Donald Sterling Is A Joke

Donald Sterling is a man with a very checkered past. In 2005, he was ordered to pay $5 million in a lawsuit that accused him of trying to drive out black and Latino tenants from apartments that he owned in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was sued in 2006 by former Clippers executive Elgin Baylor for employment discrimination based on age and race, a lawsuit that alledges that Sterling told him to build a team of  "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach." In 2009, the United States Department of Justice sued him for housing discrimination in using race as a factor in filling some of his apartment buildings. He has been sued multiple times for sexual harassment. He purchased a plot of land in the eastern end of downtown Los Angeles in 2006 with the promise to build a homeless shelter, which he has yet to begin to develop, leading many to believe he purchased this land to realize a profit.

As owner of the Clippers, he has been equally despicable. There is the lawsuit with Elgin Baylor, who Sterling admitted that he had no idea of Baylor's basketball accomplishments at any point in time. The man owns an NBA franchise, and did not know Elgin Baylor's place in basketball history? He refused to pay for assistant coach Kim Hughes' surgery for prostate cancer, leaving four Clippers players (Corey Maggette, Elton Brand, Marko Jaric, and Chris Kaman) to pick up the $70,000 tab that Hughes would have owed. Even though this surgery was required to save Hughes' life, Sterling refused to pay for it, feeling that it would set a 'dangerous example' and that others would feel that he would pay for their medical treatments. What a disgrace.

Sterling has steadfastly refused to spend money on his coaches or his scouting department, which is actually a position that the NBA wanna-be mafia boss David Stern approves of. Not coincidentally, since Sterling purchased the Clippers in 1981, they have had a total of two winning seasons. He refuses to surround himself with knowledgeable basketball minds, although some of that may be due to the fact that they will not work for him, given his history.

Don David has no problems going after Mark Cuban and other people in his private fiefdom for doing such things as criticizing the referees, wearing their headbands inside out, or other completely innocent things. Yet, he refuses to admonish Sterling for anything, including the multiple discrimination scandals. Why is this? Why does he refuse to force this bigoted, penny pinching, morally bankrupt piece of human garbage to sell his team? One would think that if any other owner was involved, or allegedly involved, in even one iota of the controversy that Sterling has been that he would be at that owner's doorstep with members of a 'persuation squad' to make them an 'offer they cannot refuse'. Why the double standard?

Clippers fans, all three of them now, deserve better than this. When Sterling no longer owns the Clippers, the NBA will be a better place.