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The Donald Sterling thread
I guess the closest precedent is the Marge Schott removal from the Reds.
I'm happy at what LeBron said (that "Donald Sterling has no place in this league," and quite frankly that's the only acceptable option. It makes me vomit to see "Should Sterling Be Suspended" headlines, when it should be "How Many Pies Should Be Thrown In Sterling's Face As He's Marched Out Of The League ?"
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The Donald Sterling thread
The thing is, none of this is new. If you knew anything about Sterling, you knew that he was a racist property owner who wanted to evict blacks and Latinos and only rent to whites and Asians. That he was a gross man who used up young women and settled sexual harassment cases out of court. Who took a girlfriend into the Clippers locker room while the team was changing and told her to look at "those beautiful black bodies."
The NBA knew all of that and had no problem with him owning a team before.
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The Donald Sterling thread
I mean, we're talking about a guy whose players were forced to chip in and help pay for a team coach's prostate cancer surgery because Sterling refused to pay for any of the treatment (he recovered from his cancer, and was fired after the end of the season by Sterling).
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The Donald Sterling thread
He also holds the record for paying the highest amount ever required to settle a racial discrimination housing suit.
Stern ignored his antics for a long time, and now Adam Silver is going to have to clean up his old boss' mess.
Of corse, this is the league that also includes a Russian oligarch.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Those outside of Los Angeles probably wouldn't know this, but he's infamous for taking out self-promoting ads in the LA Times, bragging about his charity work. And the ads are TERRIBLE, poorly designed and sometimes with incorrect grammar. I have to wonder if he designs them himself:
More here:
http://franklinavenue.blogspot.com/search/label/Donald%20Sterling
This saga of a fake homeless shelter that he used to promote himself helps to show just how twisted he is:
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-03-20/news/donald-t-sterling-8217-s-skid-row-mirage/
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The Donald Sterling thread
Even aside from being a bigot, he has been routinely ranked in the top three - usually number one - among the worst owners in North American pro sports (when the whole world is considered, Vincent Tan and some others give him a run). The Clippers have the worst record in the NBA over the time he's owned the team and yet he's made money off of them (which is another whole topic). And if they don't win it all this year or soon, none of their good players will stick around and it will all start over.
Even Forbes thinks he should be removed. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/04/26/donald-sterling-proves-once-again-why-he-is-the-worst-owner-in-sports/
Not only should be forced to sell them but, if I were the NBA, I would heavily encourage the new owners to change the name and colors of the team. Totally wipe out the sorry history and legacy of this guy. Besides their uniforms are boring and Clippers is a dumb name for a team in LA (so is Lakers, but oh well). If they want to move to Anaheim, that wouldn't be so bad either. I guess LA can support two NBA teams, but two teams in the same building is dumb.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Give them to Seattle and change their name to the Sonics.
This is only from a few years ago:
For the first time in its 38-year history, including the past 25 years in Los Angeles, the Clippers have a home. A place where their players can go practice, work-out, watch game tape, get treatment, stow their belongings in a locker and take a shower.
If these are simple luxuries that you figured were afforded to most players on a professional sports team, you would be correct except for the fact that we're talking about the Clippers here, the only NBA team that shares an arena with another NBA team. The Clippers weren't even scheduled to be tenants of the Staples Center until after plans for the arena had already been drawn up. This may explain why the Lakers' locker room and players' lounge covers 4,900 square feet while the Clippers' is only 3,600 square feet -- after a redesign wedged them in next to the arena football team's locker room.
While most NBA teams have long trained in their own state-of-the-art facilities, the Clippers, prior to the opening of their brand new training center this week, practiced at the Spectrum Club, a health club open to the public in the South Bay. In previous seasons they practiced at Los Angeles Southwest College.
When Corey Maggette was asked at Warriors' media day this week what the biggest difference between the Clippers and the Warriors was, he quickly mentioned the gym difference. "At the Clippers we played at a fitness center until 1:00 pm, then we had to sign up and play (with other people)," he told the Press Democrat. "I was dominating all those years, had some 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds. This is going to be a big transition year for Baron Davis. Yes, yes, I think he's in for a rude awakening. I wish him the best."
