No. From what I'm reading and hearing, he gets voted out meaning the Clippers will be squashed as a franchise unless he decides to sell. He would be a moron not to sell considering he bought the franchise for $15 million and it's worth North of $1 billion.
Silver said in his press conference that he believed he had the support of the owners to force Sterling to sell the team. Maybe the outcome will be different, but what you are saying is not what Silver said.
Yes it is. Because either Sterling sells the team and gets something or they dissolve the team and he gets nothing. He being a good business man wouldn't not sell. the NBA cannot kick an owner out and give his old team to a new owner, but the NBA can dissolve a team out from under an owner and start a new Franchise in its place.
Okay, I was misreading what you wrote, I thought you were saying that selling the team wasn't an option.
Not that I give a flying fuck about basketball or the NBA, but I assume Charles Barkley is getting banned for life as well?
If he refuses to sell, the franchise is squashed and he loses everything. If he sells, he profits over $500 million.
Several things bugged me up until today. First being, how it is that David Stern is getting a pass on this? He knew for decades what kinda dogshit was fronting the Clippers but as long as they didn't affect "the brand", Stern turned a blind eye and allowed it to continue. Stern owns as much of this as the other 30 owners that knew but said nothing. Secondly, why is it that the only deniers of the tape is the stooge GM that insists the tape was altered when Sterling himself all but admitted that its his voice. Those that know or heard Sterling talk also know it's him on the tape. I've heard a lot about how Sterling likes to tie people up in court for decades and he might try it here but for a lifetime ban to have been issued, you have to think the other owners gave their permission for Silver to drop the hammer. Sterling might try to sue but he'll be up against his fellow owners that probably have heard and witnessed a lot more than we know. Now the most intriguing thing to come out of this is the possibility of voiding all present contracts the players and coaches have with the Clippers making them defacto FA's. That would undermine the value of the Clippers to the point that whatever front organization Sterling creates to handle this will be forced to sell.
Cman, can I ask you a personal question as a black man? Tell me to fuck off if you don't want to be on the spot, that's totally cool with me, but something really bugs me about this. This guy, odious prick that he may be, has owned the Clippers for 33 years. We're told the league is 75 % black. The average salary in the NBA is over $5 million dollars. Meaning, over the years, this clown has paid black men hundreds of millions of dollars to work for him. And that's just players. Is a racist jerk that treats you well really deserving of such contempt? I'm asking because I don't know what its like to be the target of racism. But I'm imagining $5 million per would make things sting a little less.
Exactly, which is why I pointed out that he can't both sell and be forced out by the owners, it's either/or.
The most disgusting part is that Stern was present for at least one of Sterling's reprehensible comments (about Danny Manning).
This is only happening because it is a highly publicized black eye for the league, I doubt Silver would have done anything either if the recordings of Sterling hadn't been leaked by his 60 year junior whore girlfriend. It's all about money for the league as a whole, none of it is about race. I'm not complaining, though, by all accounts the guy is a piece of trash and I'm glad he is getting the shaft.
Good question Dierking. I can only surmise that the money made everything else they had to put up with worthwhile. I'm not so sure that being paid well translates into being treated well. James Dolan comes to mind along with Steinbrenner and other notables. Being the object of covert racism is harder to deal with. It's often said that Southern Racists were (and still are) preferable to Northern Racists because with Southern Racists, there is no equivocating, nothing nuanced about how they feel and where they stand. Going back to Elgin Baylor's lawsuit and all the other shit Sterling has gotten away with, when you take the sum of all his evils you kinda get to the contempt thing really fast. At some point though, it becomes too much. I would imagine if Silver hadn't banned him for life, he would have voided all the contracts and you would have seen an exodus out of LA that would have made Moses proud. Sterling became so toxic that even his money has become toxic. Those NAACP dupes that took his money now look like money grubbing opportunists as they too had to know what a POS Sterling is. These days of hypersensitivity would demand that any black or latino employee of Sterling to walk out and not look back. I doubt if any player would have returned their game checks as they probably think of it as comp for putting up with the bullshit. In the end Dierking, sometimes there just isn't enough money to make everything and anything you do acceptable. Every run has its end and Sterling has just run out of road.
