Donald Sterling is a Douche...

Donald Sterling speaks

August, 18, 2010 Aug 18

12:04AM ET

By Kevin Arnovitz

Archive From T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times:

A couple of months ago this was going to be the summer of all summers for the Clippers, a fresh start, a chance to hire a new coach, $17 million in cap space to go after LeBron or other big names like him and make a huge splash.

And so they signed Randy Foye and Ryan Gomes.

Or, as Sterling put it, "If I really called the shots we wouldn't have signed Gomes and what's the other guy's name?

"You know, they told me if we built a new practice facility we'd attract all the top players in the game," Sterling adds. "I guess I should have doubled the size of this place."

He's no different than most Clippers fans.

"I swear to you, I never heard of these guys," Sterling says, "but what if the coach says he wants them?"

Try to imagine you're at a business gathering, maybe a trade show. Your boss holds court in one corner of the room. He's surrounded by people who are insiders in your industry -- some of whom know you personally, while others are only vaguely familiar with your work.

The next morning you find out through a third party who doesn't even work for your company that your boss told those insiders he has no idea why the company hired you (only he called you "Whatshisname.").

Or maybe your boss told the circle you have lousy taste in personnel and couldn't attract the real comers in the field, even though that was your job. Your boss complained about how his investments in capital improvement would attract better talent, only you couldn't close.

The irony of Sterling's griping about his organization's inability to lure top talent is almost too obvious to acknowledge. You might agree with Sterling that the signings of Gomes and Foye represents a failure for the franchise this summer. You might hold Clippers general manager Neil Olshey accountable for that, or head coach Vinny Del Negro for his input in those choices. I think Olshey exercised discipline and deployed a sound long-term strategy given the circumstances -- Sterling being one of the primary circumstances. Intelligent people can disagree about how the Clippers fared this summer in the marketplace. But whichever side of the argument you fall on, there isn't a reasonable excuse in the world for what Sterling did to Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro.

The Clippers' curse isn't a supernatural phenomenon. It has a name, a face and an unfortunate history of personal failure.

Over the past few years, I've gotten to know a lot of people who work for the Clippers. They exist across the organization in sales, marketing, communications, digital media and basketball operations. These are professional people who are proud of their work -- and they should be because every day they do a solid job for a brand that few people think very much of. Yet they do the work, some of them with a sincere hope that one day they'll be able to say that they had something to do with the moment the Clippers became an entity that mattered in Los Angeles and in the NBA.

Although I haven't met Foye, last week I visited with Gomes for the first time one-on-one. I found a thoughtful professional. A very measured executive for one of the league's most well-respected franchises told me that Gomes is one of the best people involved in professional basketball. Olshey is eager to do his job well. He's always courteous, has pretty decent taste in basketball players and is a more creative dealmaker than he's been allowed to be. Del Negro has been with the team for only five weeks, but has brought the kind of charisma and exuberance that vaulted him to the top of Sterling's list of coaching candidates.

Whether Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro are basketball geniuses or likable doesn't really matter. As employees of the Los Angeles Clippers, they all warrant Sterling's basic respect, which ultimately requires so little of such a blessed, wealthy man. All Sterling has to do when asked about his employees in polite company is offer an endorsement -- or, at the very least, not publicly humiliate them. That's his only ambassadorial duty as team owner on a day when the Clippers introduce the media to some minor stylistic tweaks on their uniforms.

Imagine it's your world again. We return just as you've found out your boss was trashing you to people outside your company. Now ask yourself:

Is this a place you want to work?

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/19239/donald-sterling-speaks

 

Clippers Continue Tradition of Treating Employees Poorly0

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8/18/2010 7:41 PM ET

By Sam Amick

Senior NBA Writer

Scott Wissel knew his end with the Clippers was near.

The longtime advance scout had come in under coach Mike Dunleavy back in 2005, operating under a series of one-year verbal agreements that always began and ended in October. He was fine with the annual renewal routine, especially considering the team had never employed full-time advance scouts before he and Jerry Holloway were hired to survey the league.

But when the 2009-10 campaign ended and Dunleavy was nowhere to be found, Wissel knew he wouldn't be far behind. What he didn't know, however, was that the Clippers had no plans to pay him what he believes he is owed.

While the latest legal battle between notoriously thrifty Clippers owner Donald Sterling and a former head coach has been well publicized, his penny pinching of two NBA worker bees has not. Mike Dunleavy -- whose February exodus as coach was deemed a resignation and was followed by his firing as general manager in March -- filed for arbitration in June to collect the $6.75 million he is owed.

He is now being sued by the team for fraudulently signing the five-year contract to begin with, his case going to the courts with the Clippers just like former coach Bill Fitch's did in 1998, when he was fired with two years and $1.8 million remaining on his deal (the case was settled after two years, according to the Los Angeles Times). Meanwhile, Holloway and Wissel were left fighting for much smaller paychecks that stopped coming in mid-May.

