Sterling and Silver

So the Donald Sterling thing goes on. First, the smartest comment on the whole affair that I've seen, from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar:

What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.

We should be angered by that. But apparently, most people aren't. At least not yet.

Adam Silver, the new NBA commissioner, got his chance to be on the stage today and he came down on Jabba the Clipper real good:

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has banned Donald Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers or the NBA, it was announced today at a press conference in Manhattan.

Commissioner Silver has also fined Mr. Sterling $2.5 million, the maximum amount allowed under the NBA Constitution. The fine money will be donated to organizations dedicated to anti-discrimination and tolerance efforts that will be jointly selected by the NBA and the Players Association.

As part of the lifetime ban, Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, be present at any Clippers office or facility, or participate in any business or player personnel decisions involving the team. He will also be barred from attending NBA Board of Governors meetings and participating in any other league activity.

Commissioner Silver also announced that he will urge the Board of Governors to exercise its authority to force a sale of the team.

The discipline issued today is based on the Commissioner's conclusion that Mr. Sterling violated league rules through his expressions of offensive and hurtful views, the impact of which has been widely felt throughout the league.

A few thoughts:

• There's not a chance in hell that Sterling will pay the fine, so that's grandstanding.
• Sterling is well known for being litigious, so this is going to play out for a while now. The NBA would like to make this go away quietly, but you can't make things go away quietly while simultaneously being ostentatious in your pronouncements. They might win the news cycle, but a billionaire can afford a lot of lawyers and can throw a lot of sand in the gears. And what else does an octogenarian without his plaything have to do, anyway?
• I suspect eventually the provenance of these tapes and the motivations behind releasing them to the public will become part of the story, especially if Sterling's lawyers decide it should be part of the story, which they will. Riddle me this: if you wanted to have something that's valuable, say an NBA franchise, but that franchise were not for sale, how would you go about acquiring it? One good way would be to destroy the owner. And if it turns out that someone who was a friend of the girlfriend, who's also been known for his desire to own an NBA team, turns out to have had any involvement in the release of the tapes, the NBA is going to have an even bigger mess on its hands. I'm looking at you, Earvin "Magic" Johnson.
• The most amusing part of the story is how Sterling could simultaneously be the worst racist in the world (today's edition) and a scheduled recipient of an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award simultaneously. Another advantage of being a billionaire -- not only can you afford a lot of lawyers, but you can also buy yourself a lot of honorifics. I hope that the NAACP enjoyed their experience with Mr. Sterling more than "V. Stiviano" apparently did. But don't worry -- of course they'll respect you in the morning.

Meanwhile, Abdul-Jabbar makes another excellent observation:

And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee. 

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.

There's another reason this story has so many people "peeing with glee." It keeps other stories out of the newspaper. But we'll get to that anon.