So Donald Sterling has a legacy after all. And Danny Ferry isn’t smart.
p Apr 29, 2014; New York, NY, USA; NBA commissioner Adam Silver addresses the media regarding the investigation involving Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling (not pictured) at New York Hilton Midtown. Mandatory Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports
First, Sterling. When he was excommunicated a couple of weeks ago, he was routed to a part of history reserved for characters with no redeeming value. Sterling was living out the consequences of prejudice and arrogance and bad luck. It was historic only in it is rarity that a wealthy man was brought to his knees. In one sense it was karma, Sterling got what he deserved. More so, his departure was meant to erase his memory and tenure and all the rotten things he did over his lifetime. But what happened in the aftermath was not so clean as is the case when you break things erratically. Sometimes there is damage you never anticipated.
When the scandal broke mid-spring, Sterling’s fellow owners were not immune to the residue. They were besieged by cameras and reporters who wanted to know: what do you think about Sterling. Will you vote him out?
It was a reminder that we do sports the same way we do religion, we pray for the saint and we damn the sinner. We want the holy to be anointed and the miserable to be shunned. We want to celebrate someone’s failure if that means our side wins. We take our faith with us into bars, into work, into food truck lines, into marriages and divorce papers (who gets the courtside seats?). It is both natural and unnatural, getting caught up in the lives of strangers. It is competition and insanity at its best and it is entertainment and insanity at its worst. It is an escape. It is the other end of the real world, the one Sterling occupied for so long.
Mid-spring, Mark Cuban, who is never at a loss for words and who had been quiet the first few days of the Sterling firestorm, just shook his head and said of Sterling, “it’s a slippery slope.” He was referring to the punishment. The ability to be banned because of something privately said was to open a door behind which were thousands of bones. Cuban was also telling on the rest of his fraternity. They had things to hide and from here on in out it was going to get very rocky.
When Adam Silver became commissioner in February the first crises was Donald Sterling. It was a quick baptism for Silver and at the same time it was a blessing. It allowed Silver to clean up the league and excoriate intolerance the way Rudy Guliani once rooted out the mob when he first became U.S. Attorney of New York.
Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson had no chance for a quick escape. Danny Ferry, the Hawks general manager, suffered the same fate. Ferry’s repeating of a racist passage regarding Luol Deng set all this in motion. Levenson’s supposedly private e-mail took the same beating as Sterling’s phone call.
Silver clearly wants to re-image the NBA owner. He has a particular distaste for white men who see their world of privilege as an opportunity to be glorified in public and then, when no one is looking, be racist, homophobic, sexist, you fill in the blanks.
Jan 10, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling attends the game against the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center. The Clippers defeated the Lakers 123-87. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Did the owners misjudge Adam Silver, believing he was some go-along to get-along puppet? The owners are more uncomfortable then they have ever been even as they are profiting at record levels. Collectively, there are no good guys or bad guys here. There are the exposed and the unexposed. Private crimes and misdemeanors may be revealed to the world through a variety of channels creating scorn and humiliation. This is the legacy of Donald Sterling .
No owner is immune from looking over his shoulder or looking through his trash for something he wrote that he didn’t put through the shredder. Videos and photographs are pored over. Conversations, like Ferry’s, are walked back.
There are no perfect people, no perfect NBA owners. Wealth is often accumulated through means that can be unkind and legal but not moral. For years no one really cared and for sure no one looked very close so owners were allowed the veil of privacy to hide behind. They are rich white man, most of whom have never been held accountable for whatever racial intolerance infects their world view. But a new level of transparency has repositioned the league whereas the commissioner is judge and jury.
There is no empathy. Screw with his league because years ago you absorbed racial stereotypes to make you feel more powerful and entitled- well then you’re out of luck in Silver’s new NBA. Take note homophobics and racial purists. This is how business is going to be done from now on. If there is dirt you better bury it in the ocean’s deep end. Or else. The Sterling/Levenson punishment awaits you.