Unless Davis decides to sign-up for a membership at the Spectrum, which doesn't seem necessary now that he's dropped 20 pounds thanks to Jenny Craig, it probably won't be as big of a rude awakening. But as Davis walked around the facility, showing off his new home, he knew how fortunate he was after talking to some of his older teammates, such as Cuttino Mobley.
"They told me that they used to practice at a health club, some local sports club," he said. "You could be working out and somebody right next to you would be talking your ear off about the game or asking for tickets. There was really no privacy and it's hard to build team camaraderie when you can only work out on the bike for 20 minutes and your teammates are split up amongst [health club members]. Nothing against the health clubs out here, but it's nice to have a home."
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The Donald Sterling thread
That's remarkable.
In a just system, there would be a way for the players union and/or the owners to kick a bad owner out, but the owners have no incentive and many disincentives to agreeing to such a system.
It occurred to me that there seems to be a strong, although not complete, correlation between owners that are complete assholes and those that are chronic losers.
I suspect the apparent correlation is because the really big asshole owners are not content to just own a team. They want to either run it, even though they're incompetent at that - Dan Snyder, Jerry Jones, George Steinbrenner* - or they just want to squeeze as much money as they can out of it and don't care that sports teams in North America, by virtue of their exclusive territories, ought to be treated like a public trust and owning one is a privilege that comes with responsibilities to that community. Donald Sterling is the number one example of that, but there are others.
Anyone with such a big ego as to do either or both of those is a huge asshole by definition.
The owners that do well are content to let the experts run their team. Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you the name of the current owner of the San Francisco Giants or the St. Louis Cardinals. I frequently forget that Bob Castellini owns the Reds, the team I follow, and I couldn't tell you what he looks like.
The Maras (NY Football Giants) and the Rooneys (Steelers) are often considered the best owners. They understand the responsibility. They care about the city, the whole sport, and their legacy. But they inherited their teams and their forefathers started them as relatively small businesses. People like that just wouldn't get into major sports now.
(Art Rooney started the Steelers with the equivalent of $44,000 in 2013 dollars and then was able to invest in them by winning big at the Saratoga race track.)
Of course, it could be argued that anyone rich enough to own a major pro sports franchise has had to step on a lot of people on the way up and is therefore an asshole, but even that has different degrees. Steve Bisciotti of the Ravens started with very little, went to Salisbury State and made a fortune with his cousin with a firm that staffs aerospace companies. I have no idea how somebody gets rich off of that let alone causes much harm. John Henry (Red Sox, Liverpool) got rich because he was smart in commodity trading. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, that might be considered rent-seeking or some such, but it's not like being a slum lord. And they're actually good at what they do and created market efficiencies, if not actual value. So that's something.
There are some relatively nice people who are bad as owners. Mike Brown of the Bengals for example. The problem there is that, unlike other NFL owners, the Bengals are really the Brown's only business so he has tended to run them on the cheap and he's just not very good at it. He's also too sentimental about players and gives criminals too many second and third chances. He did help them extort a bad stadium deal out of Hamilton County, but I'm pretty sure they couldn't survive financially (and still be competitive) in old Riverfront and he didn't have the money to build a new stadium.
Abe Pollin (Wizards and Capitals) was a bit like that. He was good for the DC area, paid for his own arena and so forth, but he didn't have a great touch when it came to hiring management for those teams and he tended to hold onto people too long just because he liked them. He also famously fired Michael Jordan, which looked bad at the time, but history shows that was probably the right move.
* Jerry Jones and George Steinbrenner had success, but it was really in spite of them rather than because of them. They've meddled too much with their teams and when they did, it almost was always for the worse. The Yankees best moves were when Steinbrenner was suspended and the Cowboys just got lucky in the draft and in the Herschel Walker trade.
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The Donald Sterling thread
I don't know enough to say exactly where he fits in. I know he's a dick. I know he treats people like shit. I know that he only runs the team because his dad gave it to him. But does he meddle in the team's operations or does he just make dumb hires for the people that do?
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The Donald Sterling thread
Give them to Seattle and change their name to the Sonics.
