Posted on 09/10/2020 6:40:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Assuming one can still call an owner of a professional basketball team an "owner," this piece is about two of them. Both owners are white and bigoted, but only one was white, bigoted and incredibly stupid.
The first was named Ted Stepien. In 1980, this advertising magnate purchased the abysmal NBA Cleveland Cavaliers. Stepien thought he had a formula for success. White fans, he insisted, preferred to watch white players. The Cavaliers' stadium, at the time, was located between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, in a predominantly white demographical area. Stepien felt fans would come if the players looked like them. In 1981, he told Sport Magazine: "I feel that whites should have a position in the athletic world. Sometimes they've given it up...Professional sports in general would gain greater respect if whites competed more with Blacks in athletics, as much as Blacks want to compete more in the business world."
Stepien stacked the team with white players for the white fans. In 1980, he told a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports writer: "No team should be all white and no team should be all Black, either. That's what bothers me about the NBA: You've got a situation here where Blacks represent little more than 5% of the market, yet most teams are at least 75% Black and the New York Knicks are 100% Black. Teams with that kind of makeup can't possibly draw from a suitable cross-section of fans."
Stepien made a series of bad player trades that hurt the team's competitiveness for years. How bad were his deals? A rival general manager said: "They overestimated the talent of the people they brought in. ... They'll be impressive walking through airports, but they won't play well. ... The vultures were circling. Every club in the league was saying -- I was saying -- 'What can we cook up with them?'"
The team played even worse than before. The team also drew even fewer fans. White fans, Stepien learned, did not enjoy watching white players lose any more than they enjoyed watching Black players lose. Turns out, it was the "lose" part that fans, irrespective of their own race or the race of the players, objected to. Embarrassed, the league pressured him to sell and eventually instituted the "Stepien rule," forbidding any team from trading its first-round pick in consecutive years.
This brings us to the second bigoted owner, Donald Sterling, who owned the NBA Los Angeles Clippers. For a long time, Sterling was content to lose games with a skinny payroll as long as he made a profit. A 2014 article on Grantland, an ESPN-owned website, said: "Since 1981, when he bought the team, Sterling's Clippers have compiled not merely the worst winning percentage in the NBA, but the worst winning percentage in all four major American sports, and that includes several teams that didn't even exist when Sterling first graced the Association with his presence."
A secretly taped 2013 conversation between Sterling and his then-girlfriend was publicly released. The most eye-raising parts have to do with Sterling, then 79 years old, telling his less-than-half-his-age girlfriend that he does not want her attending games with Black people, particularly with former Los Angeles Laker great Magic Johnson. She can "sleep with them," he said, just "don't bring them to my games." As for Johnson, said Sterling, she can "admire him, bring him here, feed him, f--k him ... but don't put him on an Instagram for the whole world to have to see...And don't bring him to my games." Eventually, the league forced Sterling to sell his team.
But in the years right before he lost his team, Sterling decided he wanted to win. Despite his bigotry, nearly all of Sterling's players were Black. His player payroll was among the highest in the league. In 2013, he gave an experienced championship-winning Black coach, Doc Rivers, a three-year, $21 million contract.
The team played even worse than before. The team also drew even fewer fans. White fans, Stepien learned, did not enjoy watching white players lose any more than they enjoyed watching Black players lose. Turns out, it was the "lose" part that fans, irrespective of their own race or the race of the players, objected to. Embarrassed, the league pressured him to sell and eventually instituted the "Stepien rule," forbidding any team from trading its first-round pick in consecutive years.
This brings us to the second bigoted owner, Donald Sterling, who owned the NBA Los Angeles Clippers. For a long time, Sterling was content to lose games with a skinny payroll as long as he made a profit. A 2014 article on Grantland, an ESPN-owned website, said: "Since 1981, when he bought the team, Sterling's Clippers have compiled not merely the worst winning percentage in the NBA, but the worst winning percentage in all four major American sports, and that includes several teams that didn't even exist when Sterling first graced the Association with his presence."
A secretly taped 2013 conversation between Sterling and his then-girlfriend was publicly released. The most eye-raising parts have to do with Sterling, then 79 years old, telling his less-than-half-his-age girlfriend that he does not want her attending games with Black people, particularly with former Los Angeles Laker great Magic Johnson. She can "sleep with them," he said, just "don't bring them to my games." As for Johnson, said Sterling, she can "admire him, bring him here, feed him, f--k him ... but don't put him on an Instagram for the whole world to have to see...And don't bring him to my games." Eventually, the league forced Sterling to sell his team.
But in the years right before he lost his team, Sterling decided he wanted to win. Despite his bigotry, nearly all of Sterling's players were Black. His player payroll was among the highest in the league. In 2013, he gave an experienced championship-winning Black coach, Doc Rivers, a three-year, $21 million contract.
Ted Stepien was an idiot. White fans care about whether their team wins or not. They don’t care about the color of the players. An all-black team that wins would be just fine with the vast majority of them, provided those players weren’t in the fans faces accusing them of being racists.
So suggesting that nba teams should be “diverse” makes an owner “bigoted”?
But for anyone else to demand a faculty, a management team, hockey, golf, et al to become “diverse” is “social justice” admirable etc, That’s “Righteous” Brother
Please do a better job of proof reading before you post. You seem to constantly post with paragraphs repeating (double posted).
“A Tale of Two White, Bigoted Team Owners”
Once every school boy knew “BIGOT” stood for British Invasion of German Occupied Territory.
This writer makes it sound so bad.
Well, perhaps these examples prove that Al Davis had a point; the purpose of a sports team is to win.
"Taking a knee", wearing little decals or the name of a thug killed while fighting the police, or having a march across campus (coughcoughhomeyscoughcough)... all makes about the same amount of sense as fretting over what color someone is or isn't.
"Just win, baby. All that other stuff is distraction." Now what Al left out is something like this: "And oh BTW, just in case anyone has a case of the dumbass, no drug doing, no crime, no excessive drinking, DO respect women and kids, etc. Jeez, we shouldn't have to put up a sign..."
I disagree.
When the Celtics were starting 3 white guys in the 1980s, I was mocked several times by Black guys, and once by a Mexican guy, for cheering for the “white” team.
In the same time period, I also got mocked by a group of Black guys for being a Dallas Cowboy fan (just in that particular game) because Dallas was perceived as a “white” team also.
I thought it would be an article about Ted Turner, who called Christians losers.
I use to be a rabid NBA, NFL and MLB junkie, however, since the league decided to become political. I have decided to boycott all sports NBA, NFL and MLB. I am putting my money in better things than these leagues.
The message of this article is a good one, but the word “bigoted” comes off as a lame attempt to use the left’s vocabilary against them. These owners can best be described as racially biased against whites.
NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB are dead.
Was Sterling really bigoted, or was he just upset that his wife was seen in public with the guys she was cheating with, and they happened to be mostly Black?
It was his girlfriend. After the league took his team, the wife went to court and the girlfriend was forced to give up all her freebies she got from him, including jewelry, property and cars.
He was really bigoted. He’d gotten busted for unfair housing practices in his rentals units multiple times in the years before. He even managed to have it writing which races were not to be rented to and which should just be charged more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.