[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by Melonhead

How often you think the players actually have contact with that piece of shyt?

That's actually an interesting question, because apparently Clippers Team President Andy Roeser doesn't know the sound of his employer's voice well enough to be able to authenticate the tape recording: "We do not know if it is legitimate [the tape] or it has been altered."

Roeser does, however, recognize the voice of the owner's companion/girlfriend/mistress/hooker well enough to be able to identify her as the defendant in a civil lawsuit brought by Sterling's wife seeking return of cash, jewelry, cars, real estate and other gifts that Sterling dispensed to her during the course of a 4-year extra-marital affair/relationship. #UnemployableAnywhereInTheNBAFormerTeamPresident

Nor is Sterling's wife of 60+ years familiar enough with the sound of her estranged husband's voice to be able to tell for sure if it's him on the tape, according to ESPN's Lisa Salters. #chutzpah

At least one person, one Mr. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was previously in Stering's employ as recently as 2000, was willing to go on record as saying that he recognized Sterling's voice:

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was a Clippers special assistant coach in 2000, told CNN: "I know him. I know his voice. I am not surprised by this very much."

Funny how that works isn't it?

But if you go back to the very first post in this thread from nearly four years ago, you have accounts of Baron Davis being heckled from courtside by Sterling for being out of shape, and for playing poorly. So there's that. And maybe we should all be blaming Baron Davis right now for not going over mid-game and snapping the old man's neck like a twig. #PlayOn!

And then, if you read a couple of posts back, there's the information that came out in NBA legend Elgin Baylor's wrongful termination suit regarding player complaints [by former Maverick Sam Cassell, former Maverick Elton Brand, and Corey Magette] of Sterling bringing women/ girlfriends/ companions/ mistresses/ hookers into the lockerroom after NBA games while players were showering and encouraging the women to ogle the naked athletes as if they were livestock with comments like "Look at those beautiful black bodies." So there's that too.

And if you read some of the decades-long stack of allegations of racist statements and attitudes attributed to Sterling by former players and employees, you'll find where he allegedly said of/(to?) Danny Manning during contract negotiations "That's a lot of money for a poor black kid." So apparently Sterling injects himself into contract negotations, at lest to some degree.

And while Mrs. Sterling may not have been able to authenticate her husband's voice on-tape, she did have this to say: "The team (which is, or at least was worth an estimated $600 million) is the most important thing to my family." If true, does that sound like a family who is detached from the day-to-day goings-on of the franchise?

Maybe Sterling isn't as hands-on an owner as Cuban, but I'd say judging from a quick scan of available evidence that Sterling crossed paths with the players on more than an intermittent basis.

Originally Posted by Melonhead

A racist said something racist. Its not really a shock to me.

So you'd just ignore it? Keep your head down, and keep on working for someone, making a lot of money for a man who obviously didn't respect you or regard you as an equal person? Here's the thing: Sterling isn't just 'a racist' like any guy off the street. He's the longest tenured owner in the NBA, which is one of the highest-profile sports leagues in the world. He's the owner of an NBA franchise with a decades-long history of oncourt failure largely attributed to his unwillingness to pay (mostly African-American) athletes enough to remain with the team.

If Sterling feels like that about the players his team employs, can you imagine what he must feel like about the fanbase with a large number of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans who come to his games?

Oh wait! You don't have to imagine! Sterling's past comments on people like that are part of the public record in the form of court proceedings. Because in addition to being an NBA owner, Sterling is one of the wealthiest men in Southern California (net worth nearly $1.5 Billion), with a real estate empire and an extensively documented record as a slum lord, with numerous tenant complaints over unfair housing practices that resulted in a near $3 million fine by the U.S. Justice Department.

When Sterling first bought the Ardmore, he remarked on its odor to Davenport. "That's because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they're not clean," he said, according to Davenport's testimony. "And it's because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day."He added: "So we have to get them out of here." Shortly after, construction work caused a serious leak at the complex. When Davenport surveyed the damage, she found an elderly woman, Kandynce Jones, wading through several inches of water in Apartment 121. Jones was paralyzed on the right side and legally blind. She took medication for high blood pressure and to thin a clot in her leg. Still, she was remarkably cheerful, showing Davenport pictures of her children, even as some of her belongings floated around her.
___
Davenport reported what she saw to Sterling, and according to her testimony, he asked: "Is she one of those black people that stink?" When Davenport told Sterling that Jones wanted to be reimbursed for the water damage and compensated for her ruined property, he replied: "I am not going to do that. Just evict the bitch."

While Sterling's attitudes toward Asian-Americans are, in a perverse way, not quite as toxic:

Sterling's preference for Asians extended to the people he wanted in his buildings. "I like Korean employees and I like Korean tenants," he told Dean Segal, chief engineer at a Sterling property called the Mark Wilshire Tower Apartments, according to testimony Segal gave in the Housing Rights Center case. And Davenport testified that Sterling told her, "I don't have to spend any more money on them, they will take whatever conditions I give them and still pay the rent … so I'm going to keep buying in Koreatown."

...still they can't be characterized as positive.

And while Sterling apparently quite enjoyed the company of women other than his wife, LOTS of women, his attitudes toward them were not, shall we say, 21st-century enlightened:

But it's the people who work for Sterling and live in his buildings who say they bear the worst of his unconventional behavior. For years he has run semianonymous ads (crude design jobs he reportedly mocks up himself) seeking "hostesses" for Clippers events and his private parties. In a Times ad last summer, Sterling's company solicited "attractive females" to bring a résumé and photo to his address, where employees reviewed their looks. Some of the women who have gone through this process found it humiliating. "Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life," says a hostess from the 1990s who says she helped set up "cattle calls" to find other women to work the job. "He asked me for seminude photos and made it clear he wanted more. He is smart and clever but manipulative. When I didn't give him what he wanted, he looked at me with distaste. His smile was so empty."

