OT: Did the NBA just open up a can of worms?
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/04/29/boot-sterling-nba-team-owners-ma…
I posted yesterday that trying to remove Donald Sterling could back fire on the NBA as Sterling won't go quietly into the night. He's always had a chip on his shoulder and if he believes he has been unfairly targeted, as I can bet he has here right or wrong, that he could possibly use a scorched earth strategy to counter the NBA's punishment. It has already been reported that Sterling told a Fox reporter that he will not sell his team
Don't think for a minute that he's the only creepy character in the NBA. The owners have to vote to have him removed. Some of those owners might want to think twice about their votes as I am betting there are stories about them that they do not want out in the public.
And certain players should also be careful. We already know that many of them aren't the most honorable, ethical or racially tolerant as we would think.
The NBA is a very seedy place.
As they say, be careful for what you wish for.
The flip side to all of this is that the NBA guarantees that Donald will get a more than fair price for his team to leave quietly. And then Magic Johnson and his billionaire white investors will have their team.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:26 AM ^
Amar’e Stoudemire fined $50,000 by NBA for using gay slur in Twitter exchange with NY Knicks fan
Kobe Bryant fined $100,000 for gay slur
And those were for a single use of a potentially offensive term, caught on camera or twitter.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:47 AM ^
Right, which is actually worse than a private (possibly illegal) recording. So what the NBA is saying is that its okay with homophobia and will allow hateful anti-gay bigots to play in its league. There's no way around this: Adam Silver has made any punishment for bigotry that is less than a lifetime ban seem like he's okay with that type of hate.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:40 AM ^
It seems that is the only just response to bigots for the NBA.
Please explain the difference to me.
1. Economics are in play here, not morals. What percentage of the NBA players (read: employers to potentiall strike/boycott) are black vs. homosexual? What percentage of the target audience (read: $) for the NBA is black vs. homosexual?
2. We're talking players vs. owner. An owner has significantly more influence than a player where the league is concerned. If player X is a bigot, other players can say "I don't want to play with that guy" and the team can choose to not renew/extend his contract, trade him, etc. Team suffers for 4 years tops because of locker-room drama, etc. In the case of an owner, players can choose not to sign with that team for as long as he/she is the owner. Team suffers for however long that person is the owner, typically much longer than your avg. NBA player contract. This ties back into economics since the NBA probably isn't making any money selling Clippers jerseys anymore.
tl;dr when something doesn't seem "fair" in life, follow the money and you'll eventually find out why it's not fair.
Donald Sterling has shouted horribly offensive at times racist things to the players on the court from his front row seat according to several players. Team executives and others have heard him openly say the N word when referencing the players, and nobody did anything about it for nearly 4 decades.
This isn't about singular comments made in the heat of battle like Kobe Bryant. This is about a decades long pattern of behavior that has taken place both within and outside of the NBA, that has continuously embarrassed the NBA. Behavior that has alienated sponsors, fans, employees, and his fellow owners.
Donald Sterling wasn't booted simply for these comments, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
There is also a huge difference between a someone making a comment and someone having a belief system.
There is also a difference between an owner saying something, and an employee saying something. A manager at Walmart making a racist comment and the CEO of Walmart making racist comments will have astronomically different impacts.
Also, the owners run the league. If the Lakers think Kobe Bryant is a horrible bigot then they can release him, seeing as he's so awful, and I'm sure none of the other 29 teams will sign him, right?
The owners have that power. If they want a player gone, he's gone.
When it comes to an owner, there is almost no recourse at all. It takes a herculean effort and the endorsement of 75% of the other owners just to get the ball rolling.
They are vastly different situations because their spheres of influence are vastly different.
Imagine if some yahoo congressman or state representative said "Fuck Russia!" and what the impact would be. It might get a little media coverage for a day or two but no one would really care that much.
Now, imagine if the President of the United States said, "Fuck Russia!" There would be an epic shitstorm that could possibly spark an international incident, and it would be covered non-stop by the media for weeks and weeks and weeks.
