Why banning Donald Sterling could enhance his already malignant legacy

Police dramas make for the best television. The Shield. The Wire. Crime Story.

The stakes are always high, the threat of violence is invariably looming and it all takes place in a setting that’s typically unfamiliar to us. However, the most engaging storyline in these programs is the one in which the good guy is aware of a bad guy’s crimes, but has to find a way to make those crimes punishable.

Sometimes, the protagonist will use less than legal methods. Other times, they’ll try to do it by the book. Either way, a character’s internal struggle to reconcile ends with means through their own definition of justice is an incredibly engaging dramatic device.

Donald Sterling

We’ve known for some time that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is (allegedly) a bad guy.

In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department sued the Los Angeles based slumlord for refusing to rent to African Americans in Beverly Hills. Sterling’s alleged justification for his discrimination was that “Black tenants smell and attract vermin.” He’s also alleged to have said that he avoided renting to Hispanics because they “smoke, drink and just hang around the building.”

In 2009, former Clippers GM Elgin Baylor sued Sterling for discrimination, alleging the owner told his number one executive he wanted to fill his team with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach.” The suit also made mention of wage disparity between the Causcasian head coach who made $22-million over four years, and Baylor’s salary as GM which had been frozen at $350,000 for the previous five years.

Perhaps most damning is an anecdote reported in an ESPN: The Magazine profile from the summer of 2009. Seven years earlier, Sterling had purchased the Ardmore Apartments in Beverly Hills. According to testimony from former employee Sumner Davenport during another discrimination lawsuit, Sterling set about systematically getting rid of African-American, Mexican-American and other tenants with young children by making conditions inhabitable for them.

The most heartbreaking instance of the landlord’s alleged cruelty is the case of Kandyce Jones, whom Davenport discovered living in a unit at the Ardmore with several inches of water flowing through it.

Jones was paralyzed on the right side and legally blind. She took medication for high blood pressure and to thin a clot in her leg. Still, she was remarkably cheerful, showing Davenport pictures of her children, even as some of her belongings floated around her.

Jones had repeatedly walked to the apartment manager's office to plead for assistance, according to sworn testimony given by her daughter Ebony Jones in the Housing Rights Center case. Kandynce Jones' refrigerator dripped, her dishwasher was broken, and her apartment was always cold. Now it had flooded. Davenport reported what she saw to Sterling, and according to her testimony, he asked: "Is she one of those black people that stink?"

When Davenport told Sterling that Jones wanted to be reimbursed for the water damage and compensated for her ruined property, he replied: "I am not going to do that. Just evict the bitch."

Repairs never came. The shower stopped working, and the toilet wouldn't flush; Jones needed to use a plunger and disposed of waste tissue in bags.

The Recording

All of these instances had happened long before Sterling’s most recent bit of discrimination.

In early April, his girlfriend, V. Stiviano, recorded a conversation the two shared about an Instagram photo in which she posed with Magic Johnson.

In the audio recording, Sterling complained, “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people." He then proceeded to tell Stiviano that he didn’t want her bringing African Americans to the games anymore.

That led to an exchange in which Stiviano asked Sterling how he reconciles such an attitude with so many African Americans playing on his basketball team. 

His reply:

I support them and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Do I know that I have… Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?

The Reaction

Twitter went berserk. Sponsors pulled their financial support. NBA players — current and former — protested. Even other league owners spoke out against Sterling.

On Tuesday, the NBA handed down its punishment. For private comments Sterling made to someone with whom he believed he shared an intimate relationship, he will face a life-time ban and a $2.5-million fine (the maximum allowed under the NBA constitution). The league will also encourage other owners to force Sterling into selling his team.

They were despicable comments. Hurtful, stupid, ignorant and racist, but also, as close to personal thoughts as anything someone could say aloud.

Punishing Sterling for this — with a past so full of discriminatory practices — is a bit like imprisoning Al Capone for tax evasion. It’s getting Avon Barksdale on possession with intent to distribute. It’s shackling Vic Mackey to a desk job he hates.

It’s not right, but it will have to do.

A Malignant Legacy

Few people so deserving of retribution have received their comeuppance on such questionable grounds. We accept it, and we embrace it because we hate what this man said, and we don’t want any association with it. However, if this sets any sort of precedent for the authority of professional sports leagues, it’s a dangerous one.

The league isn't bound by the same burden of proof as a court of law, but the same principle that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is using to ban and fine Sterling becomes applicable to all private conversations that all team owners have. 

In this instance, it’s thankfully being used to lance an unsightly boil full of rancid pus. However, what happens when an owner is recorded sympathizing with players during a labor dispute? How will the NBA react when an owner expresses negative opinions on the network that pays billions of dollars for television rights?

Who makes the distinction between condemnable whispers said in private, and spoken words for which the league must merely shrug its shoulders?

Obviously, outlandish racist sentiments is at the extreme of the spectrum, but by placing it there, Silver and the NBA have created a range that didn’t exist before today. 

It’s almost fitting that if this represents Sterling’s last bit of business with the NBA — doubtful, given his penchant for litigation — he manages to leave an even more malignant legacy than could have ever been imagined.