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\n The NBA has blocked the Atlanta Hawks from hosting a planned tribute night honoring Magic City strip club after facing criticism from players, fans and league stakeholders. The controversial promotion was set to feature the club’s famous lemon pepper wings and themed merchandise during Monday’s game against Orlando.\n <\/p>\n
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The NBA has blocked the Atlanta Hawks from moving forward with their controversial tribute night honoring Magic City, a well-known Atlanta strip club, after facing pushback from multiple sources within the league.<\/p>\n
The Hawks revealed their promotional plans last month, describing their intention to honor what they called a significant \u201ciconic cultural institution\u201d through special menu items \u2013 including the venue\u2019s signature lemon pepper wings that bear the name of former Hawks player Lou Williams \u2013 along with themed music and special merchandise.<\/p>\n
The promotional event drew divided reactions from the public, with supporters and critics voicing strong opinions on both sides. San Antonio Spurs player Luke Kornet publicly criticized the strip club promotion and called on those involved to abandon the plan.<\/p>\n
League officials apparently received similar feedback from numerous other sources.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we became aware of the Atlanta Hawks\u2019 scheduled promotion, we reached out to Hawks leadership to better understand their plans and rationale,\u201d NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. \u201cWhile we appreciate the team\u2019s perspective and their desire to move forward, we have heard significant concerns from a broad array of league stakeholders, including fans, partners and employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe canceling this promotion is the right decision for the broader NBA community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawks representatives did not immediately respond with a statement. The themed event had been planned for Monday\u2019s matchup against the Orlando Magic.<\/p>\n
The team has established connections to the entertainment venue. Team principal owner Jami Gertz served as a producer on a documentary series examining the club\u2019s background, its significance within Black and hip-hop communities, and its role in Atlanta\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis collaboration and theme night is very meaningful to me after all the work that we did to put together \u2018Magic City: An American Fantasy,’\u201d Gertz, who works as both a filmmaker and actor, said when announcing the original promotion. \u201cThe iconic Atlanta institution has made such an incredible impact on our city and its unique culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hawks had also planned to record a Magic City-themed podcast with fans who arrived early to the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA has blocked the Atlanta Hawks from hosting a planned tribute night honoring Magic City strip club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[80926,80927,7,80920,80928,80922,80923,80921,80924,48,6,47,76,3883,80925],"class_list":{"0":"post-657065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando-magic","8":"tag-102-3","9":"tag-102-3fm","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-fine-day","12":"tag-fine-day-102-3","13":"tag-fine-day-fm","14":"tag-fine-day-media","15":"tag-fine-day-radio","16":"tag-have-a-fine-day","17":"tag-magic","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-orlando","20":"tag-orlando-magic","21":"tag-orlandomagic","22":"tag-weller-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116224946252265663","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}