Clippers owner barred for life
NBA takes extraordinary step after racist comments emerge
LOS ANGELES — The National Basketball Association on Tuesday 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 basketball league of Mr. Sterling after he was recorded making racist comments.
Commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA would try to force Mr. 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 Mr. Sterling for comments he made in a private conversation.
Mr. Sterling also was fined $2.5 million, the largest that league bylaws would allow, but a small percentage of his estimated $1.9 billion fortune. It is unclear how Mr. Sterling, who is believed to be 80, will respond. He has made no public comments in his defense since the episode began.
“The views expressed by Mr. Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful,” Mr. Silver said. “We stand together in condemning Mr. Sterling’s views. They sim-
ply have no place in the NBA.”
Dozens of players and several team owners quickly released statements applauding Mr. Silver’s move. Even the Clippers’ organization, apparently freed from the fear of repercussion from their 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: “We Are One.”
The controversy began over the weekend with the public release of audio clips of Mr. 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,” Mr. 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?”
Mr. Sterling has made no public comment about whether the voice was his, but Mr. Silver said that the NBA’s investigation had revealed that the voice belonged to him, and that Mr. Sterling had admitted that the words were his.
Mr. Silver did not elaborate on what grounds, specifically, the league believed it could force Mr. 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 $500 million.
Mr. 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 Tuesday night’s game in Los Angeles. At Sunday’s Game 4 in Oakland, Calif., Clippers players wore their practice shirts inside out, concealing the team’s name, as a sign of solidarity and protest. Other teams in the playoffs followed.
“Former and current NBA players are very happy and satisfied with Commissioner Silver’s ruling,” Magic Johnson said on Twitter.
Mr. Sterling is not the first owner of a professional sports team to run afoul of his league’s standards, but he might end up with the most severe punishment. George Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees’ principal owner, was given a lifetime ban from the day-to-day operations of his team in 1990 for conspiring with watched from their modern headquarters and practice facility, where the lane entering the gated parking lot is named — for now — Sterling Drive.
One by one, players and coaches pulled out of the lot in their cars, a few waving or honking to a handful of reporters and smattering of smiling supporters.
In a courtyard outside the downtown City Hall, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles 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,” Mr. Johnson said. “Through history, sports has played a pivotal role in advancing civil rights — Tommie Smith, 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.”