Steve Ballmer has purchased the Los Angeles Clippers -- at least as far as Donald and Rochelle Sterling are concerned -- for $2 billion.
Many media reports have broken the story late Thursday night, Pacific time.
This, almost certainly, represents about a 9.0 on the NBA's Richter Scale.
At the end of the day, this gets the Sterlings out of the NBA, and, one would think, at first, that will satisfy everybody.
Nope.
There are a number of problems with this sale:
1) Who has the authority to do this in the first place? According to SI.com (from ESPN),
Donald Sterling has now been declared mentally incompetent for his own affairs. This was done today.
I guess my first thought of the matter is: How convenient!!! Rochelle basically gets her husband declared what he almost-certainly IS. The guy is probably dangerously mentally incompetent for what he can do with his money and the like with how far his brain probably
is gone.
So I have no dispute as to the declaration, with how he's been conducting himself.
That said, you would think the NBA would want some degree of words on this, and, not only that, there still is the point that it has become clear that Rochelle Sterling is also no longer welcome in the National Basketball Assocation either...
2) ... which,
according to the main SI report on this subject, is not going to be the case:
"The agreement with Ballmer could also allow Shelly Sterling to maintain some association with the team,
according to ESPN.com. "
That's not going to fly. It has long been speculated that an end-around to try to keep Rochelle Sterling or Donald Sterling somehow involved with the team, and it appears that speculation is correct.
With the NBPA still threatening a strike if at least Donald is not gone, I'd be very pressed to think this includes Rochelle.
So I think this, alone, will torpedo the deal.
3) And then there's the Seattle question.
Yes, Ballmer said this (main SI article, linked above):
“If I get interested in the Clippers, it would be for Los Angeles,”
Ballmer said [earlier this month to the Wall Street Journal
]. “I don’t work anymore, so I have more geographic
flexibility than I did a year, year-and-a half ago. Moving them anywhere
else would be value destructive.”
So, Steve, it's value-destructive enough to keep the Clippers in Los Angeles, and NOT value-destructive enough to create a gaming system that you try to ram through the public at E3 2013 that is not only invasive to the gamer's play, but to their very lives (and then get your ass ripped so badly that you've backtracked so far that the only way you might get equity in the current-generation's video-game console battle is for Sony to effectively bankrupt itself.
In my opinion, Steve Ballmer is a bombastic shyster, and there's no way in Hell I think he would pay $2,000,000,000 for that team and not stab LA in the back as a final FUCK YOU from the Sterlings to LA and the NBA...
In short, I think he's a lying sack of shit.
4) What this sale will (regardless of who ends up owning the team, or what price) do to the landscape of American sports and the franchises with which they are played.
My main-contributor friend came up with a wonderful point earlier tonight -- before the reports of the Ballmer sale:
If the Clippers just went to being worth $2,000,000,000, what does that make even the Jacksonville Jaguars (the LEAST valuable NFL franchise) worth?
(Much less the Cowboys...)
It almost takes any valuable franchise of professional sports in North America, and doubles the value of that franchise instantaneously -- at minimum!!!
And that's going to have a seismic effect on sports in this country.
Getting back to the sale itself, Michael McCann, sports-law expert for SI,
has posted an article with six points the NBA will probably attempt to enforce before this sale would be allowed.
Here are my thoughts on those six points.
1) Sterling's gone from the NBA, and he won't challenge it.
Perhaps the best case (and my friend has already brought this up) for this sale, if all other factors fall in line, the "long national nightmare" of the NBA can be brought to a quick end, with as little mayhem as possible.
I have believed, since the first I heard of the process to try to get a wet-ink signature for the team by the Tuesday 1 PM EDT hearing to throw LACBC out of the NBA, that this sale by the Sterlings was an effort to effectively sue the NBA for trying to throw them out, without suing the NBA for trying to throw them out (because they can't under the Constitution and By-Laws).
Today's developments about Sterling's mental capacity, though they should come as no surprise to anybody, should bring into further question how it took into 2014 before the league finally said "No more!"
And then there's the question as to whether Donald will challenge the fitness ruling Rochelle has received.
On top of that, one has to wonder if this is additional legal maneuvering to basically counteract the charge that his statements are those of LACBC Inc.
Thumbs down, because of the allowance that Rochelle will still have involvement.
2) The Sterling mental ruling doesn't present it's own problems.
Frankly, it presents MANY problems (above and beyond control of this accelerated sale), from not only the act of expelling LACBC Inc., to whether the NBA is, in fact, negligent for allowing LACBC Inc. to stick around so long with such a clearly incompetent (and the jury can now be out as to how legally you take that statement!) owner...
Could somebody with an axe to grind state the NBA, in allowing such an incompetent person to own a team, has violated it's own Duty to Loyalty to put on contests with highest integrity?
Thumbs down, because, unless Donald Sterling is all but dead, I can't see this passing muster on any number of levels!
3) Rochelle Sterling is gone.
Thumbs down, the reports say she will have a role within the Clippers.
4) Releases from the Sterlings against each other ("mutual release") and with the NBA.
And given Donald's "sterling" reputation of lying through his teeth, I don't even think they'd accept a legal release from him at this point, competent or not.
Thumbs down.
The league would need to make sure both Sterlings don't take further action against each other to spurn this sale, and, later, don't sue the NBA for this action (this being not unlike a criminal plea deal -- a release from later action is always considered part of a plea agreement). This, to me, would be against anything Donald is about.
5) The lifetime ban and fine payment stand.
Thumbs down, at least on the fine payment, especially if the incompetency ruling is retroactive to the tapes or beyond -- there could be a challenge that he was out of his mind when he said them, and is, hence, not responsible for his conduct.
6) The team must stay in Los Angeles.
This is probably the one step of the situation that I can only call on personal bias on.
I can only state that I cannot believe Ballmer would pay $2 billion and keep the team in LA on my feelings with respect to his conduct at Microsoft, especially the spewing bullshit he pulled last year at the announcement of the XBox One.
I do not believe the NBA will approve this sale, on any number of grounds, as I outline above.
I do not believe the intention of this sale is for the NBA to approve it.
I believe this is an attempt by the Sterlings, knowing that they still have the league by the balls to a certain extent, to maximize their legal leverage.
