Ostensibly Hoops

[AlabamAlum]

I am between Bham and Tuscaloosa. And it is bad.

[Saint]

Sterling's a Jew? I thought he looks Jewish but he also looks like a pickled old Irishman, too.

I'm sticking with the theory that Magic is behind the recording in an attempt to scoop up the Clippers franchise.

[Bklyn]

LOL at cats still dick harded on Reverend Wright.

Crash has no black friends.

[Owlman]

which is more offensive our president attending a racially charged church for years whom we elect president or an old geezer telling his girlfriend not to go to nba games with black guys now going to get run out of town on a rail

The old geezer who was mad at his gold-digger because he wanted her to pass as white by not affiliating with anyone of color. One thing, a pass, but he also has the largest ever settlement in Los Angeles housing discrimination suit (rental actually)

[Jungle Rat]

Lost in all this racial bullshit...

RIP Dr. Jack

[Bklyn]

Cuban is right, but the free agency option is interesting (if unlikely)...

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10854 ... king-owner

[eCat]

Kareem

It's time to look at ourselves — and our collective moral outrage — in the mirror, says former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking. All over the latest in a long line of rich white celebrities to come out of the racist closet. (Was it only a couple days ago that Cliven Bundy said blacks would be better off picking cotton as slaves? And only last June Paula Deen admitted using the “N” word?)
More

Yes, I’m angry, too, but not just about the sins of Donald Sterling. I’ve got a list. But let’s start with Sterling. I used to work for him, back in 2000 when I coached for the Clippers for three months. He was congenial, even inviting me to his daughter’s wedding. Nothing happened or was said to indicate he suffered from IPMS (Irritable Plantation Master Syndrome). Since then, a lot has been revealed about Sterling’s business practices:


2006: U.S. Dept. of Justice sued Sterling for housing discrimination. Allegedly, he said, “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)
2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.

And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee.

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.

I don’t blame them. I’m doing some whooping right now. Racists deserve to be paraded around the modern town square of the television screen so that the rest of us who believe in the American ideals of equality can be reminded that racism is still a disease that we haven’t yet licked.

What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.

Make no mistake: Donald Sterling is the villain of this story. But he’s just a handmaiden to the bigger evil. In our quest for social justice, we shouldn’t lose sight that racism is the true enemy. He’s just another jerk with more money than brains.

So, if we’re all going to be outraged, let’s be outraged that we weren’t more outraged when his racism was first evident. Let’s be outraged that private conversations between people in an intimate relationship are recorded and publicly played. Let’s be outraged that whoever did the betraying will probably get a book deal, a sitcom, trade recipes with Hoda and Kathie Lee, and soon appear on Celebrity Apprentice and Dancing with the Stars.

--------------------------

and lets be outraged the NAACP was going to give this man an award (ecat edit)

[hedge]

As someone said earlier, the market will take care of all of this. Capitalism in action...

"Worse for whom? The individual getting yelled at? The NBA? Society, in general? Or worse for the "we are post-racial America" meme pushed by many?"

People have been talking about "post-racial societies" since homo sapiens killed off the neaderthals. Hasn't happened yet and likely never will, until sky net takes over and even then there will be prejudice amongst the machines based on different components or whatever. It wasn't all about John Conner, Arnold (T-800) and the T-1000 really hated each other...

[crashcourse]

crash has lots of black friends

crash dated black girls

but after looking at sterling's body of work its time for him to go--surprised he was going to be named ncaap man of the year--evidently no one in LA knows his past history

I would defend one mans rant in his own home as something that can be explained
but after reading this guys history he is a bigot that Im surprised wasnt exposed many years ago

[hedge]

I liked Kareem's take. It's always fun to enjoy a taste of schadenfreude (that hardly needs saying in the Goat Pen, as we have gorged on it for years at one another's expense), but when it starts becoming (as Kareem said) Lord of the Flies, watch out...

[AlabamAlum]

That Kareem is very articulate... you know, for an athlete.

[aTm]

He's a muslim scholar.

[AlabamAlum]

Same diff.

[hedge]

If the commissioner suspends this guy, I wonder if there will be a backlash? I wonder if the owner won't take some kind of action against the commissioner? In other words, I wonder if Sterling will come down on Silver. Get it? Sterling silver???

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Ahem...

[crashcourse]

never a moderator around when you need to expunge something

[BigRedMan]

I agree 100%.

Rape, shoot, drugs, and murder dogs. No problem.

Doesn't make any sense. Rape, if proven, you go to jail. Shooting someone, even yourself, went to jail. Drugs, suspended from the league. Murder Dogs, went to jail.

If that's no problem to you, then what is a problem

The problem is the media barely touches stuff like this (well the Vick thing was pretty much covered) but most of the time real "crimes" barely get anyone talking and rarely will you hear that they should be banned forever and never able to make a living. Big Ben, Plaxico, Vick, all have went on to play again and make money and they actually broke the law.

This cat does nothing ILLEGAL and all he is guilty of is being a dumbass and may be forced to sell his franchise. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Let the people with their pocketbooks make the choice of whether they want to support him or not.

[hedge]

You have a point, but it's hard for me to feel sorry for somebody being forced to sell something for $1 billion. I know, I know, "it's the principle", but you can buy alot of principles with $1 billion...

[AlabamAlum]

Banned for life and a 2.5MM fine.

[AlabamAlum]

BRM,

It may not be fair, but people are held to different standards. When I was a COO, if I got my name in the paper for something idiotic I did or said, I would suffer far worse consequences than some ER tech who did the same thing. It's just the way it is...he owns a team that is primarily black in a league that's primarily black with a good number of black fans.... and sponsors who want to sell to them - and in the end, that cooked him. Does he deserve a lifetime ban? Maybe not, but as Will Munny said, "Deserve's got nothing to do with this."

[bluetick]

Glad Sterling is gone.

Maybe the frontrunning Rev. Jackson will rethink his call for a boycott of the game by the fans. Doubt he'll back away from his "pickin' cotton balls to pickin' basketballs" absurdity, though.