"We begin bombing in five minutes."
April 30th, 2014 at 10:27 AM ^
entirely true. Kobe Bryant got fined $100k for getting caught on camera calling a ref a homophobic slur. NBA then launched a big ad campaign discouraging use of the word.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:31 AM ^
but no suspension? Nada? Zilch?
Double-standard to be sure.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:38 AM ^
The offenses aren't remotely parallel: Sterling didn't just let out a random "nigger" or "boy" in the heat of argument.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:49 AM ^
Yes, Kobe Bryant's offense is worse: He's comfortable with calling people "faggots" in the public eye.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:55 AM ^
You don't see how they are remotely parallel? Two people involved in the NBA make inflammatory bigoted comments. One makes them in a public forum and is fined. One makes them in a private forum and is fined AND banned for life. How do you not see this to be a double standard? Is bigotry against homosexuals less important than bigotry about race?
Please help me to understand - maybe I am missing something.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:09 AM ^
I can't speak for Silver but for me the main difference is in that link you posted upthread. A fine and an apology can't make that history go away.
There's also a distinction between players and owners that I think is significant. Players aren't employers and their prejudices don't have quite the same consequences. (The social consequences of the example can be enormous in the case of a player, of course, but the apology deals with those pretty well as long as it never happens again.)
And, yes, I regret that the league let this fester so long and I wish they'd blown him up over the lawsuits.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:23 AM ^
Except as an employer there isn't a lot of evidence that Sterling's racism had any effect on employment. He had a black GM for 22 years (Odd that after 22 years Elgin Baylor complained of racism), despite the fact that the Clippers only made the playoffs twice during that stretch. He hired numerous black coaches. I haven't read anything that says he discriminated against people when it comes to employment and he clearly didn't have a problem putting black people in positions of power within his organization. Black people didin't seem to have a problem being a part of the Clippers organization before this came out.
He's being banned for the league because the NBA doesn't want to be associated with the beliefs expressed in the private recordings. So, by not punishing anyone involved in the NBA with a lifetime ban for other bigoted opinions, the NBA would be saying they don't mind being associated with beliefs of, say homophobia.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:30 AM ^
In fact, Sterling has been previously lauded for his progressive stance on hiring minorities into power positions in the NBA.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:50 AM ^
April 30th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^
I agree to an extent. While the situation is not the same, I would not say they aren't remotely paralle. To me, the difference is Kobe or Amare used the term as a hateful adjective, they weren't exactly discriminating against "gays". Was it wrong, of course, but not to the extent of irrationally hating on an entire group.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:17 AM ^
April 30th, 2014 at 11:33 AM ^
the blinding glare of the media's lights.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:19 AM ^
who said, 'i deplore what you said, but i will fight to the death for your right to say it'? sterling is a world class [expletive], and as i have posted before, he deserves all the scorn he's getting, but the PC police need to let him be his own worst enemy, boycott his team, etc. banning him for life is silly. candidly, my dark-skinned teammates used the N-word and other racial slurs on a regular basis and it would almost cause me to wince, but it wasn't like we suspended them or even took note of it.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:25 AM ^
Revenue sharing owners would completely disagree with you. Fans (and players) boycotting a team hurts the entire league. Banning him for life is the right thing to do, and it has nothing to do with being PC.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:35 AM ^
You don't see any difference between young African-Americans using the N-word and a old weathly white man who owns an NBA team making despicable racist comments? Really?
or yelling it across the line of scrimmage. seems alot more offensive than a private conversation b/w an idiot and his GF.
and FWIW, two of my quiverfull have skin at least as dark as shakey jake's avatar.
yes....but, should we? Can we argue that maybe it's wrong in any form or forum or are their degrees of "wrongness"?
I'd prefer not hearing people say offensive things. I can understand why African-Americans have adopted "the N word" as a sort of a term of endearment used amongst each other, but that doesn't mean I agree with it.
