Basketball

Clippers whine about not having a home court advantage

The Golden State Warriors beat the Los Angeles Clippers last night 110-106 last night in Los Angeles. After the game, many of the Clippers players and coaches complained about how the crowed seemed to be rooting for the visiting Warriors and not the Clippers, technically the home team.

This from Clippers forward and Kia pitchman Blake Griffin:

“Home-court advantage is just not there for us. If that’s how it feels in the playoffs, it’s not looking good. I don’t know what we could do, but it would be great if it wasn’t that way. It’s kind of like when we play the Lakers. I don’t know, maybe worse. It’s one of those things where it would be great if it wasn’t like that.”

I know what they can do. If the Clippers want a true home-court advantage, they need to get their own home court.

The Los Angeles Clippers are the only team in the NBA without their own stadium. They play in the Staples Center, home of the Lakers and in hockey, the Kings. It’s why the seats are purple and there are championship banners belonging to the Lakers and Kings hanging from the rafters. Surrounding the Staples Center are statues of former Lakers greats. There’s even a statue for Wayne Gretzky, honoring the time he played hockey in Los Angeles.

There are no Clippers greats in statue form surrounding the Staples Center. Mostly it’s because it’s not their home, but also it’s because there has never been a Clippers great.

Technically, the Clippers play their home games in Los Angeles, but I’ve never known anyone from southern California who claimed to be a Clippers fan. Not really. In fact, it could be argued that they are the third most popular basketball team in Los Angeles: the Lakers are first, the UCLA Bruins are second, and the Clippers are a very distant third.

Clippers Number One Fan, Shelly Sterling

Why would anyone want to be a Clippers fan? Look at who’s legally the Clipper’s number one fan. It’s none other than Shelly Sterling, wife of racist scumbag Donald Sterling. In fact, if the Clippers ever win a championship, it’s in Shelly Sterling’s contract with the NBA that she receive three championship rings.

If that’s not enough to always root against the Clippers, then I don’t know what is.

Shelly Sterling named 'Clippers' Number One Fan'

The NBA officially declared yesterday that former Microsoft muckety-muck Steve Ballmer is now the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. It cost him only $2 billion. That’s OK though, because he’s worth around $20 billion. One might think that when you pay that much for a team, that the sale would be clean, without any extra obligations.

That is not the case with the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers.

The deal involves a series of perks for Shelly Sterling, longtime wife of former Clippers owner, racist scumbag Donald Sterling. This perks include:

$200 million funneled into The Shelly Sterling Foundation, an organization to be dedicated to benefiting children, minorities, and abused women. As the name implies, Sterling will get to run the foundation.
Two courtside tickets to all Clippers home games.
Ten tickets in sections 101 or 111 to all Clippers home games.
Six parking spots in Lot C for each Clippers game.
Twelve VIP passes to all of the fancy lounges and clubs in the Staples Center.
Three championship rings if the Clippers ever win a title.
Honorary title of “Owner Emeritus” and “Clippers’ Number One Fan” for the rest of her life.

Why Steve Ballmer would want to own the Los Angeles Clippers is beyond me, especially when it means he will have to deal with Shelly Sterling on a continuous basis. She’s just as racist and just as awful as her husband. I would rather drink a cup of Ebola than root for a team who’s number one fan is Shelly Sterling.

Steve Ballmer signs deal to buy Clippers for $2 billion

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has signed an agreement with the Sterling family trust to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion.

The Clippers are the third most popular basketball ball team in Los Angeles, after the Lakers and then the UCLA Bruins. After the deal is completed, it will be the richest deal ever paid for an American sports team. The Los Angeles Dodgers sold for $2.15 billion, but that deal included Dodger Stadium and the massive, but dangerous parking lot. The Clippers don’t have their own arena. They share the Staples Center with the Lakers and the Kings.

I don’t understand this deal. The second-richest contract for an NBA team was earlier this year when the Milwaukee Bucks sold for $550 million.

Steve Ballmer is supposedly worth $20 billion, so I guess it’s not a lot of money when it’s put into context. Still, if the Clippers are worth $2 billion, what are the Lakers worth?

Los Angeles is a weird sports town. It can’t support an NFL team, but one of its two professional basketball teams, the least popular of the two, is supposedly worth $2 billion.

Donald Sterling threatens to sue the NBA

Remember when NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life? Yeah, about that. Sterling has hired high-priced antitrust lawyer Maxwell Blecher and is vowing to fight the NBA, claiming that he has done nothing wrong.

In Sterling’s defense, I’m sure he believes that.

He’s been a terrible human being for decades. He’s done far worse things than telling his mistress/personal assistant that he didn’t want her to bring black people to basketball games. Donald Sterling is a slum lord who routinely discriminated against people by refusing to rent apartments to people because of the color of their skin. Housing discrimination is far worse than getting angry at your skeevy mistress because she posted a photo of herself on Instagram standing with Magic Johnson.

Donald Sterling is a billionaire, and he’s a lawyer. As Jesus once said, it’s easier to get a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is to get a billionaire lawyer to do something they don’t want to do.

It seems that Donald Sterling doesn’t want to go away quietly.

Donald Sterling banned from NBA for being Donald Sterling

Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, found out the hard way that Adam Silver, the newly crowned commissioner of the NBA, is not someone to be trifled with. Silver announced yesterday that Sterling is banned from the NBA for life. Considering that he’s eighty years old, that may not be for very long. Also, Silver said he’s calling for the other 29 owners of NBA teams to hold a vote to force Sterling to sell the Clippers. Lastly, Silver also fined Sterling $2.5 million, the most that an owner can be fined by the NBA.

Adam Silver made it abundantly clear that, unlike he predecessor, he has no patience for Sterling’s racist shenanigans.

Good.

I’d prefer it if this racist old coot didn’t have to sell the Clippers. It bothers me that when he sells the team, he will pocket a windfall. He paid only $12.5 million for the Clippers back in 1981. When he sells it, he will rake in considerably more. He ran the team into the ground for decades, yet when he sells, he will be adding a substantial amount it his already massive fortune.

That just doesn’t seem right.

I’d prefer if the team was just kicked out of the league and the players be allowed to sign with other teams. I don’t know if that is possible under the NBA constitution, but it should be.

Why I have zero sympathy for Doc Rivers

One of the many things I find fascinating about the controversy over racist comments allegedly made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is how some people are acting like Sterling being a racist jerk-face is something new. It’s not. Of all the people now pretending to be surprised by the racist allegations about Sterling, none has been more vocal than Clippers coach and VP of basketball operations, Doc Rivers.

From Marc J. Spears at Yahoo Sports:

Rivers, who signed a three-year, $21 million contract last summer to become the Clippers coach and vice president of basketball operations, said he’s unsure whether he’ll return to the team if Sterling remains owner.

“I don’t want to answer that question,” Rivers said. “I don’t know. This just happened.”

No, it didn’t.

The world has known for a long time that Donald Sterling was a racist asshat. There was even an extensive article on Sterling and what a terrible human being he is, in the June 1, 2009, issue of ESPN The Magazine. I can’t be the only person who remembers reading it. In the article, among other things, it reports how Sterling made racially disparaging comments about black and Hispanic tenants living in his buildings.

Doc Rivers is an intelligent man. Before agreeing to work for Donald Sterling, he should have found out the type of person he was going to be working for. It’s not like he had to take the Clippers job, technically he was still under contract with the Boston Celtics.

If Rivers doesn’t want to work for a racist douchebag, he should have just honored his contract with the Celtics.