[NBA Gossip] Donald Sterling Hates the Blacks, Including Magic

Public knowledge -- yes, but that knowledge should include an understanding that the racist stuff was said between him and his GF. He did not release the recording to the public. Someone said he asked to GF to record the conversation for his reference so he can remember. I don't know if that was true. But certainly TMZ was the site that made it public.
Anyways, this is now in the court of Public, so he is subject to it, no sympathy. If you were to ask me, should the Clippers fold in the playoff because of this? I would say they probably should not.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Great stuff from <a href="https://twitter.com/EdgeofSports">@EdgeofSports</a> on how the owners enabled Sterling and are now &quot;shocked&quot; by what he said. <a href="http://t.co/QsXw1vDroJ">http://t.co/QsXw1vDroJ</a></p>&mdash; Kurt Helin (@basketballtalk) <a href="https://twitter.com/basketballtalk/statuses/460975354773921792">April 29, 2014</a></blockquote>
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If Les Alexander says the guy needs to go than he's probably right.

 

Again, people looking to place blame aren't thinking clearly. First thing is what do you do about this situation and do it.

They can ask David Stern how a known racist used one of the leagues teams as a tax write-off and dodged the spirit of the sport on top of his antics, even reportedly while Stern was standing there in a case and he did nothing at all.

 

As I said, the NBA owners, players, sponsors, etc. all took an attitude toward Donald Sterling similar to Sterling's attitude with his girlfriend and black guys: Out of sight, out of mind. They have all known what Sterling is for a long time, but as long as he's not seen in public doing what he does, they ignore him.

They care now because this thing is made public and it's hitting their pocket-books.

The Clippers are losing sponsors already, the rest of the league risk also losing fans and sponsors if this thing isn't handled correctly. Remember, all these teams and sponsors (Kia, State Farm...) are all big corporations whose profits are affected by their public image. The same goes with the higher profile players, Griffin and Paul first and foremost. Those players are essentially multi-million-dollar businesses who trade on their public image.

 

Agreed... it is more reactive now than pro active, but the main point is, something needs to be done going forward or that franchise will crumble and it may very well affect the NBA as a whole on top of that.

All of the people laying blame have probably worked for someone with similar views or bought products from companies with executives with warped views and it didn't stop them then or now from using those things so its just not the time for that at the moment.

Kevin Johnson has submitted that as a question already so lets see if he gets an answer.

 

Who exactly would be outraged if Sterling was forced to sell the team? Anyone but Sterling? I guess a long drawn out lawsuit is what Silver has to fear.

How come there wasn't this much outrage when Chris Paul was rumored to have said he wanted to play for a black coach? Is it because that was racism against whites where as Sterling was racist to blacks?

 

was there ever any proof chris paul said this?

 

When did that Chris Paul recording come out, again? Please, remind me.

 

it was reported by the New York Daily News and I don't recall a bunch of analysts saying 'well if this is true then strong actions need to be taken by the Commissioner'. I don't recall any basketball commentator saying a word. Why not?

It didn't but you knew that obviously by your douchey post. Here is what you meant to write 'I think this is different since the evidence against Chris Paul was less concrete.'

 

usually people don't take something serious that comes from "multiple sources" especially when ny daily news is the only "credible" news outlet that reported it

 

as opposed to say the credible source of TMZ? I am not saying it isn't true (I am quite confident it is), but the disparity between the way these stories were handled is ridiculous.

 

i'd say that an actual audio recording is more credible than he-said-she-said from "multiple" unnamed sources.

 

Chris Paul is not a major sports franchise owner... good lord are we going to keep doing this to defend this guys comments?

 

I've been thinking about this as well, and tried to approach it from the side of the complexities of actually removing him.

You need 3/4 of the ownership to remove him unless he willingly sells, so you would need to build a consensus. Owners are going to be very reluctant to remove another owner without proof positive of wrongdoing.

If there isn't public outrage about Sterling, then you also can't really prove that he's damaging the brand and integrity of the business. You risk airing the NBA's dirty laundry and getting into a very nasty public fight.

Also, Sterling is highly litigious, so you know there would be substantial financial costs to remove him if the case isn't very solid.

And the case against him as the owners wasn't air tight since even in his settlements against the EEC and Elgin Baylor, he settled out of court and denied that he behaved in a racist manor. Without a "smoking gun" you could actually lose if he challenged the legality of the claim and argued that the cases were just an example of vindictive tenants attempting to extort money from him.

In other words, you had a lot of smoke (in the form of witness testimony), but no real fire (IE a judgement finding of discrimination) since he settled out of court.

Once you have the tape out, not only is there a smoking gun (making previous cases secondary evidence to support the argument of pattern behavior vs primary evidence as proof of behavior), but the "dirty laundry" is already in public.

At that point, it's far more difficult for Sterling to win any sort of legal challenge. With public outrage, it's easier to prove material damage to the brand and financial impact.

Essentially, you almost require a recording and public outrage to make it possible to remove him with a high certainty of success as well as to definitively convince the other owners that they should take such an extreme step.

So while we wonder why it took so long, I can see why they didn't do it before. It's really hard to take down a billionaire owner unless you have a Smoking Gun and enough people who care about it to raise a fuss.

 

Not surprised at all that you would say this. First, there is never going to be the same level of outrage for black-on-white racism as there is for white-on-black racism. If you don't understand the reason why, I recommended reading The People's History of the United States or... well, any U.S. history textbook. Second, "rumored" and an actual tape- yeah, I'd say one provokes a BIT more outrage.

 

a) who cares if chris paul is a player and not an owner? Hes a player so racist comments dont matter?

b) not a single person on this planet has defended what Sterling said.

wtf does that mean dan? u gonna bring politics into another thread? let me guess, my desire for small government makes me hate black people?

well thts quite morally bankrupt. one type of racism is not more offensive than another.

whys that? tapes can be faked quite easily (again, not saying i think sterling is innocent of the allegations. he's not)

 

Can you provide me with a video or audio tape of Chris Paul being racist before we continue this conversation?

 

You must be unfamiliar with tallanvor and his tactics. Get ready for a lot of leading questions in the vein of "I'm not saying it's true, I'm just asking why the lame stream media didn't take Chris Paul to task for espousing purported racism" and circular logic that won't get anywhere four pages from now. Come stop by the D&D sometime, we have a lot of fun.

 

I bet DS will get a year suspension and fine. The NBA doesn't have the balls to force him to sell. They'll hope it goes away in a year.

As for allowing Clippers players to become free agents, that would be dumb...you're only as strong as your weakest team. Destroying a franchise to spite a racist old man isn't in the league's best interest.