As Spurs veteran Luke Cornett’s plight with the Hawks adds to the NBA’s list of concerns

The 2025-26 NBA season has been marred by controversy, from one hot topic to another, including the most recent one, in which San Antonio Spurs a veteran Luke Cornet he condemned Atlanta HawksUpcoming “Magic City Night” promotion. Cornett doubled down on his criticism of the Hawks’ planswhich followed an open letter asking the NBA to intervene in Atlanta’s planned promotion for its upcoming March 16 home game against the Orlando Magic.

Cornett says the Hawks are paying tribute to the strip club calling it an “iconic cultural institution of the city” is inconsistent with the values ​​of all NBA players, and the association should not have endorsed it.

“The NBA should want to protect and value women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world,” Cornett he wrote in his personal blog. “We should promote an atmosphere that protects and respects the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers and partners we know and love.”

“To allow this night to pass without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, especially complicity 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 that they should never be exposed to.”

For the NBA, a league already mired in moral concerns over its ardent support for sports gambling, Cornett’s points are valid, given the negative connotations associated with adult entertainment. While the association’s attempt to embrace the culture of the region, which the Magic City has considered one of the cornerstones of Atlanta’s hip-hop music scene for the past two decades, the Hawks may have gone too far with their latest promotion.

With the league technically having bigger issues to deal with, Cornett’s latest campaign adds to what has been a busy season for the NBA. After Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for life in April 2024 for violating the league’s gambling rules, Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat was arrested for an illegal gambling scheme.

Former Portland Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was also named in the federal investigation, which involved sports betting and high-stakes rigged poker games. Former Detroit Pistons forward Malik Beasley has been at the center of a separate investigation into alleged inappropriate gambling on games during the 2023-24 season.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver is usually open to thinking outside the box, which has prompted the league’s front offices to do the same in order to rebuild their rosters and compete for championships. Teams deliberately drafting their best players to increase their chances of getting a high pick in the upcoming draft has emerged as one of the most controversial topics in sports.

The NBA has considered taking deep action in response to teams intentionally sitting players to increase their chances of losing. The changes include expanding the lottery to include all teams in playoff tournaments, setting lottery odds based on team performance over two years, and freezing draft lottery odds at the deadline to discourage intentional losses near the end of the regular season.

Luke Cornett writes an open letter ahead of the Spurs match

Veteran Spurs center Luke Cornett knows talking about the Hawks’ promotion is rare for an NBA player. Still, Cornett feels passionately about the topic and hasn’t backed down from his original blog post.

Learning about Jastreb’s “Magic City Night” promotion a week ago forced Cornet to to speak uphe said, according to ABC 6’s Jason Dumas.

“I feel like it didn’t really represent what I and a lot of other NBA (players) thought. So, I just want to make sure that some of the discussion is expressed. It comes with people like criticism and things like that — it’s part of the process that people might be hesitant to do, but I think I’m really just trying to start a conversation and have it during the Spurs taping,” Cornett said.

“It’s something important to make sure that the league, everyone is willing to represent, and the environment that you want to have.”

Luke Cornett made some waves nationally when he called on the Atlanta Hawks to cancel Magic City Night, saying it was disrespectful to women.

I asked him about it after the Philadelphia shooting. He says he hasn’t spoken to the league since his statement. pic.tvitter.com/eTvFuZGAGK

— Jason Dumas (@JDumasReports) March 3, 2026

Cornet made it to the league, but no changes were made regarding the upcoming event. When a reporter asked if he had spoken to anyone in the Hawks organization, he said no.

Still, it’s just another bad look for the NBA amid a season full of bad publicity, from allegations that the Clippers skirted the salary cap to investigations into sports gambling to problems stemming from the teams’ intentional hitting; feels like one problem after another during the 2025-26 campaign.