In 1996, a former employee named Christine Jaksy sued Sterling for sexual harassment. The two sides reached a confidential settlement, and Jaksy, now an artist in Chicago, says, "The matter has been resolved." But The Magazine has obtained records of that case, and according to testimony Jaksy gave under oath, Sterling touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable and asked her to visit friends of his for sex. Sterling also repeatedly ordered her to find massage therapists to service him sexually, telling her, "I want someone who will, you know, let me put it in or who [will] suck on it."

...

Sterling's testimony in another case, this one involving former associate Alexandra Castro, underscores his aggressiveness with women. When Castro, whom Sterling met in Las Vegas at Al Davis' birthday party over Fourth of July weekend in 1999, visited his Beverly Hills office, Sterling later stated under oath that she brought a lab report proving she was HIV-negative, freeing him to continue having unprotected sex with his wife. "The woman wanted sex everywhere," Sterling said. "In the alley, in her car, in the elevator, in the upstairs seventh floor, in the bathroom." And he paid her for it. "Everytime she provided sex she got $500," he testified in 2003. "At the end of every week or at the end of two weeks, we would figure [it] out, and I would, perhaps, pay her then."

"When you pay a woman for sex, you are not together with her," he further testified. "You're paying her for a few moments to use her body for sex. Is it clear? Is it clear?"

So, Melonhead, you say, "But I'm not African-American. I'm not Mexican-American, I'm not Asian-American, and I'm most definitely NOT a woman! What does any of this have to do with me? Anyway, they're playing a sport!"

And let me hasten to say, Melonhead, that I understand your confusion. I have seen and heard attitudes like yours expressed often by people who are not African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, or women--i.e. white males who've never been on the business end of the discrimination stick, and who, thus, have not developed any sense of empathy for people mistreated by incorrigible, unrepentant, elitis, classist, bigoted, chauvinistic, sexual predators like Donald Sterling. (Now, I'm not necessarily assuming that you're a white male, but I will observe that your perspective sounds very similar.) So maybe your sense of empathy for people in that situation isn't finely honed, but surely you have a mother? A sister? A wife? A daughter? Maybe a non-white-male friend? Would you really want any of them to have to work for a man like Donald Sterling?

Originally Posted by Melonhead

Im not saying they should alreayd be over it, but how long does one have to dwell on an ignorant person saying something ignorant?

Even as a white male (correct me if that's wrong), would you yourself want to work for a man like Donald Sterling? Would you just politely bow your head when he became abusive and demeaning, and wait for that twice-a-month paycheck? When you pose the question "....how long does one have to dwell on an ignorant person saying something ignorant...", I think you're posing the wrong question. Instead the question is "How long do you ignore the behavior of a bigot like Donald Sterling? How long do you have to put up with it?"

And the answer is: "Not one second longer than you have to."

And guess what? The players (and coaches) on the Clippers and the players across the league have figured out they don't have to put up with it any more. Those recordings are game-changers. Current Clippers players no longer have to put up with what past players, and past employees, and past tenants of buildings owned by Donald Sterling have had to put up with for decades.

Those recordings (and the others that are sure to come) will force the league to address a problem (Donald Sterling) that it had allowed to fester for far too long. In retrospect, Donald Sterling may be the indelible blemish on David Stern's NBA legacy, the ugly sh!tstain that Stern managed to keep hidden while he was NBA Commissioner, but who became impossible to ignore once Stern retired. (To be fair, Sterling loves playing hardball. David Stern attempted to fine Sterling $25 million in 1984 for relocating the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles without league approval. Sterling in turn sued the league for $100 million, and Stern ended up penalizing Sterling a mere cost-of-business $6 million by withholding his share of new expansion franchise fees. Maybe King David's fingers were singed enough by that interaction that he was reluctant to lock horns with Sterling thereafter.)

So to the question: "...how long does one have to dwell on an ignorant person saying something ignorant ..."? When that person is Donald Sterling, the answer for NBA players right now is "You dwell on it until Sterling is out of the league, or at least disassociated from Clipper ownership."

And after that? Is Sterling the only NBA owner with questionable social attitudes and business practices? Sadly, probably not. Is he the most extreme case? Gosh, you have to hope so. <...cough...Dolan...cough>

But if other similar examples to Sterling's years-long dossier of misbehavor come to light, the NBA Players Association should be prepared to point to Sterling as an example of the cost of doing nothing, and insist that the league be prepared to act.

As for the rest of us? When we hear with our own ears a billionaire, social- and power-elite like Sterling expressing an unequivocally bigoted mentality, and we see that mentality clearly manifested in his business practices over the years, we shouldn't bury our head in the sand and pretend that we're somehow 'post-racial'.

And when we see recent Supreme Court decisions that allow a majority of voters to abolish Affirmative Action programs; or that allow state legislatures to draw voting districts in such a way as to minimize minority political representation; or that allow state legislatures to pass Jim Crow-esque voter requirements that result in the suppression of racial minorities' voting rights, we should ask ourselves exactly whose interests the Supreme Court is protecting. If you're a billionaire, social- and power-elite without a conscience like Sterling, you can feel comfortable enough. But if you're a non-white-male, non-billionaire, non-social-and-power elite, chances are that Roberts, Scalia, & Alito ain't workin' for you.