ESPN published the article about Suns owner Sarver, here are some parts. NBA already launched and investigation.
After the loss, Suns majority owner Robert Sarver entered the coaches locker room, Watson told ESPN.
"You know, why does Draymond Green get to run up the court and say [N-word]," Sarver, who is white, allegedly said, repeating the N-word several times in a row.
At least a half-dozen Suns staffers recounted to ESPN instances of Sarver hearing a story from a Black player and then using the same language when retelling it, down to the usage of the N-word.
Sarver once used the N-word when trying to explain to a staffer why he preferred hiring Lindsey Hunter over Dan Majerle as head coach in 2013, according to a high-level executive who heard the remark. Hunter was a first-year Suns player development coordinator while Majerle was in his fifth year as a Suns associate head coach.
"These [N-words] need a [N-word]," Sarver told the staffer of his largely Black team, according to the executive.
More than a dozen employees recalled Sarver making lewd comments in all-staff meetings, including discussing times when his wife would perform oral sex on him. Four former employees said that in several all-staff meetings Sarver claimed he needed to wear Magnum or extra-large condoms. Former employees said he asked players about their sex lives and the sexual prowess of their significant others.
At one point, the woman broke down in tears, to which Sarver said, "Why do all you women around here cry so much?"
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 shellshocked. 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."
In 2017 two former employees said that a white male executive repeatedly called a Black co-worker "Carlton," in reference to the character from the '90s TV show "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." In at least one instance, he jokingly told the co-worker to "do the Carlton" for him. The employees said the Black co-worker on multiple occasions told the white executive to stop calling him by that name and that he was not going to dance for him. "Super racist," one former employee said.
One female former employee said that after being physically assaulted by a male co-worker outside of the office, a female co-worker went to HR out of concern for the employee's safety. The two told ESPN that HR spoke with the alleged victim, ultimately deciding that simply moving her desk would resolve the issue. At that time, the alleged victim said there were two rows of desks -- with partitions separating each one -- and that hers was right next to the male co-worker's. They moved her to the second row. "I couldn't escape," she said, adding that if she stood up, he was right there, probably less than 10 feet away. "It was a joke. An absolute joke."
As far as the employee is aware, there was no investigation. The Suns told ESPN they could "take no action because both employees declined to speak with HR and because neither employee expressed an interest in having the Suns intervene concerning the dispute." The Suns denied ever instructing "either employee to 'move [their] desk' to resolve the domestic issue they were having."
In all, three people told ESPN the employee's desk location had indeed been moved.
One female former sales employee said a former Suns vice president, who appeared intoxicated, asked her how many members of her department she had slept with and about a specific coworker's penis.
"It was terrible because I had not had sexual interactions with anybody on [the staff], so that was very weird," she told ESPN. "And [it] also made me uncomfortable because my VP is asking me about my sexual history with other co-workers? That kind of thing was almost normal."
A second former HR rep said employees were told not to file complaints and that they shouldn't come to the HR office, that they should instead meet outside the office: "I would say, 'Let's go take a walk. Because if they see you being here, they're gonna come after you.'" Several employees said they were taking antidepressants and going on medical leave because of the issues they were having with superiors, according to the former rep.
Added the first former HR rep: "Unfortunately, HR is a place that most people come to, to get refuge from things that go on. You should be able to go there and get some help. [But] it's sort of a culture of complicity. Which I was a part of. And I hate saying that."
