NBA set to wrestle with a pig named Sterling
By Joe CalveyJoeCalvey.com
@JoeCalvey
DONALD STERLING is still an unmitigated racist and current owner of the NBA franchise Los Angeles Clippers as predicted is going to fight the NBA effort to ban him for life, fine him $2.5 million and take away his franchise in court and he is likely to win. Not because he isn't a despicable bigot but because he has $1.9 to spend to defeat the best NBA can muster.
Name one NBA owner who will step up and fund the entire effort to oust Sterling? You can’t because no one other than a delusional 80 year old with no downside would risk their fortune in that manner. If Sterling doesn’t fight the NBA the franchise is gone. If he fights and loses it is still gone but he will have extracted far more flesh from the NBA’s image and coffers than they will of his. If you accept the premise that the franchise is gone then Sterling will redefine what he considers to be winning.
Picture each NBA franchise having to make quarterly Cash Calls far into the millions of dollars to fight Sterling. Regardless of how just the battle is not many franchises are going to want to divert the funds when a negotiated face saving settlement is possible. Not all NBA franchises are profitable. Smaller market teams count on the revenue stream from television and that will dry up faster than the tears Sterling pretended to cry during his Anderson Cooper interview. The marketplace may extract more from Sterling than the NBA can some might surmise.
Facts are fungible in a courtroom. Did Sterling get Due Process or is he getting the results of an inexperienced commissioner caving into pressure from the media, players and ex-players? Sterling will want to get a deposition from every single person who has ever worked in any NBA front office. First Sterling’s attorneys will seek and easily get a temporary restraining order to prevent the NBA from disposing of his asset, the Clippers. Next they will try and get the temporary appointment of Dick Parson reversed so Sterling can resume control of the franchise but they will lose that battle but the judge will likely put Parson’s under control of the court which will cause Sterling’s team to claim a victory.
Expect the judge, now a celebrity in their own right, to rule that any coach or player who doesn't honor his contract to be violation of the temporary order. The judge will have no choice but to bar them from coaching or playing basketball anywhere at any level the attorney’s will argue. Any player or coach who refuses to honor their contract out of principle will likely face Sterling’s legal onslaught as lone individual defendants when he sues them each for breach of contract, lost revenue and depreciation of the value of the Clippers.
What player accustomed to earning millions of dollars and now reduced to a zero dollar income stream will want to start funding a lawyer’s early retirement account? Wouldn’t it be better some will opine to step on the court, say the American legal system must be allowed to carry on and then play ball?
Turning your warm up shirt inside out is one thing, sitting out on tens of millions of dollars in earnings is quite another. Lebron James is quoted one day as saying he will lead a boycott if Sterling isn’t gone by next season. Apparently someone quickly explained to him what tortuous interference with a contract is because the NBA Player Association spokesperson Roger Mason, Jr. quickly retracted the statement claiming Lebron never made it in the first place.
The hour long prime time interview Sterling gave Anderson Cooper should have made the new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver throw up. Silver, a lawyer himself, cut his teeth sending out letters to advertisers when they were infringing on the NBA and it’s properties by doing unauthorized ticket giveaways and the like. Sterling gleefully began slaughtering one NBA icon’s image as an AIDS infected womanizer and having sex in every city.
Magic Johnson and Silver realize now there will be no sacred cows in this fight. When the players and ex-players get served with their deposition papers expect a phalanx of lawyer to ask "Yes. Mr. ______ , isn’t it true that one time in a hotel room in San Francisco you and three women engaged in what can only be described as deviant sex?" When Charles Barkley testifies you can expect the universe to tune in.
How many years do you think it will take to ask the thousand or more participants relevant questions like "Have you ever used the N Word? Have you ever heard it used? By who? More than once"?
How many arenas have played music during the game by artists that carried misogynistic, racially insensitive or otherwise offensive music? Many if not most teams like the Spurs have entertainment arms that book concerts and the like. Will any of them face scrutiny because they booked an artist who used racial epitaphs?
How long do you think you can expect a jury to sit and listen to the evidence after the years it will take to compile it? You can expect it to be one of the longest and the costliest civil trials in history. At this point the NBA can only hope that Sterling dies soon and his family is willing to settle. The NBA had the chance to extract tens of millions of dollars above and beyond the franchise rules for charity, ban him from court side seats, the locker room and the front office. Now they may be stuck with his stink for years to come. Not even a judge’s gag order will keep the fans and players from gagging.
But in a cosmic twist of fate what a sweet and moral punishment it would be if the Clippers went to the NBA Finals and won while Sterling was forced to watch at home. Naw, this ain’t no fairy tale and there will be no happy ending.