NBA was aware of Danny Ferry audio recording, per report

To this point, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has maintained that while the comments made by Atlanta Hawks GM Danny Ferry were damaging, he doesn't believe that he should lose his job. That may not be changing soon. USA TODAY's Sam Amick reports that an NBA Investigator had already seen the transcript of the conference call and had listened to the audio recording.

But a person with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports that an NBA investigator previously had seen the report and also heard the recording. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the investigation. And Silver has acknowledged the existence of the scouting report and referenced its role in the matter as part of his reasoning for not believing that Ferry should be fired.

The audio tape was released on Thursday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and from listening to it, its tough to discern that Ferry is reading anything aloud. He appears to be speaking freely. Still the league maintains the existence of a scouting report, or a collection of reports that Ferry was speaking from.

Many are expecting the NBA to get back involved in this situation but if Amick's report is correct then they already had this information before Silver backed Ferry publicly on Wednesday. If that is the case, then what does the NBA know that we do not? Had Silver heard the audio before speaking on Ferry's behalf?

As our own Jason Walker wrote on Thursday, if Ferry was indeed reading from a scouting report then who wrote it? Where did it come from and why protect the author? Is that the next piece of evidence to be released in this saga? Day by day more details get released but the situation just gets messier and promises to not be over anytime soon.