Donald Sterling sues the NBA for more than a billion dollars

Go Donald Go. You may be a scum sucking dementia ridden racist but the NBA Commissionaire and his lackies overstepped their bounds by using a private conversation that was made public by a blackmailer to enforce rules that may not even be legal.

Can people imagine the uproar if this had happened to any other mentally incapacitated person other than the billionaire Donald Sterling? My guess is that the whole world would have been up in arms about how he was denied due process by the league and how they fined, suspended and bullied him into selling his team. It wouldn't be a pretty picture but for some reason being rich makes it okay to be treated like this and just because he did this same type of things to his employees doesn't mean the League and Commissionaire should stoop to his level and still be able to claim moral superiority.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the conversation was just an excuse for the Commissionaire's Office to get rid of a bad owner who was at odds with them and their policies. Sterling was at war with the League because of their refusal to allow him to move his team to Seattle, abuse of his employees and shady business practices so this whole sordid affair had less to do with racism than retribution on the leagues part.

But, if I was an owner I'd be worried. This whole scenario should serve notice that the League and Commissionaires Office have become omnipotent when dealing with owners they disagree with and that they are now quite willing to, without due process, issue the same types of punishments and sanctions that they gave to Sterling just to get compliance or in some cases revenge.

Screw him. Racist pig. I hope he spends boatloads of money and fails. It is time that the bad guy loses for a change.

I have no problem with him losing his shirt, the issue I have is how the league and Commissionaire handled the whole thing. They could have handled it much more discretely than publicly embarrassing and bullying Sterling into relinquishing his ownership and selling the team just so the newly minted Commissionaire could espouse his moral superiority and smile smugly for some photo ops.

As for the excuse of placating the players. Sorry but they're under contract and if they'd decided to walk off the job because of Sterling's comments, then they should have been fined and or fired for their illegal actions. They have no dog in this fight other than their moral outrage so had they been informed that the league was taking appropriate action and what that action would be, that should have been enough to keep them from a wildcat strike.

I'm wondering if the League and Commissionaire would have dealt with Sterling any differently had they known he was operating at a diminished capacity? As it stands now it just looks like they bullied a retard into doing something he didn't want to do because they wanted revenge. But, if they would have treated him the same even knowing that he was mentally incapacitated it then becomes like I said, a dire warning to the other owners that they had better not challenge the new Commissionaire, his regime and legal team or they'll face his wrath.



Sterling may be out of the league but he's definitely going not going away anytime soon because of the piss poor way the league handled the whole affair and the legal wrangling their over the top reactions led to.

I'd rep if I could FOG. Due process seems to be the constant loser in our outrage driven society.

Provided of course, that the racist pig bad guy is a White team owner and not a Black player.
The double standard being displayed by the NBA is sickening. If being a racist pig is grounds for a banning from the league then there are a number of players who should also be banned. And let's face it, some of their outbursts were done in public.
And considering the number of NBA players who have criminal convictions, some of them multiple convictions, the league has sent the disturbing message that being White and uttering a mildly racist comment in private is far, FAR worse than being Black and a criminal douche.

The class and loyalty shown by the rich is astounding. Having your own husband be deemed incapacitated?
It makes me laugh.

Speaking of racist outbursts, anyone seen the latest Bieber scandal ?





He's 15 in the video but this does not bode well for his squeaky clean reputation.

It wasn't just about placating the players. The day the nba laid down its ruling, the Clippers had lost all of their sponsors. Sterling is bad for business.

Exactly, this goes beyond Sterling's comments as his private conversation was recored and used against him is the real issue. This means nothing to the knee jerk reaction race baiters but they should think about it real hard because anytning they have ever said in private was recored could be used against them, against them getting the new job, losing their current job, this is about losing the freedom of speech in your own home. The only one who has any commonsense about this seems to be Mark Cuban.

As an owner, he is not selling widgets out of some factory, he is selling a brand. The whole industry is based on fan support and he has done irreparable damage to that brand which has consequences not only for the team but for the league.

The views of individual players has less impact as they are just spokes in the wheel and can be replaced or traded. When it comes to the owner, this is not the case.

The anti-trust rules that pro sports leagues operate under allow them tremendous leeway and grant them enormous power in policing themselves. Sterling, as an owner, would have been well aware of this. As a signatory to league policy he would also be seen to have willingly endorsed it, even though as arrogant as he is he probably never imagined that it would be used against him. He probably doesn't have a leg to stand on legally. Besides, he's been issuing threats through the media for weeks now, none of which have materialized. It's also been reported that he's got dementia too. His best play would be to just take the $2 billion the sale of the team generated, shut his stupid mouth (which he should have done in the first place), and just quietly disappear.

I don't doubt that the league has a legal right to do what they're doing. It's the "thought police" implications that I find disturbing. How many of us can honestly say we've never said anything in private that we wouldn't want to be repeated to the world?

If he had said this things in a public forum where he could reasonably be expected to be seen as representing the team I would have no problem with the league going after him. Or if they had gone after him because of his disgusting business practices. But going after him based ona private conversation that was recorded without his knowledge...? That's scary.

I hope he goes after the woman who recorded and released the tape for every penny she has to compensate him for the millions or billions that this is costing him.

It isn't "thought police" though. A private conversation was recorded by one of the two individuals participating in it. She wasn't working for the police or the media and she released it for reasons of her own. And the NBA had no choice except to respond, because the players were either going to all simultaneously strike and wipe out the playoffs or strike next season if the league didn't immediately act against Sterling. From what I see the NBA probably isn't going to be in too much legal difficulty on this issue and probably aren't scared in the slightest of any of Sterling's threats. They won the whole thing anyway, when the league and 29 of 30 owners collectively decided that they would no longer do any business at all with Donald Sterling.

Sterling's transgressions, from being a scumbag slumlord to being wildly contemptuous of the players who made his money for him, are well known and well documents. There is no presumption of innocence here because it's been convincingly and repeatedly proven that Sterling is a genuinely horrible person who finally got what was coming to him. A better question would be as to why the various sports leagues keep tolerating these kinds of people being in ownership positions.

yeah...it's not like they don't have enough racist and criminal scum playing on their teams, spewing stupid shit to the press.