NEW YORK — The San Antonio Spurs’ locker room had all but cleared out after the team’s blowout loss to the New York Knicks Sunday, as many players had left to enjoy one last evening in the city.
Sitting by himself in the corner, center Luke Kornet was hammering away on his laptop like a veteran newspaper reporter trying to get a story in on time. It was a curious scene, as players rarely have laptops open after a game, or have their own laptops in the locker room at all. But Kornet, as The Athletic covered this week, has his own recently revived blog, which he has expanded from writing about his favorite churches on the road to the random musings of life in the NBA.
“Did you make deadline?” I jokingly asked him after he closed his laptop.
“This will get some attention,” Kornet responded, explaining he wanted to file his story quickly to ensure it still hit the zeitgeist. He then double-checked that he had used the word zeitgeist correctly. He did.
The next morning, Kornet dropped the most notable piece of his writing career.
Last week, the Hawks announced a partnership with the famous Atlanta strip club, which is sponsoring “Magic City Night” for the team’s March 16 game against the Orlando Magic. In a new entry entitled “Concerning the Atlanta Hawks,” the 30-year-old Spurs center posted an open letter asking the Hawks to rethink it.
“The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world,” Kornet wrote. “We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love. Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society. Regardless of how a woman finds her way into the adult entertainment industry, many in this space experience abuse, harassment, and violence to which they should never be subjected.”
Magic City, which the Hawks called “the city’s iconic cultural institution,” is ingrained deeply enough in the local culture to have its own night at the State Farm Arena. Located a short drive from the arena, Magic City is perhaps as famous for its revered chicken wings as its dancers. It’s a popular nightlife spot for Atlanta celebrities and civilians alike. Though there will not be dancers at the Hawks’ Magic City game, it will be celebrating the club.
It’s also a popular institution for NBA players coming to town. Former Clippers guard Lou Williams, who lived in the area as a teenager, was caught breaking quarantine protocol at Magic City after leaving the NBA’s COVID-19 bubble in 2020 for his grandfather’s funeral. The club subsequently named their iconic lemon pepper chicken wings after him.
As The Athletic’s David Aldridge detailed, Magic City is also one of the cultural epicenters for the Atlanta music scene, which helped the club gain global prominence as that scene took hold of mainstream hip hop over the past few decades.
Kornet is a devout Catholic and has served as a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. Though he did not mention his faith in his open letter to the Hawks, it has been at the core of his prior stories on his blog. He wrote one story on how his faith helped him cope with losing his shooting ability, and the blog was founded on his passion for church architecture and community.
In his letter, Kornet emphasized his belief that the NBA should remain family-friendly.
“I and others throughout the league were surprised by and object to the Hawks’ decision,” Kornet wrote. “We desire to provide an environment where fans of all ages can safely come and enjoy the game of basketball and where we can celebrate the history and culture of communities in good conscience. The celebration of a strip club is not conduct aligned with that vision.”
The Spurs center’s protest comes at a time when the NBA is grappling with morality concerns on multiple fronts. The league’s ardent support of the exploding gambling market has led to multiple scandals, from arrests of active players to a hostile climate from fans. Tanking has reached an inflection point that has commissioner Adam Silver threatening drastic reforms. The Kawhi Leonard-Clippers cap circumvention investigation remains unresolved publicly.
“This is not a shameful thing,” said Jami Gertz, a co-owner of the team along with her husband, Hawks governor Tony Ressler, in a recent interview with The Athletic. “This is a family-run business and a family-run atmosphere, if I can say that.”
Kornet sees it differently, and he was clear about trying to rally supporters in the league to speak up before the promotion occurs two weeks from Monday. His blog went dormant for years as he searched for a deeper purpose to his writing beyond reviewing church architecture. It appears Kornet has found one.
