Posted on 06/03/2014 3:15:16 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The league has never kicked out someone for speech before, but the era of smartphones and political correctness may change that.
With the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers franchise from Shelly Sterling to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer apparently on the league’s fast track, there really needs to be an assessment of what exactly happened to Donald Sterling and why he was banned from the National Basketball Association after a privately recorded conversation which was filled with racist and sexist remarks ended up on TMZ. How the tape ended up with Harvey Levin is being investigated by the Los Angeles County District Attorney but it surfaced and jolted the sports and pop culture world.
Dallas Mavericks’ owner Cuban sounded the alarm after the Sterling suspension.
"Again, there’s no excuse for his positions. There’s no excuse for what he said. There’s no excuse for anybody to support racism. There’s no place for it in our league, but there’s a very, very, very slippery slope.”
Last week in an interview with The Daily Beast, Cuban clarified but reaffirmed his warning.
“I wasn’t referring to other owners with the slippery slope comment,” he said. “But to all of us. Players are far more at risk than owners. We have lawyers. Lots of different interests. Players for the most part have one source of income. The risk isn’t the leagues. Those are collective bargaining agreement issues. The risk is social and fan, i.e. boycotts etc.”
“If Riley Cooper happened in the NBA this summer, it would be a horrible event.”
Riley Cooper is a National Football League player who was caught on tape last summer threatening to “fight every nigger” at a Kenny Chesney concert.
Cooper apologized and was barred from Eagles’ team activities for two days.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Play touch Football down at the park.Heck you can bring your own beer.
Not if dey be Black.
Mark Cuban was one of those fanatical leftists who literally thought Bush flooded New Orleans and brought down the World Trade Towers.
Now he is amazed that the tactics he employed is used against ordinary people??
If there was never another BB game played I wouldn’t miss it.
yep. There are things to admire about Cuban, but he was a looney toon about Iraq and other events during the Bush years. He and Steve Nash both made it hard to like the Mavs for a period there.
Then Cuban brought the Kardashian freak show to Dallas, when he brought in Lamar Odom.
What will they do if Lebron James gets caught on tape yellin’ “Kill Whitey?” ...
Just sayin’ ...
70% of bball players are black. unless they’re gonna toss out black racists cuban’s worries are overblown.
Good post, you beat me to it.
I can't stand the SOB ........
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The players aren’t at any particular risk. Silver was out to get Sterling, and did. The rules are selectively enforced, it’s the American way.
Hell, when they first suggested that he'd have to sell the team, I told someone, he should say, "Fine! $2.37 Billion!" What I thought would be an "outrageous" number. What did I know?
It would have been a lot more fun to have Sterling hire teams of lawyers and investigators to track down every racist comment by a player or owner to demonstrate the unequal application of the rules. I would think he had a lot of leverage considering the disaster for the league if the average white fan caught on to what the players think of him.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of cash flow for the NBA originates with “white” people.
I don’t know which will implode first—The NFL or the NBA.
Either way, there will be a lot fewer Black millionaires when both organizations are on the ash heap of history.
Don’t suppose that’s occurred to any of the fools currently pi$$ing in their own sandboxes.
I don’t know much about him except for his role on Shark Tank. He is really good on that show.
He does have a point , just very very very old one
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