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well said, Kareem (Donald Sterling discussion thread)

TheTwinAndreBen said:
You think that the group of elitist douchebags that comprise NBA ownership are going to crowdsource ownership? Give me a break. It is much to precious of a boys club to have a rogue in there, especially considering the books are top secret.
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Ownership groups are not uncommon at all.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
Seriously? Its not like the dude owns all the shitty apartments in LA. Tell that to the family of the guy Jason Williams shot in the chest.
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Whose actions have a more harmful overall effect.

The guy at HSBC who willfully turned a blind eye to money laundering for drug cartels or the dealer on the corner who sold a kid crack that he later OD'd on?
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
I heard the contraction option discussed on CNN yesterday and today. The reality is we dont know whether any compensation would be awarded in contraction because, again, the constitution and the bylaws are secret.

Also you dont think he could find a court to levy a temporary injunction? This is a contract dispute. Either the NBA and or Sterling are fulfilling their obligations under their mutual contract or not.

Dumbo Ears Silver is not a judge, what he says is not the law. Ryan Braun was able to stay on the field when a judge determined that MLB hadn't followed its own rules. Not sure how this is different. It's not black and white.
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There is no legal procedure or hidden bylaw whereby that the NBA could simply stiff Sterling of a billion dollars. It's not possible, and I challenge you to find any source that suggests otherwise and post it here. You must've misheard. The league was able to consider contraction for the Hornets, but only because the league already owned the franchise after paying out George Shinn. And in that case, Shinn couldn't even make payroll, yet he still got fair market value for his franchise. A vote of an association's membership cannot simply remove a legal asset from another member without fair compensation. Sterling will get paid his franchise's value literally no matter what he tries to do (unless he racked up a billion dollars in fines, I suppose). No association bylaw could trump the basic sanctimony of property embedded in our legal system. Rules can be agreed up to establish and govern membership, but if you take something from someone under one of those rules, you have to pay fair compensation for it. There's no other option.

Courts don't levy injunctions against voluntary associations that treat their punishment decrees as arbitration rulings, like the NBA does. Lester Munson covered that in his last point here: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10852199/challenge-donald-sterling

Adam Silver is a lawyer, and he got the job he currently holds by being an expert on the rules governing the NBA, associations of this nature, their internal mechanisms, labor relations, etc. Sterling will now be searching for a lawyer with half the expertise that Silver already holds in this area of law. Silver is not fucking scared of Donald Sterling's legal expertise. He's pretty sharp on these matters, and I wouldn't bet on him having not fully covered his bases. Ryan Braun stayed on the field by way of the agreed-upon appeal mechanism baseball had in place regarding PED suspensions. For Sterling, there is no appeal process, by agreement of the ownership--that expressly stated in the governing documents (see that Munson article again). That's why it's different. He has no recourse, and agreed to that rule. No one is going to relieve him of the dictates of his own agreement.
 
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RChildress107 said:
Just because the harmful effects of Sterling's housing discrimination aren't as readily apparent and directly related as a player beating his wife, they exist and the sum of those effects over the span of 30 years is worse than any single violent crime committed by an NBA player.
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I would strongly disagree. Sterling's alleged housing discrimination occurred in the context of leasing medium to high-end apartments, including in Beverly Hills. I'm not saying his actions weren't wrong or illegal, but if you can afford a Beverly Hills apartment from a racist, then you can likely afford a Beverly Hills apartment from a non-racist. I get that systemic housing discrimination has serious effects, but to equate Sterling's housing discrimination (as one owner or ownership group or however he was acting) to actual assaults would be to assume that there was nowhere else for his "victims" to rent, which simply isn't the case when talking about the apartments in question. You can't seriously equate the harm of Sterling denying people from only his apartments in a city with 3.5 million housing units to Lance Stephenson throwing his girlfriend down the stairs or Dante Cunningham strangling his girlfriend and slamming her head into the wall, or Kendrick Perkins punching random people in the face.
 
Irrelevant comparison. Show me where Sterlings prior actions had the effect of death. Or really anything more serious than relocation (with compensation after the record verdict lawsuit was settled).
 
ArlingtonDeac said:
I wouldn't worry. The only thing Sterling will lose is the right to continue as a member of this association. He'll be paid full market value for his franchise, making his damages, even were he to establish some form of mistreatment -- a long-shot, iMO - a manageable number for the NBA to pay out should they lose. But they won't lose here. Unprecedented or not, I think they have ample legal and PR cover for this decision, and a lot of clout to make sure Sterling doesn't accomplish much. They'll probably make more money in the long run, whatever spoons Sterling decides to bang these next few years.
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And it is not like Sterling won't be having a lawsuit or two on being made to sell this team. We don't know if they can constitutionally make him sell the team over an unconstitutional taping of a conversation. Even if he did admit to having it.
 
