NO LEAGUE-WIDE CONDEMNATION FROM NBA OWNERS

There are 30 Teams in the National Basket-ball Association (NBA. Thus far only 2 own­ers are report­ed to have voiced an opin­ion on the out­ra­geous racist dia­tribe of LA Clippers own­er, Donald Sterling. In that exchange Sterling berat­ed his close con­fi­dant V. Stiviano about her rela­tion­ships with Black peo­ple. He told her he did not want her bring­ing Black peo­ple to his games.

Since then the League has banned mis­ter Sterling from the league for life and is report­ed­ly active­ly engaged in try­ing to have an ear­ly vote by the League’s Board Of Governors (the oth­er own­ers} to force Sterling to sell the Clippers.

In 2011 rough­ly 78% of the NBA play­ers were African Americans. The NBA has the high­est per­cent­age of Black play­ers of any pro­fes­sion­al Sports League in the United States and Canada. Simply put Basketball is a black man’s game accord­ing to Pacers President Larry Bird. “It is a black man’s game, and it will be for­ev­er. I mean, the great­est ath­letes in the world are African-Americans,” said Bird. The NBA has no oth­er com­mod­i­ty except it’s play­ers. Any indi­vid­ual or Corporation doing busi­ness must have a vest­ed inter­est in it’s com­mod­i­ty. Most Companies will fight to the last dol­lar to pro­tect that which it deals or trades in. After all that’s the com­pa­ny’s life-blood. No com­mod­i­ty, no Company. NBA Players are well paid, that how­ev­er is not the point. They bring to the pub­lic, a very sought-after form of enter­tain­ment which the pub­lic is will­ing to pay hand­some­ly to see. Subsequently NBA team own­ers are rolling in the wealth these play­ers cre­ate for them. 

Most play­ers are Millionaires, Many own­ers are Billionaires. NBA play­ers are a great com­mod­i­ty for the Billionaire team own­ers. It is dis­grace­ful yet not sur­pris­ing that there is no league-wide out­cry from these wealthy white men who own the oth­ers fran­chis­es except those two, who by the way are still anony­mous. This begs the ques­tion whether more of these own­ers are them­selves clos­et­ed big­ots, who even if they vote to oust Sterling, will sim­ply be going along to get along? If NBA own­ers can­not denounce ran­cid big­otry out of moral con­vic­tion, should­n’t they be able to do so since their chat­tel the play­ers, make them wealthy?

Clippers leg­end and for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er Elgin Baylor accused Sterling of hav­ing a “plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty” in a law­suit against Sterling in 2003. Maybe the Plantation men­tal­i­ty runs deep­er than just Donald Sterling. Maybe the new cot­ton fields are the NBA courts.