Warriors co-owner used ‘hoodish’ in email, blames autocorrect
Warriors co-owner Peter Guber claimed he meant to type “Yiddish” rather than “hoodish” in a reply to an email highlighting the amount of international players on the roster.
USA TODAY Sports
Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Guber apologized to team employees for using the term "hoodish" in a reply to an email highlighting the amount of international players on the roster, according to Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports. Guber said he meant to type the word "Yiddish" and claimed his phone's autocorrect may have led to the error.
Guber's email came after a league-wide email was sent out announcing that a record 101 international players are on opening-night rosters. The Warriors have five such players, including Andrew Bogut, Leandro Barbosa, Festus Ezeli, Ognjen Kuzmic and Nemanja Nedovic.
Warriors director of media relations Raymond Ridder forwarded the NBA’s press release throughout the organization, commenting on how the team has “come a long way” in terms of having a diverse international roster. That led to this reply from Guber:
“I’m taking rosetta stone to learn Hungarian Serbian Australian swahili and hoodish This year. But it’s nice.”
While apparently joking, Guber mentions in his email that he’s planning to learn Swahili. Ezeli, who was mentioned by name in Ridder’s email, was born in Nigeria, where English is the official state language and Swahili is not widely spoken.
At least one Warriors team employee took offense to the email, and once it was pointed out to Guber, he followed up with an apology and reasoning for his mistake:
“Someone just brought to my attention that an email I responded to earlier contains the word ‘hoodish,’ which I don’t even think Is a Word, and certainly not the one I intended to use,” Guber wrote in the email. “I intended to type Yiddish. Either my mobile fone [sic] autocorrected or it was typed wrong. In any event I regret if anyone was unintendedly [sic] offended.”
This incident comes after a summer ripe with controversy involving racism in the NBA. Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson announced in September that he was selling his stake in the team due to racial statements made in an email in 2012. Hawks general manager Danny Ferry is on an indefinite leave of absence after reading racially charged statements about Luol Deng from a scouting report during free agency.
Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned from the NBA and forced to sell the team when recordings of him making numerous racist comments were released to the public by a former girlfriend. Sterling sold the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.
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