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Dominique Wilkins reportedly interested in buying Atlanta Hawks

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Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins is reportedly interested in buying the Atlanta Hawks amid the racially charged controversy that has engulfed the franchise he once starred for throughout the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Gossip website TMZ.com cited multiple NBA sources saying that Wilkins was “extremely interested” in partnering with a prominent businessman to buy the Hawks. Wilkins, 54, has been a Hawks vice president since 2004 and serves as the team’s TV analyst. He made well over $20 million in salary during his 15-year NBA career.

Wilkins has not commented on the departure of controlling owner Bruce Levenson over a racially insensitive email Levenson sent team executives in August 2012 or remarks made by General Manager Danny Ferry in June about free agent prospect Luol Deng’s African heritage.

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“Thank you to all my fans and concerned Hawks community,” Wilkins tweeted Tuesday. “Please be patient with me. I will be commenting on the recent Hawks news shortly.”

Meanwhile, Yahoo Sports on Wednesday released new details about the conference call with Hawks owners in which Ferry disparaged Deng.

After Ferry said Deng “has got some African in him” and made a comparison to Africans selling counterfeit goods, minority owner Michael Gearon Jr. can be heard responding dramatically, according to a partial transcript obtained by Yahoo.

“Oh my god, that comment sounds like [Donald] Sterling on TMZ,” Gearon said, referring to the Clippers owner who received a lifetime ban from the NBA and was forced to give up his stake in the team over inflammatory racial comments.

Ferry went on to say that Deng “can come out and be an unnamed source for a story and two days later come out and say, ‘That absolutely was not me. I can’t believe someone said that.’ But talking to reporters, you know they can [believe it].”

Ferry described Deng as a “good guy in Chicago. They will tell you he was good for their culture, but not a culture setter. He played hard and all those things, but he was very worried about his bobble-head being the last one given away that year, or there was not enough stuff of him in the [team] store … kind of a complex guy.”

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Ferry has said he was repeating words compiled by other sources when it came to using racially objectionable language, but Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski wrote that “in the context of the transcripts, it appears that those had been Ferry’s own interjections on the call, somehow supporting the intel culled outside of the Hawks.”

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