Whether the conversation was illegally taped or not is irrelevant to the NBA's right to act. The league had no hand in the recording, and once it was made public, it's public, and the NBA can certainly act to protect its interests, and punish Sterling based on damage to the league resulting from his acknowledged statements. The secret taping issue is a red herring as far the NBA is concerned.

And for some perspective, keep in mind that the NBA just paid these guys 500 million to quash an ABA franchise right granted to the owners of a contracted team, in 1976, without even flinching. They aren't quaking at the thought of a Sterling lawsuit. A hassle? Undoubtedly. A terrifying possibility? No. Any damages that Sterling might possibly win -- and again, I doubt he wins anything -- would be chickenfeed in the larger NBA fiscal picture. Solving this PR problem was way more valuable to the brand.
 
bigdoublezero said:
OK, you want to make a bet that the Clippers won't successfully forfeit any games or lock out its players? I'll take that bet.
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TheTwinAndreBen said:
I didnt say he would be successful. However, for him to go down without a fight would be uncharacteristic. I dont think it can be assumed that (i) Sterling doesnt have options to fight and (ii) the League is standing on firm legal ground.
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Yeah, didn't think so.
 
ArlingtonDeac said:
Whether the conversation was illegally taped or not is irrelevant to the NBA's right to act. The league had no hand in the recording, and once it was made public, it's public, and the NBA can certainly act to protect its interests, and punish Sterling based on damage to the league resulting from his acknowledged statements. The secret taping issue is a red herring as far the NBA is concerned.

And for some perspective, keep in mind that the NBA just paid these guys 500 million to quash an ABA franchise right granted to the owners of a contracted team, in 1976, without even flinching. They aren't quaking at the thought of a Sterling lawsuit. A hassle? Undoubtedly. A terrifying possibility? No. Any damages that Sterling might possibly win -- and again, I doubt he wins anything -- would be chickenfeed in the larger NBA fiscal picture. Solving this PR problem was way more valuable to the brand.
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They didn't exactly "quash" an ABA owners franchise rights from the Silva Brothers. They have been trying to "quash" the Silva Brothers for years & years to no avail and have paid them hundreds of billions as they had an IRON CLAD contract that the NBA could not "quash." The Silva Brothers just went ahead and said What the Hell and settled with the NBA and will still get over a Billion dollars over the years in this payout. They made out quite well from their little investment and from taking on the vaunted NBA with limitless bucks. I don't think Sterling & his Billion is afraid of the NBA either. He didn't make those $$$ by being afraid of people.
 
TheReff said:
They didn't exactly "quash" an ABA owners franchise rights from the Silva Brothers. They have been trying to "quash" the Silva Brothers for years & years to no avail and have paid them hundreds of billions as they had an IRON CLAD contract that the NBA could not "quash." The Silva Brothers just went ahead and said What the Hell and settled with the NBA and will still get over a Billion dollars over the years in this payout. They made out quite well from their little investment and from taking on the vaunted NBA with limitless bucks. I don't think Sterling & his Billion is afraid of the NBA either. He didn't make those $$$ by being afraid of people.
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I don't think you understand the points I was making. In fact, you are repeating my earlier points, which I brought up the Silva brothers situation to emphasize. 1) The NBA can't just steal Sterling's investment, because they have a contract. So he'll get his franchise sale price in any scenario. 2) The NBA also can afford to pay any possible damages Sterling might win in a hail mary lawsuit, because the league is incredibly wealthy, as evidence by their ho-hum 500M payout to the Silva brothers just to get them out of the picture (mostly). In your head, what did you think I was arguing there?

Sterling can fear or not fear whatever he wants. He's not going to change what just happened, and he's just suing a richer entity that can fight back easily and effectively, and he will probably lose. Fire away, Donald, but your time in the NBA ended yesterday.
 