Seattle would have to build a new arena to make it attractive for a new owner, but the city is not going to pay for that. At least, that's how I understand it. Maybe not.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Dolan actively meddles in the teams' operations, as well as making dumb hires.
He was telling Phil Jackson what staff members were "untouchable" within ten days of giving him a massive contract and "absolute control over basketball operations".
Going back to Sterling for a moment, the original San Diego Clippers identity
both made sense for San Diego and featured a unique colour scheme.
The LA version, on the other hand, is essentially generic clip art in the least creative colour scheme possible for a US-based team.
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The Donald Sterling thread
There's a conversation online between actors Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins, who first met in the parking lot before a Clippers game. They decided they watched the Clippers because each had home town affiliations (Warriors and Hawks respectively) and couldn't possibly support the Lakers. Maybe there's a fair few LA incomers who feel the same way.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Yes, people like that are what keeps them afloat, along with fans who go to the Clippers because the tickets are generally cheaper, I'm told. Their celebrity fans aren't so famous as the Lakers'.
The LA version, on the other hand, is essentially generic clip art in the least creative colour scheme possible for a US-based team.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Amor de Cosmos wrote: There's a conversation online between actors Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins, who first met in the parking lot before a Clippers game. They decided they watched the Clippers because each had home town affiliations (Warriors and Hawks respectively) and couldn't possibly support the Lakers. Maybe there's a fair few LA incomers who feel the same way.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Reed John wrote: Even aside from being a bigot, he has been routinely ranked in the top three - usually number one - among the worst owners in North American pro sports (when the whole world is considered, Vincent Tan and some others give him a run).
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The Donald Sterling thread
FWIW, Simmons tweeted that he heard that Silver will go nuclear on Sterling. And Woj backs that up:
Without the Clippers, Sterling simply was a multimillionaire slumlord. With them, Sterling had status in the celebrity culture of Hollywood. As the Clippers transformed into winners, something changed in Sterling's life: To the public, he no longer defined the franchise. Here came Blake Griffin. Chris Paul. Doc Rivers. They had big contracts, bigger profiles, and slowly, surely, Donald T. Sterling faded out of focus.
"They're the stars of the Clippers show now, not Sterling anymore," one deposed Clippers official told Yahoo Sports. "They moved him aside and he didn't matter anymore.
"But now, this [scandal] has made him relevant again. In his mind, he's the star of the Clippers again. Everybody's talking about him again. In his own way, he'll revel in this. I would bet there's no way [Sterling] will give in and sell his team. There's no way that he's going to do anything but stay and fight everyone until the very end to hold onto this."
This is why there's so much pressure on NBA commissioner Adam Silver to deliver a devastating blow at his 2 p.m. ET news conference. Sterling's inclination will be to keep the team, keep the NBA mired in courts and the Clippers franchise will never survive it. Rivers will never return as president and coach under Sterling, sources told Yahoo Sports, and that'll start the beginning of a player mutiny that could result with several top Clippers also demanding out of the franchise.
Several league officials – including owners and Board of Governors members – told Yahoo Sports they believe Silver has been studying the nuclear option on Sterling: a provision in the NBA's bylaws that would allow Silver to summon a vote of league owners to strip Sterling of his ownership. The NBA would run the Clippers until the team could be sold.
Minimally, Silver could implement these penalties on Sterling: a one-year suspension, a $1 million fine and an assignment to counseling. For all the years former commissioner David Stern let Sterling slide, there's a strong belief Stern simply feared Sterling in the courts. Sterling is an attorney – he loves litigation – and Stern feared Sterling would become Al Davis to his Pete Rozelle.
Despite his denial of ownership interest in the Clippers, Magic Johnson and potential investors spent part of Monday working to understand the avenues to which they could eventually make a deal to become Clippers owners, sources told Yahoo Sports. If the franchise becomes available, Johnson wants to be positioned to make a deal.
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The Donald Sterling thread
Early reports were wrong.
Sterling banned for life from Clippers and NBA Board of Governors, fined USD 2.5 million.
Silver urges the Board of Governors to force Sterling to sell the franchise (he needs a super majority vote from them for that to happen).
Sterling loves to sue people. The litigation is going to be interesting.
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