolerance stance for owners who degrade the NBA, its players and fans with racist attitudes. 

Ray Rice

The NFL (along with the Baltimore Ravens, the Atlantic County, New Jersey prosecutor’s office and others) grossly mishandled the Ray Rice incident.  When Rice admitted to knocking out then-fiancée (now wife) Janay Parker after cable TV channel TMZ aired security-camera video showing the Ravens’ star running back dragging his unconscious wife out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator, Atlantic County prosecutors gave Ray the opportunity to participate in a counseling program instead of facing a trial for domestic-violence charges.  The NFL handed Rice a two-game suspension and Ravens ownership and management chose to do nothing.  Nike, which paid Rice $1.6 million a year in endorsement fees, stuck by him.  Only after TMZ broadcast the now-viral inside-the-elevator footage did the NFL, the Ravens and Nike take strong action.  The Ravens cut Rice, the NFL indefinitely extended his suspension and Nike ended its relationship with him.  The second video didn’t reveal anything new, other than to show in gruesome detail the blow we knew Rice threw that resulted in what we saw in the first video: Ms. Parker lying crumpled on the elevator floor. 

Roger Goodell (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell claims no one in the Commissioner’s Office had access to the tape before it ran ad nauseam on TMZ and then every other outlet in the country, and he has hired former FBI Director Robert Mueller to conduct an investigation into the matter.  Nobody I have spoken to about it believes the NFL didn’t see it, and neither do I, despite Goodell’s repeated denials.  But really, it doesn’t matter, not at all.  He knew Rice knocked out his girlfriend and give him a slap on the wrist for it. 

Is it fair to hold Goodell accountable for not reacting more strongly the first time around?  After all, Janay Parker has stoutly defended him, and prosecutors didn’t go after him.  (And, by the way, prosecutors acknowledge that they did have the inside-the-elevator video.)

Yes, Goodall blew it.  He should go, and right away.  The NFL has a culture problem rooted in violence that is tarnishing its brand.  The commissioner showed poor judgment in his initial response to the latest attack on the reputation of the NFL, and he has lost credibility with those of us who think the head of the NFL had the power, if not the will, to obtain the video.   

Whether it is animal cruelty, as with Michael Vick, or on-field violence, such as the play of those who have shown a pattern of seeming to try to injure their opponents, such as Washington free safety Brandon Meriwether, or domestic violence, the NFL does seem to recognize the problem.  But in the case of Ray Rice, it sent the wrong message.  You can’t make fundamental shifts in an institutional culture with incremental changes.  A two-game suspension for punching a woman so hard it knocks her out?  If that was the standard, what would be the standard for a player who rapes a woman—a three-game time-out?   

Copyright © 2014 by Dave Douglass