Rico's rants: Stupid is as stupid does

John Branch has an article in The New York Times about booting Sterling out of the NBA:

The National Basketball Association (NBA) handed a lifetime ban to the longtime Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, an extraordinary step in professional sports, and one intended to rid the league of Sterling after he was recorded making racist comments.
Commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA would try to force Sterling to sell the Clippers, fully expecting to get the necessary three-quarters approval from other team owners. It would be a rare, if not unprecedented, move for a North American professional sports league, made even more unusual by the fact that the NBA is punishing Sterling for comments he made in a private conversation.
Sterling was also fined $2.5 million, the largest that league bylaws would allow, but a small percentage of his estimated two billion dollar fortune. It is unclear how Sterling, who is believed to be eighty years old, will respond. He has made no public comments in his defense since the episode began.“The views expressed by Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful,” Silver said. “We stand together in condemning Sterling’s views. They simply have no place in the NBA.”
Sterling’s time as owner of the Clippers has been marked by player unrest, accusations of racism and sexism, and, until the team began winning consistently three years ago, incompetent basketball management.Dozens of players and several team owners released statements applauding Silver’s move. Even the Clippers’ organization, apparently freed from the fear of repercussion from its unpopular owner, released one with the approval of Andy Roeser, the team president, and Doc Rivers, the team’s head coach: “We wholeheartedly support and embrace the decision by the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver today,” the Clippers’ statement read. “Now the healing process begins.”
The team’s website featured an all-black background on its home page, and a simple message next to the team’s logo: We Are One.
The controversy began over the weekend with the release of audio clips of Sterling making wide-ranging racist remarks in a conversation with a female acquaintance. He was perturbed that the woman posted online pictures of herself with black men, including Magic Johnson, who played his Hall of Fame career with the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Don’t put him on Instagram for the world to see so they have to call me,” Sterling said, in recordings released by TMZ. “And don’t bring him to my games. Yeah, it bothers me a lot that you want to promo, broadcast, that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?”
Sterling has made no public comment about whether the voice was his, but Silver said the NBA’s investigation revealed that the voice belonged to him, and that Sterling admitted that the words were his.Silver did not elaborate on what grounds, specifically, the league believed it could force Sterling to sell the team, nor did he make clear how a transfer of ownership might be conducted. The Clippers are valued at more than five hundred million dollars.
Sterling’s comments have overwhelmed the NBA playoffs, especially the first-round series between the Clippers and the Golden State Warriors. The teams were tied, 2-2, in the best-of-seven series before the recent game in Los Angeles. At Game Four in Oakland, California, Clippers players wore their practice shirts inside out, concealing the team’s name, as a sign of solidarity and protest. Other playoff teams followed suit.There was talk of boycotting games if players felt the league was too soft on Sterling. The Warriors made loose plans to go out for the jump ball and walk off the court before the discipline against Sterling was announced.
“I believe that today stands as one of those great moments where sports once again transcends, where sports provides a place for fundamental change on how our country should think and act.” said Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California and a former NBA player.
“Former and current NBA players are very happy and satisfied with Commissioner Silver’s ruling,” Magic Johnson said on Twitter.
The game began with a festive air, the team aggressively promoting the We Are One slogan and fans carrying signs conveying messages of unity in a post-Sterling environment. Fans + Players = Clippers Nation, one read.
Outside the arena on a warm afternoon, where any planned protests against Sterling or the NBA fizzled after word of the sanctions, some wore black t-shirts that had Sterling’s name on the back with a jersey number: –1.
Sterling is not the first owner of a professional sports team to run afoul of his league’s standards, but he may end up with the most severe punishment. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner, was given a lifetime ban from the day-to-day operations of his team in 1990 for conspiring with a gambler in an effort to defame Dave Winfield, a Yankees player. But Steinbrenner was not forced to relinquish his ownership of the team, and he was reinstated three years later. In 1993, Major League Baseball suspended Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott from the day-to-day operation of the team for one year and fined her $25,000 for using racial slurs toward employees and making anti-Semitic remarks.The NBA’s response to Sterling’s comments may put an end to one of the more criticized ownership tenures in American sports. Sterling bought the San Diego Clippers in 1981 and moved them to Los Angeles in 1984, deep in the shadow of the popular and successful Lakers. The Clippers spent decades as a consistent joke, with Sterling the easy punch line. The team managed just one winning season in Sterling’s first two dozen years as owner, and has yet to make it past the second round of the playoffs.
But a few years of high draft choices and strong basketball management have turned the Clippers into a burgeoning league power with an enviably deep and talented roster.
The NBA has long been uncomfortable with Sterling. He was unsuccessfully sued by the team’s former general manager, NBA great Elgin Baylor, for age and race discrimination in 2009. Baylor said in the suit that Sterling “had a pervasive and ongoing racist attitude” and ran the team with a “Southern plantation-type structure”.
That same year, Sterling paid $2.76 million to settle a housing-discrimination suit brought by the Justice Department on behalf of African-Americans, Latinos, and families with children.
Silver said that Sterling was being barred from the league for his recent comments, but that the owners’ coming decision whether to force him to sell the Clippers would take into account his entire ownership tenure. Silver said the process to vote on forcing the sale of the team would begin immediately.
Silver, whose tenure as commissioner began this year, made the announcement at a news conference in New York City, where the NBA’s headquarters are located. The Clippers, minus Sterling, were at their modern headquarters and practice facility, where the lane entering the gated parking lot is named— for the moment— Sterling Drive. Players were watching film with Rivers, who interrupted to share the news. “There was complete silence,” Rivers said.
In a courtyard outside City Hall in Los Angeles, California, Mayor Eric Garcetti of that city and Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, a former NBA player, gathered with a contingent of current and former NBA players with ties to the city’s teams, the Clippers and the Lakers. “This is a defining moment in our history,” Johnson said. “Through history, sports has played a pivotal role in advancing civil rights: Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics; great leaders like Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, Jason Collins, and our very own Jackie Robinson. I believe that today stands as one of those great moments where sports once again transcends, where sports provides a place for fundamental change on how our country should think and act.” Among the current and former players present were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Steve Nash, Tyson Chandler, Norm Nixon, and Luke Walton. “We may be a two-team town,” Garcetti said, “but today we’re behind one team, and the players of the Los Angeles Clippers; tonight, we want you to know that we love you, we are behind you, and today we feel like justice has begun to be served.”
At Clippers headquarters— where, according to Silver, Sterling is no longer welcome— there were few outward signs of change. A couple of television crews and one man stood outside. He was DeWayne Williams, waving two American flags and a sign that read: No time for racism. Love. “It’s important for people to know that we don’t tolerate that anymore,” Williams said. As for the news of Sterling’s banishment, Williams took a wait-and-see approach. “I prefer him to be out,” Williams said. “It’s hard for players to play for a person you know doesn’t have respect for you. So I’m going to be here every day until he’s out.”