OT - Donald Sterling Banned from NBA for Life

That may be the case, and I'm sure Sterling would then claim that he could have gotten $1.5B if the NBA hadn't made it publicly known he could no longer associate with the franchise and (as a result) had a weakened position for negotiation.

I'm not saying he could sue for the punishment; that is clearly within the purview of the commissioner.  But when you basically, publicly force a guy to sell, Sterling could definitely bring suit claiming that the sale price was hurt by the fact that he basically had to sell and had a weaker negotiating position.  It may not matter in this case because the LA market is flush with cash, but I wouldn't put it past him claiming he deserves additional compensation.

Not sure who else may have, but I doubt he was the only player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_banned_from_Major_League_Ba…

The usual reasons were gambling and more recently PEDs, of course. In earlier times players were banned for asserting what would now be considered their labor rights, objecting to the reserve clause for example, or holding out.

Marge Schott is by far the closest parallel (although to be fair to her, I lived a good chunk of my life in Cincinnati and I don't ever remember any allegations that her views impacted the way she ran her car dealership--she had nothing like the history of discrimination lawsuits Sterling carries). Like a lot of these people she was eventually reinstated.

The non-gambling highlights:

• Oscar Walker was banned in 1877 for "contract jumping" by signing a contract to play for another team while still under contract to the team he left. (This was 98 years prior to the advent of free agency in sports; Walker was reinstated in 1879.)
• Horace Fogel, Philadelphia Phillies owner, was banned in 1912 for publicly asserting that the umpires favored the New York Giants and were making unfair calls against his team.
• Joe Harris of the Cleveland Indians was banned for life in 1920 after he chose to play for an independent team rather than the Indians. (Harris was reinstated by Landis in 1922 due, in part, to his service during World War I.)
• Benny Kauff of the New York Giants was banned in 1920 for selling stolen cars. (Commissioner Landis considered him "no longer a fit companion for other ball players," despite Kauff being acquitted of the charges against him in court.)
• Heinie Groh of the Cincinnati Reds was banned for two days in 1921 while he held out for a higher salary, and Landis gave Groh an ultimatum: play for the Reds in 1921, or face lifetime banishment. (Groh chose the former option and played out the 1921 season; he retired in 1927.)
• Ray Fisher of the Cincinnati Reds was banned in 1921 after he refused to play for the Reds; he had asked for his outright release when the Reds cut his salary by $1,000 (equal to $13,222 today), but the Reds refused to release him. (Fisher was hired by the University of Michigan to coach baseball later that year, and was reinstated by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in 1980; he died in 1982.)
• Phil Douglas of the New York Giants was banned in 1922 after notifying an acquaintance on the St. Louis Cardinals that he planned to jump the Giants for the pennant stretch run to spite McGraw, with whom Douglas had had a severe falling out during the regular season.
• Ferguson Jenkins of the Texas Rangers was banned in 1980 after a customs search in Toronto, Ontario, found 3 grams (0.11 oz) of cocaine, 2.2 grams (0.078 oz) of hashish, and 1.75 grams (0.062 oz) of marijuana on his person. (Jenkins missed the rest of the 1980 season, but was reinstated by an independent arbiter, and retired following the 1983 season. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991.)
• George Steinbrenner, New York Yankees owner, was banned in 1990 for paying a private investigator $40,000 (equal to $72,206 today) to "dig up dirt" on Yankees player Dave Winfield in order to discredit him; much of the information Steinbrenner received was from a small-time gambler and rackets-runner named Howard Spira, who had once worked for Winfield's charitable foundation. (In Steinbrenner's absence, Robert Nederlander, a limited partner, took control of the Yankees, and Joe Molloy, Steinbrenner's son-in-law, took control after Nederlander resigned.^[5] Molloy relinquished the team back to Steinbrenner when Bud Selig reinstated him in 1993; Steinbrenner retired as owner in 2006, passing control to his sons permanently, and died in 2010.)
• Marge Schott, Cincinnati Reds owner, was banned in 1996 for bringing Major League Baseball into disrepute by repeatedly making slurs against African-Americans, Jews, Asians and homosexuals, and showing a sympathetic attitude to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. (Schott had previously been fined $250,000 and banned from day-to-day operations of the Reds for the 1993 season for similar offending; she was the first, and to date only, woman to be banned, and also the only person to have been banned solely for the content of his or her speech on a matter of public concern; she was reinstated in 1998, resigned as owner in 1999 and died in 2004.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_players_banned_or_suspended_by_the…

Ten players have been banned for substance abuse; six of those were later reinstated.

I'm pretty sure Stanley Wilson is the only NFL player to get a lifetime ban for anything not gambling-related. And Billy Coutu was banned from the NHL for assaulting an official.

I'm not doing that at all.  Please see my first post in this thread in which I applauded the NBA for banning him for life.  My point here is that the LA Chapter of the NAACP had reasons to think well of him other than the fact that they gave him money. 

The LA Chapter of the NAACP was aware of the Baylor suit, though probably not what would come out in discovery, and the housing suit when they awarded him.  It was a poor choice, to be sure, but not one that was necessarily based entirely on Sterling giving the chapter money.

An important distinction here is that he was only awarded by the LA Chapter of the NAACP.  The national NAACP doesn't dictate what the LA Chapter does, and in fact the LA Chapter is currently refusing the national office's request that it rescind the 2009 award.