To get back on topic, however, I fail to see how it has much to do with the Sterling fiasco. For that matter, if Joe Schmo said something racist to his girlfriend, he probably wouldn't be punished because Joe Schmo is not a powerful or famous person (and thus, we wouldn't even discover his views or care if we did).
April 30th, 2014 at 11:03 AM ^
You make a quiver full of fine points. I relate especially to the part about teammates and being a white guy playing in a sport with a lot of blacks and wincing at the language.
The guy, in a way, has a right to be a racist dickbag. The comments, regrettable at best, were made in private and recorded without his knowledge. I don't mean to defend the guy's remarks at all, and they are remarks that would not come out of my own mouth, but I do believe there is a big can of worms being opened.
I sit out front of my own house, in my own yard, playing with my two little white sons. Because of the other kids that walk by and use that word, loudly and openly, someday I'm going to have explain to them the word, why they don't use it, and then somehow have to come up with an explanation for why these other boys "can" use it, and why that's "okay". For the time being, we just ignore it.
There's all this talk of banning bad language and terms like the N. And I'm okay if somehow rich white dickbags like Donald Sterling stop using words like that (which a ban won't cause to happen anyway). But there are a whole lot of other people using that very word with a very high frequency that would have to alter their behavior for any of this controversy to have any sort of positive impact in the end. It's frustrating.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:33 AM ^
As much as I hate Sterling's comments, and as disgusting as they were, they were made in private to a personal acquiantance. The tape was released without him knowing and surely there was malice involved in the motive for releasing the tape.
Nobody is perfect and I am sure that there are many, many people associated with the NBA that have bigger skeletons in their closet than Donald Sterling. Yes, he has a history of being a racist dickbag - this is and was well known to everyone. He is the longest serving owner in the league, yet his racist dickbag-ness throughout the years did not cause any issues for Donald Stern, the media, the players and the rest of the owners.
So Yes - I believe that the NBA has opened up a can of worms. The hypocrisy involved in this whole fiasco for this league is ridiculous.
Everyone wants to act like a moral tough-guy when the issue is staring them right in the face, but when it's under the blanket and doesn't need to be dealt with, then nobody wants to do anything. This was merely a PR move for the NBA, nothing more. It was going to hurt the revenue and was merely a business decision.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:40 AM ^
Yes, absolutely.
NBA players who have used gay slurs in the past few years (in public): Kobe Bryant, Roy Hibbert, Amar'e Stoudemire. Jason Collins (who stated he was glad that the racist Donald Sterling was out of the league) said an NBA player insulted him due to his sexuality. Why not tell the league who so that hateful monster can forever be banished from the NBA? For all the bleeding heart fans and media members who are cheering because the horrible racist was exposed (probably due to illegal recordings) due to a private conversation, how can you dare support a league that contains such vile bigots who feel the need to degrade the gay community in public? How can Adam Silver allow such ignorant, horrible people to play in the NBA? Is that what the NBA stands for, rampant homphobia?
Or what about players who stated that Linsanity happened because Jeremy Lin was Asian? Isn't that racist? Should they be banned for life? What about a former player like Shaq who insulted the Asian community on live television? Should he be banned from ever attending an NBA game? What about Jason Whitlock? He cracked a racist joke about Jeremy Lin on twitter. Should he be banned for life from ever attending an NBA game or being at a press conference?
The NBA has close ties with the hip-hop community. Should rappers be banned from attending games for degrading comments about other black people, white people, women, gay people, etc.? Should players be banned for associating with such people, because clearly they are okay with hate and hate has no place in the NBA right? Should Jay-Z be banned from NBA games because he wore a necklace with the symbol of a hateful anti-white group?
And wow, now anyone can be banned FOR LIFE for what they say in private. All the self-righteous people on this blog and in the media...Jesus. Are you kidding me? Are you telling me you'd be bullet-proof with your private conversations? That there isn't a single time in your entire life you said something that might not be 100% PC? And if you're someone looking to make a quick buck, isn't the move now to just record anyone involved in the NBA in private and just sell the audio to TMZ or Deadspin? Boom, has to be a lifetime ban, no way around it.
