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+--- Thread: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban (/showthread.php?tid=166747)
N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - $tevie - 04-29-2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/sports/basketball/nba-donald-sterling-los-angeles-clippers.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=SP_NBA_20140429&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=1
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - rjmacs - 04-29-2014
A good business decision and the right thing to do.
I wonder if we'll hear outcries about his "free speech" being impinged over this, as we did with Brandon Eich.
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - Paul F. - 04-29-2014
Cue the lawsuits....
(You know they're comin'...)
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - vision63 - 04-29-2014
He still gets to endure the punishment of selling what he's paid $12.5 million for a cool Billion dollars. The wife might want to keep the team if she can engineer the divorce properly. She's already suing the mistress and has begun to condemn Sterling.
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - C(-)ris - 04-29-2014
rjmacs wrote:
A good business decision and the right thing to do.
I wonder if we'll hear outcries about his "free speech" being impinged over this, as we did with Brandon Eich.
He was free to say whatever he wanted, and he did. The NBA is also free to do as they want. However, I'm not so sure the NBA was justified in their actions. This was a private conversation and was he was not commenting as an owner or to anyone related to the NBA. I don't know what the legalities on recording conversations are in that state, but it was between him and a member of his family. Doesn't make him any less of a bigot, but I wonder if the NBA can legally impose those penalties or if he is going to make a fortune in lawsuits against them. I'd find it hard to believe that they can force him to sell the team if he has broken no laws.
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - Blankity Blank - 04-29-2014
Sterling gets a lifetime ban, and can't be associated with the league or any operations of the Clippers, and can't even attend NBA games. There's also a $2.5 million fine, the maximum allowed. A forced sale of the team will require agreement of 3/4 of the owners, but the commisioner said no decision has been made about whether members of Sterling's family can be associated with the team, so I guess Sterling could end up a 'stealth' owner.
Sterling won't really be hurting of course . He's worth $2 billion and bought the Clippers for $12 million, and the team is worth over $500 million now.
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - graylocks - 04-29-2014
rjmacs wrote:
A good business decision and the right thing to do.
I wonder if we'll hear outcries about his "free speech" being impinged over this, as we did with Brandon Eich.
i don't want to get into a free speech argument but i don't understand how NBA ownership works and how the league can ban him. is there a morality clause or something like that? lots of racists own businesses but no one takes their business away from them. what is the structure of the NBA that the organization has that level of control over multi-billionaire owners?
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - $tevie - 04-29-2014
When the Clippers were losing, which they did for 27 of Sterling’s years there, the league tacitly accepted Sterling’s well-documented racism and other flaws. For decades it was perfectly acceptable to let him run his team like “a Southern plantationlike structure,” as the former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor once charged in a lawsuit. Sterling routinely operated below the radar, so what was there to worry about?
...
One of the most distressing parts of the revelations might have been that they did not come as a complete surprise. A string of lawsuits against Sterling over the years — for housing discrimination, for sexual harassment, for failing to pay employees — was not enough to pique the N.B.A.’s interest in disciplining him. A claim in one lawsuit said Sterling did not like Hispanics as tenants because all they did was “smoke and drink and just hang around the building.” A 2009 federal discrimination lawsuit led to a $2.76 million settlement, widely reported to be the largest amount paid in such a suit.
Did the N.B.A. and its team owners somehow miss that news? Or did they just ignore it and hope others would too because, after all, the Clippers were usually so bad that no one really cared what they did?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/sports/basketball/after-33-years-of-sterling-a-boiling-point.html
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - $tevie - 04-29-2014
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling might have more trouble coming his way. His ex-girlfriend, V. Stiviano, recorded more than 100 hours of conversations with him, according to TMZ:
"Our sources say ... Sterling is keenly aware V. Stiviano is in possession of more than 100 hours of recordings ... some of which are extremely damaging to Sterling's reputation.
...
As for why Stiviano taped so many conversations ... as TMZ Sports reported, she told friends the Clippers owner WANTED her to record him and he knew he was being recorded ... partly because he frequently forgot what he said and the tapes refreshed his memory ... at least that's her story."
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/4/28/5660950/donald-sterling-girlfriend-recordings
Re: N.B.A. Commissioner Hands Clippers Owner Lifetime Ban - Blankity Blank - 04-29-2014
C(-)ris wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]
A good business decision and the right thing to do.
I wonder if we'll hear outcries about his "free speech" being impinged over this, as we did with Brandon Eich.
He was free to say whatever he wanted, and he did. The NBA is also free to do as they want. However, I'm not so sure the NBA was justified in their actions. This was a private conversation and was he was not commenting as an owner or to anyone related to the NBA. I don't know what the legalities on recording conversations are in that state, but it was between him and a member of his family. Doesn't make him any less of a bigot, but I wonder if the NBA can legally impose those penalties or if he is going to make a fortune in lawsuits against them. I'd find it hard to believe that they can force him to sell the team if he has broken no laws.
The conversation was in California, I believe, and my understanding is that consent of only one of the parties is required for recording in that state. And given that the league is only responding to what have become public utterances, regardless of Sterling's original intent or how they became public, and with them being genuine statements by Sterling -- which from Silver's statement today, it seems Sterling has copped to -- I'd guess they're okay there too. Particularly since part of those statements were to the effect that he did not want a specfic segment of the NBA audience attending league games in his venue. A statement and sentiment which would of course be directly damaging to the league in any number of ways; not the least of which is a lot of high profile, big ticket advertisers already pulling out of their dealings with the Clippers.
As far as sale of the team goes, they seem to be operating based on formal agreements already in place as part of being an owner of an NBA franchise, so my guess is they're on solid ground there.