LEAGUE’S ACTION A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD

“Why are you tak­ing pic­tures with minori­ties,” Sterling alleged­ly said on the tape, among many oth­er things. “It both­ers me a lot that you want to broad­cast that you’re asso­ci­at­ing with black peo­ple. Do you have to?” “You can sleep with [black peo­ple],” Sterling con­tin­ued. “You can bring them in, you can do what­ev­er you want. The lit­tle I ask you is not to pro­mote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

These are the state­ments attrib­uted to Clippers own­er Donald Sterling. Mister Sterling was speak­ing via tele­phone with his female com­pan­ion V. Stiviano, in which he told her he did­n’t want her to “bring black peo­ple to his games” includ­ing Magic Johnson. The own­er report­ed­ly went off after Stiviano post­ed an Instagram shot of her­self with Johnson at a recent game (which she lat­er deleted).

The NBA has since banned mis­ter Sterling from hav­ing any­thing to do with the League including

his own team . In addi­tion he has been fined 2.5 mil­lion the max­i­mum allowed. New Commissioner Adam Silver has asked the League’s board of Governors to vote to force Mister Sterling to sell the Clippers.

Andy Roeser, pres­i­dent of the L.A. Clippers, told E! News in a state­ment, “We have heard the tape on TMZ. We do not know if it is legit­i­mate or it has been altered. We do know that the woman on the tape — who we believe released it to TMZ — is the defen­dant in a law­suit brought by the Sterling fam­i­ly alleg­ing that she embez­zled more than $1.8 mil­lion, who told Mr. Sterling that she would “get even.”

SHOULD STERLING HAVE BEEN DISCIPLINED BEFORE

Mister Sterling was sued twice by the U.S. Department of Justice for dis­crim­i­na­to­ry rental prac­tices, pay­ing a then-record $2.73 mil­lion penal­ty to set­tle the sec­ond case. Former Clippers gen­er­al man­ag­er Elgin Baylor described Sterling as hav­ing a “plan­ta­tion men­tal­i­ty” dur­ing his unsuc­cess­ful age dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suit, recount­ing con­ver­sa­tions with his for­mer boss that were, at best, racial­ly insensitive.

Whether mis­ter Sterling will be forced to sell his team by the board of Governors we don’t know. Team own­ers are them­selves large­ly wealthy white men who may very well share some of the same views in-art­ful­ly spilled by Donald Sterling. The tough puni­tive stance tak­en by the new Commissioner will how­ev­er be a new dou­ble edged sword that will sure­ly pierce play­ers , coach­es and oth­ers in the League as it has Sterling. No one asso­ci­at­ed with the league will be allowed to berate or dis­re­spect oth­ers who are dif­fer­ent. It behooves all con­cerned to be restrained in their glee regard­ing the actions of the league against mis­ter Sterling. The same knife which sticks Sheep sticks Goats (old Jamaican saying).