The new commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, announced today that Donald Sterling is banned for life from the NBA and will be assessed a $2.5mil fine from the league for his racist remarks in the privacy of his own home. Silver also said he needs 22 votes from the other 29 owners (75% Supermajority) in order to force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers. Everyone knows that this harsh of a punishment means that the courts will be heavily involved.
I have quite a few takes on this whole situation. Donald Sterling needed to be banned for life, so I'm happy for the Clippers players that he is gone. His history of discrimination speaks for itself. In regard to the $2.5 million, I know for a fact the NBA will never see one red cent of that fine. Sterling was literally just days away from receiving his 2ND lifetime achievement award (what?) from the NAACP chapter in Los Angeles. Donald Sterling would die before he laid down to be railroaded into a fine for his private opinions in a private conversation. He's going down swinging, especially since this case is as easy as a 1st Amendment case gets. The NBA ousted him essentially because of his thoughts, which is far from legal in even the loosest sense of wrongful termination. His gold digger, V. Stiviano, is going to end up in jail for illegal wiretapping, defamation, and extortion. That is if Sterling doesn't just kill her first. I would if I was him. Shelly Sterling, Donald's still current wife, is going to end up running the Clippers for the year or two it actually takes for this to play out in court.
The smartest thing Adam Silver did was basically make this an NBA owner's problem going forward. In theory, I bet the NBA bylaws say that any such vote for removal would be confidential, but no owner would/could risk a vote in favor of Sterling that would surely be leaked. You would need 8 owners to abstain from voting in order for the ousting to fail, and I don't see that happening. Abstaining is almost an admission of guilt to some unknown skeletons in your closet, so I see that as pretty unlikely. Yesterday Mark Cuban called it a slippery slope to oust an owner in this manner, but I think he was just covering his own ass. He came out strongly in favor of Silver's decision today. I'm really just excited for Donald Sterling to go out in a hail of gunfire dragging the NBA down with him. And imagine if they make him sell to Magic.
UPDATE -- I just saw that the NBA Player's Association released a statement after Silver's announcement claiming the players were going to boycott the playoff games tonight. This was basically everyone's collective reaction to that laughable bullshit.
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