Holloway has already had his day in court , so to speak. In a brief interview with FanHouse, he said he recently received his entire earnings after filing a lawsuit in his home city of Philadelphia that never went to court. Now it's Wissel's turn.

He'll likely talk with his lawyer, continue coordinating with the NBA coaches' association, and -- as he sees it -- hopefully be handed a check for the final five months of pay by the time it's all over. And as is so often the case for anyone who works for or watches the Clippers' operation, he'll be rolling his eyes all along the way.


"What can you say? I've never seen an organization like this one," said Wissel, who has been in the NBA 17 years and worked for Memphis, Sacramento, Detroit, and Milwaukee before the Clippers. "I don't know why they do this. I just don't know why. There's no ethical basis for them to do what they're doing in this situation."

Clippers team president Andy Roeser didn't return a call for comment, instead relaying the message to the team's communications department. Clippers director of communications Rob Raichlen later issued an organizational statement via e-mail.

"We do not comment on internal personnel matters, but it would be totally inaccurate to say that there are any claims or disputes concerning either of those former employees," the statement read. "Both were at-will employees. Neither were or are owed any additional compensation. Any suggestion to the contrary is unfounded and irresponsible."

Officially, of course, Holloway's situation has been resolved and Wissel has yet to decide on his plan of action. Unofficially, both men claim that they are just in disputing the way they've been treated.

Life as an advance scout is far from glamorous, the job considered by most to be the toughest of any in the league. The travel is nearly nonstop during the season, a fast-moving routine between planes, hotels and arenas all over the country. They file timely and detailed reports on their team's upcoming opponents that are eventually shared with their players, working into the early morning hours long after that night's game has ended.

While Wissel nor Holloway wanted to discuss the exact figure they believe they are and were owed, league sources said an internal NBA survey done three years ago indicated the approximate league-wide average salary for scouts at between $65,000 and $75,000 annually with the range between approximately $30,000 to $150,000. Depending on the organization for which a scout worked, those with longer tenures and who handled the league-wide reports alone have traditionally been the highest paid.

In Holloway and Wissel's case, they not only split the duties but worked for an organization that -- Dunleavy's five-year, $22 million contract aside -- is renowned for being among the league's worst paying teams. Wissel said that was part of the reason he preferred the one-year verbal arrangement. Agreeing to any sort of multi-year deal on paper, he said, would have lessened the already low-end pay even more while also tying him to an organization that is notorious for not allowing its employees to pursue better opportunities when they come along.

Despite the fact that an advance scout's work is almost entirely done from October through the end of the season, Wissel's stance -- which has been formally supported by the NBA coaches' association and deemed "contractual misbehavior" -- is that he did a year's worth of work and deserves to be compensated as such. He said it was Roeser's preference, and not his, to stretch payments over 12 months in order to, as he claims Roeser always said, "help (the Clippers') cash flow."

Wissel is shaking his head at how the Clippers are treating Dunleavy as well, and he's not alone. According to both Wissel and a source close to the situation, the notion that Dunleavy didn't want to fulfill the length of his contract simply doesn't add up to anyone who knows him or the sequence of events leading up to his departure. The source said it was clear entering last season that Sterling was attempting to deprive Dunleavy of control over his coaching staff with the hopes he might resign and take the owner off the hook for the contract.

Specifically, the source said Sterling made it clear to Dunleavy heading into last summer that it was unlikely his coaching staff of Jim Eyen, Rory White, Neal Meyer and Kim Hughes would be brought back. A head coach typically has significant control over who is on his staff, but Dunleavy clearly couldn't retain the assistants he held in such high regard and they all pursued other opportunities when it was clear they would not return.

Eyen left the Clippers to join the Sacramento Kings, while White went on to become the Dakota Wizards' head coach in the NBA D-League and Meyer was hired as a video coordinator in Cleveland. Eyen had been with the Clippers for six seasons after previously coaching under Dunleavy with the Lakers, Bucks and Portland, while White and Meyer had been there for six seasons. Hughes was the only assistant who remained, only to eventually serve as interim head coach for the final two months of last season.

Dunleavy did not return a call for comment.

"I think they did everything they could (to make Dunleavy quit), but he wasn't going to dishonor his contract," Wissel said. "He's too much of a competitor.

"It is what it is. I loved working there, loved the location. How could you beat LA? It's one of the top five cities in the league. The weather and the climate, a great facility to play in, and now they have the practice facility done, but it's just a shame the way they treat employees who work so hard for them."

E-mail Sam at amick.sam@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at
@samickFanHouse.

Read More: Clippers FanHouse Exclusive Jerry+Holloway, Mike+Dunleavy, Scott+Wissel

http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/08/18/clippers-continue-tradition-of-treating-employees-poorly/

 

http://deadspin.com/5403403/no-one-likes-donald-sterling-part-783-update

Video link to some of the atrocities committed by Sterling...