So yeah, absolutely Adam Silver opened up a can of worms.
If you think this is merely about the comments Donald Sterling made to his girlfriend, you have missed the boat so much you're wandering the desert.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:32 AM ^
Spike, who does work for the NBA is quite the racist himself with public comments/actions such as these:
In Febuary Lee complained about the gentrification of Harlem in racial terms, telling an audience questioner who praised the changes in the neighborhood. “ Let me tell you right now, have you seen Fort Green park in the morning ? It's like the mother######g Westminter dog show. When you see white mothers pushing their babies in strollers, three o'clock in the morning on 125th street, that must tell you something.”
After visiting South Africa in the early 90's Spike stated “ I seriously wanted to pick up a gun and shoot whites. The only way to resolve matters is by bloodshed.”
And he says this of interracial couples: “ I give interracial couples a look, Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.”
After the Trayvon Martin shooting, Spike Lee posted the address of George Zimmerman's parents on Twitter.
April 30th, 2014 at 11:38 AM ^
There seems little doubt Spike Lee is a racist. They won't ban him from the NBA though. They might ban him from tennis, golf or some other white sport though. That was Sterling's real problem in all this.
It has nothing to do with justice. It has everything to do with money.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:35 AM ^
Yes. And it's about time.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:36 AM ^
NBA players do not employ NBA players.
Sterling is an employer whose bigoted views went in opposition of his kabor force. He also has a history of tangible discrimination against minorities.
April 30th, 2014 at 10:39 AM ^
Its not just about that. He's banned from the NBA for life, which has nothing to do with employment and was fined the max for a private conversation. How can the NBA do anything but ban a player for life for an ignorant comment made in public or private after this without being hypocritical?
April 30th, 2014 at 10:58 AM ^
Can't wait for the next incident of boorish bigoted biased beliefs being brought into broad daylight!
April 30th, 2014 at 12:11 PM ^
You're clearly set in your views here, but you need to realize there's a difference between being a player in the league and owning a team. You don't need me to list those differences to you. But the standard for each is different. This happens in nearly every company in the world - men/women in different positions are held to different standards. Simple as that.
April 30th, 2014 at 12:48 PM ^
I understand there is a difference between being a player and being an owner. You don't seem to understand the reason why he was banned.
Donald Sterling is banned from the league because he was a representative of the league and his ideas do not represent the what the NBA believes. Players are also representatives of the league, are they not? Coaches? You can't say "We aren't going to be associated with bigotry and therefore Donald Sterling no longer represents us" and then say "But we're still going to associate with and be represented by known bigots like Kobe Bryant and Roy Hibbert, because they aren't in the same position as Donald Sterling". Furthermore, a guy like Kobe is a far bigger influence on the NBA's popularity and is a bigger name in public than Donald Sterling.
So no, its not as simple as that.
But now the public and media know that they can create said scenario and Silver will have only one option. The backlash the next time anything like this happens is going to be far bigger than the Bryant or Hibbert incidents because its been proven to get results.
Furthermore, the fact that this was a private conversation has created a scenario where anyone can be recording anyone at any time and then sell said recordings to various websites who will trumpet it to the world.
Silver has given the incentive to do both of the above.
But now the public and media know that they can create said scenario and Silver will have only one option. The backlash the next time anything like this happens is going to be far bigger than the Bryant or Hibbert incidents because its been proven to get results.
I fail to see what is bad about that. Oh no! The fans of the NBA realized they have the ability to speak with their dollars and make their entertainment more enjoyable for themselves.
Furthermore, the fact that this was a private conversation has created a scenario where anyone can be recording anyone at any time and then sell said recordings to various websites who will trumpet it to the world.
Well... except for the current evidence is that Sterling WANTED her to record him, and would go back and refer to tapes BECAUSE he was so batty he couldn't remember what he had said in the past.
Never mind that in many states, single party recording was already legal... or that Sterling has admitted he said those things.