Behind the scenes details of Atlanta Hawks scandal emerge

The Atlanta Hawks are more than 12 months removed from the racially charged scandal that engulfed the team and led to the eventual departure of Danny Ferry and the sale of the franchise. The truth is though, the events that brought this scandal public started many months before with an ownership group that was ultimately doomed to fail from the beginning.

ESPN.com's Kevin Arnovitz and Brian Windhorst published this morning an all encompassing look at the scandal from the beginning to end. A lot of the information was already public, but it does an excellent job of filling in the gaps.

One of the more interesting twists in this long story is how Ferry's attempted dismissal of the Hawks' training staff of Wally Blase and Pete Radulovic actually set a lot of the events in motion. Rather ironically, one of Mike Budenholzer's first acts as President of Basketball Operations for the team was to replace both Blase and Radulovic.

The story is a tangled mess with warring factions pitting Michael Gearon Jr against Danny Ferry with Bruce Levenson attempting to play the mediator between both sides.

There is much more and many of the details are ugly. While this clearly shouldn't be the focus at this time of the season, we knew all along that this story would eventually come out. The takeaway from all of this is that the Atlanta Hawks as a franchise has survived and come out the other side of the this debacle. The majority of the principle players from in and around the scandal have been removed and the bar was set pretty low for Tony Ressler's new ownership group going forward. Fans can only hope that the dark days for this franchise are behind them.