WEEKLY WHINE

Strikes

Last week, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned for life from the National Basketball Association.

He was already banned for life from GoobNet, of course. But if you are reading this, Mr Sterling, knock it off. Really, just stop everything that you’re doing.

The basketballing world knew what kind of person Sterling was for a long time. Put aside the housing discrimination lawsuit brought in 2006 that he settled by paying US$2,730,000, the most expensive settlement ever in such a case. Put aside the other housing discrimination case brought in 2003 that he settled for an undisclosed amount. Put aside the sexual harassment suit brought by former employee Sumner Davenport that he settled for an undisclosed amount. Put aside the employment discrimination lawsuit brought by longtime Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor that was ultimately dismissed but still brought some of Sterling’s most damaging comments to light. Put aside the many lawsuits that he has brought, including against the NBA when he illegally moved the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles in 1984, and against his mistresses to reclaim gifts that he gave to them.

Put aside all of that, and Sterling was still one of the worst owners in the history of professional sport, for one simple reason: He wanted to make money.

You may now be asking: “Wait, I don’t understand. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that why anybody owns anything in a capitalist society?”

Yes, that is why people own things in a capitalist society. But sport is not a capitalist society. The objective of a sporting team – any sporting team, professional, amateur, or in between – is to win. Or, failing that, to have a good time and partake in the competitive environment that sport provides.

The Clippers were unable to do either of these for most of Sterling’s ownership. During that time, they amassed an overall regular season record of 930-1,646 and had a winning record in only six of 33 seasons. The club qualified for the playoffs seven times, none in the first ten years of his ownership.

Someone who is paid a large sum to play a game for a living would normally be expected to be one of the happiest people on the planet. But not if you are paid a large sum by Donald Sterling. Many people who played or worked for the Clippers over the past third of a century have described their time with the team as a low point in their careers. Players like Ron Harper, Bobby Simmons, Andre Miller, and Lamar Odom escaped through free agency as soon as their contracts expired. Danny Ferry was drafted by the Clippers in 1989 and refused to play for the team, forcing a trade. Jason Williams signed with the team in 2008 and then retired before the season began.

Sterling’s Clippers may not have won or had fun, but they definitely made money. He purchased the club in 1981 for US$12,700,000, and if the NBA forces him to sell, it is expected to earn him as much as US$1,000,000,000. And Sterling did everything he could to squeeze the maximum quantity of cash from his team.

The Clippers played in the LA Memorial Sports Arena, an aging facility that the Lakers had moved out of twenty years previously. It had little going for it, except possibly the low rent that it charged Sterling. For more than twenty years, the team trained at small facilities like health clubs and local colleges. At one point, one of the training facilities locked the team out because Sterling was in arrears for years of back rent. The club had a low payroll for most of that time; Elgin Baylor said that Sterling did not permit him to negotiate player contracts because Baylor was too apt to offer them market value.

Construction of the Staples Center was a golden opportunity for the Clippers, who reportedly paid US$1,500,000 per year in rent, a low rate for a team that does not own its arena – particularly a large, state of the art arena in downtown Los Angeles. Since then, the club has, according to ESPN, made US$140,000,000 in its first nine years in the new building.

But until recently, very little had changed. After he was fired in 2010, coach Mike Dunleavy had to sue the team to reclaim unpaid wages, just as Bob Weiss had sixteen years previously. Sterling also refused to cover prostate cancer treatment for assistant coach Kim Hughes in 2004. It fell to the players to pay for the surgery.

The team’s payroll has increased in recent years, and Sterling built a new training facility in 2008, but this appears to be another occurrence of one repeated behaviour of his. Any time he is criticised, he will inevitably respond in the same manner: spending money.

In the wake of the housing discrimination lawsuits, he donated to the NAACP and then ran newspaper advertisements congratulating himself. In response to those describing him as a slumlord who runs his apartment buildings as he does his basketball club, he pledged US$50,000,000 to build a homeless center in East LA in 2006. The land remains unused today.

So, in 33 years, Sterling has repeatedly faced the criticism that he is bad at owning a basketball team. His response would seem to be the last several years, in which players like Baron Davis, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan received large contracts. One of the league’s best players, Chris Paul, was acquired in a trade and is currently under contract for about US$20,000,000 per year.

In the end, though, it was Sterling’s treatment of people that was most reprehensible. Rubbing shoulders with the famous and the beautiful has long been one of the perks of wealth, but Sterling went to great lengths to engineer his hobnobbing. Perhaps the most illustrative example of this was his annual party at which guests were instructed to wear white. Every aspect of these events was arranged. The parties were held in September, making reference to the rule about not wearing white after Labor Day. It also gave Sterling the opportunity to stand out by wearing his habitual black outfit. Clippers players were told to attend, so that his guests could meet real live professional basketball players. He hired women to act as hostesses, only selecting them after a humiliating process in which their appearances were reviewed in detail. One woman who helped arrange these sessions for Sterling called them “cattle calls”.

Should Donald Sterling be banned from the NBA for comments that he made in private? Of course. It is unacceptable for anyone to say, whether in public or in private, that an entire group of people is unwelcome at a sporting event.

But he should also have been banned for failure to pay debts, for failure to treat his employees and players with respect, and for failure to make a good faith effort to field a competitive basketball team. He should have been banned when his treatment of Christine Jansky came to light. He should have been banned when his treatment of Alexandra Castro came to light. He should have been banned when his treatment of Paul Silas came to light. He should have been banned when his treatment of Elgin Baylor came to light. He should have been banned when his treatment of Baron Davis came to light. He should have been banned when his treatment of black tenants came to light.

The NBA has failed to act until now, apparently considering that because it is not a baseball league, one should not be out after amassing three strikes. Sterling has had many more strikes against him than that. It is our hope that in banning Donald Sterling, new NBA commissioner Adam Silver is serving notice that the NBA will from now on have an N strike policy, where N is an integer less than infinity.