A Magic City Night to Remember
A week and a half ago, the Atlanta Hawks announced that they would hold Magic City Night on Monday, March 16, in a home game against the Orlando Magic. For the unfamiliar, Magic City is a strip club in Atlanta. It’s the strip club to end all strip clubs, the unquestioned leader in its field, and, in the words of the press release, an “iconic cultural institution.”
The truth is, Magic City doesn’t need the Hawks as much as the Hawks need Magic City. While the basketball franchise has become synonymous with mediocrity in recent years, the strip club has been name-checked and visited by hip-hop royalty throughout the four decades it’s been open. It even has its own entry in NBA lore, dating back to a Lou Williams incident during the bubble in 2020. Lou Will had an excused absence to travel to Atlanta for a funeral, and he took the opportunity to stop by Magic City during his trip. He wore an NBA-branded face mask inside the club because of course he did. (In his defense, the lemon pepper BBQ wings are named after him. By all accounts, they are delicious.)
When something like Magic City Night gets an official stamp of approval, the obnoxiousness rises. We get very huffy and puffy. We start to “think of the children.” It is all very dramatic. And a few days after the announcement of Magic City Night, San Antonio Spurs big man Luke Kornet joined the ranks of the pearl clutchers with a blog post titled “Concerning the Atlanta Hawks,” in which he asked, “respectfully,” for the team to cancel the promotion. As someone who dabbles in the blogosphere, I’m not in love with the title, and for SEO purposes, he probably should have included “Magic City” in the headline. But hey, I’m not his editor. I assume that job falls to Kelly Olynyk. Either him or Harrison Barnes, both of whom should know better.
Kornet is a sentient stork who has enjoyed a modicum of fame within NBA media circles this season for two primary reasons. The first is his emergence as one of the best backup bigs in the league and a worthy frontcourt partner for Victor Wembanyama in the Spurs’ aptly named “French Vanilla” lineups. The second is that in January, he relaunched an old blog on Medium, where he writes about everything from life as an NBA role player to churches he visits on the road. The posts are novel and enjoyable to read. In an age of innumerable player podcasts, Kornet is the only active NBA player trying to write in this way, and his pen is decent. He has a relatively distinct voice, and he tends to keep things playful. He’s not Faulkner, certainly, but he’s not ChatGPT, either.
But then he got to finger wagging. In a move that could be considered a PR misstep or a savvy traffic play, depending on your vantage point, the Stork waxed judgmental about the Hawks’ decision to celebrate a strip club. “Please join me in petitioning the Atlanta Hawks to cancel this promotion,” he wrote, “so as to ensure that the NBA remains a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment for everyone involved.”
It was Kornet’s most ridiculous contest since he broke out the eclipse. It’s not like the Hawks planned to put poles at midcourt and turn the in-arena entertainment over to Magic City’s dancers. The promotion included selling the restaurant’s famous lemon pepper wings, limited-edition Magic City–Hawks hoodies, and a halftime performance by rapper T.I., something that’s still slated to happen. Yet, a day after Kornet’s post, former Hawk great Al Horford hopped on the anti–Magic City Night train, too. Move over, Woodward and Bernstein, there’s a new truth-wielding duo strutting through the halls of power. On Monday, one week after the blog went up, Kornet and Horford got their way. The NBA went puritanical and canceled the promotion, with Adam Silver himself passing down the ruling from on high.
And thus concludes Luke Kornet vs. Magic City, undoubtedly the silliest beef in recent NBA history. From a tiny blog on Medium to a statement from the commissioner. From one brave writer going out on a limb to the league asserting its dominion over in-arena entertainment. All of a sudden, we’re living in an absurd world in which Kornet will probably get booed in Atlanta for the rest of his career. In which a Magic-Hawks tilt on a random Monday night has become one of the most discussed NBA games of the season. In which ticket prices for said game have apparently dropped from $180 to $50 in the 24 hours after Silver’s decision.
It would be giving Kornet too much credit to say that he forced the league to act, and I say that as someone who believes wholeheartedly in the power of a great blog. The game is scheduled to air on Peacock, one of the league’s main broadcasting partners, and broadcasting partners are not exactly known for their progressivism. It’s also probably true that the Hawks were not purely trying to celebrate one of Atlanta’s iconic cultural establishments, what with team co-owner Jami Gertz being an EP on Magic City: An American Fantasy, a STARZ docuseries that premiered in August of last year.
But none of that makes this any less silly, or any of the principal characters seem less ridiculous. Kornet will have to endure eye rolls from me and James Harden for the foreseeable future. The Hawks managed to drum up a ton of free publicity, but they’ll have work to do to earn back the trust of the local business community in Atlanta. And for Silver, it’s not a great look that he acted more swiftly to shut down Magic City Night than he’s been to address either of the league’s ongoing gambling scandals, the massive conflict of interest arising from a two-time MVP’s partnership with a prediction market, the NBA’s often disappointing handling of domestic abuse cases, or credible reports that the richest team owner circumvented the salary cap to sign a star player. Maybe get to work on those, Adam. They’re far more important.
And to the fine employees of Magic City, the hardworking staff at State Farm Arena, and the namesake of LouWill’s Lemon Pepper BBQ wings himself, we’re sorry. You deserved better. Please try again next year.
Tyler Parker
Tyler Parker is a staff writer at The Ringer and the author of ‘A Little Blood and Dancing.’First Appeared on
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