ArlingtonDeac said:
There is no legal procedure or hidden bylaw whereby that the NBA could simply stiff Sterling of a billion dollars. It's not possible, and I challenge you to find any source that suggests otherwise and post it here. You must've misheard. The league was able to consider contraction for the Hornets, but only because the league already owned the franchise after paying out George Shinn. And in that case, Shinn couldn't even make payroll, yet he still got fair market value for his franchise. A vote of an association's membership cannot simply remove a legal asset from another member without fair compensation. Sterling will get paid his franchise's value literally no matter what he tries to do (unless he racked up a billion dollars in fines, I suppose). No association bylaw could trump the basic sanctimony of property embedded in our legal system. Rules can be agreed up to establish and govern membership, but if you take something from someone under one of those rules, you have to pay fair compensation for it. There's no other option.

Courts don't levy injunctions against voluntary associations that treat their punishment decrees as arbitration rulings, like the NBA does. Lester Munson covered that in his last point here: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10852199/challenge-donald-sterling

Adam Silver is a lawyer, and he got the job he currently holds by being an expert on the rules governing the NBA, associations of this nature, their internal mechanisms, labor relations, etc. Sterling will now be searching for a lawyer with half the expertise that Silver already holds in this area of law. Silver is not fucking scared of Donald Sterling's legal expertise. He's pretty sharp on these matters, and I wouldn't bet on him having not fully covered his bases. Ryan Braun stayed on the field by way of the agreed-upon appeal mechanism baseball had in place regarding PED suspensions. For Sterling, there is no appeal process, by agreement of the ownership--that expressly stated in the governing documents (see that Munson article again). That's why it's different. He has no recourse, and agreed to that rule. No one is going to relieve him of the dictates of his own agreement.
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First of all, Munson hasn't practiced law in 30 years. Quoting him is similar to quoting Bilas.

Disagree on a few points. I'm not saying that he won't get paid. What I am saying is that your premise is based on the fact that the NBA has complied with their contractual duties.

If you want to assume Munson knows what he is talking about, the Owners can terminate a membership with a 3/4 vote if:

when an owner "fails to fulfill" a "contractual obligation" in "such a way as to affect the [NBA] or its members adversely."
Silver and the owners could assert that Sterling's statements violated the constitution's requirements to conduct business on a "reasonable" and "ethical" level.

This is a highly subjective standard. Again its not black and white.

Also, he says: The constitution provides in Paragraph 24(m) that a commissioner's decision shall be "final, binding, and conclusive" and shall be as final as an award of arbitration. It is almost impossible to find a judge in the United States judicial system who would set aside an award of arbitration.

That last sentence might be true if there actually WAS an award of arbitration, and not just a one party decision where there was no hearing and Sterling was neither represented nor was given the chance to plead his case. Its not the same.

Let's not forget that Jonathan Vilma, a man of much lesser resources, who lost an actual arbitration hearing allowing Goddell to suspend him, was able to get the commissioner to back off the punishment by using other legal avenues.

And finally, Braun stayed on the field because MLB again, violated their contract with the players regarding testing. Independent parties can agree to almost anything that is legal in a contract, but that doesnt mean that they can write in clauses that let them ignore the contracts own provisions.
 
bigdoublezero said:
Yeah, didn't think so.
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I never offered a bet, you did clownshoes. I suggested avenues that the guy might take to try and fight. I never said any would be successful. Chalk it up to another win for the 99lb weakling club though! We own these messageboards! (High fives no real life friends)
 
As part of the NBA's operating agreement, the commissioner's decision regarding punishment -- the fine and lifetime ban -- is final, unappealable, and is, in fact, given the legal force of an arbitration agreement by group agreement. It will not be set aside no matter what Sterling tries in an outside court. Sterling forewent his right to a hearing, representation, appeal, etc. by contract. He has no right to appeal, period. He has no right to formal arbitration, period. He agreed to those rules as an owner of an NBA franchise. The other examples you mentioned -- players in other pro leagues -- are cases where arbitration was included in the package of rights the players had as part of their collective bargaining agreement. They have no bearing here. Sterling does not possess such a right, because he explicitly agreed not have such a right years ago, and can't escape it now. The situations simply aren't the same.

Sterling is gone as an active entity in the NBA. The lifetime ban is unassailable. The only question is regarding the league's ability to force him to sell the team rather than creep along as a silent partner. I think Silver has the authority and it will hold up, for the reasons I've stated. Cheers.
 
TheTwinAndreBen said:
I wonder though, given his past, how ugly he could make this. He could forfeit the rest of the games for the Clips, lock them out, etc.
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Never in this post do you intimate that Sterling would try but fail. He can't do either of those things, he wouldn't attempt to do them, and you know it.

How about "... given his past, how ugly he could make this. He could call up Vladimir Putin and have him fly to Los Angeles and kick Doc Rivers in the balls!"

I mean, I'm not saying he would be successful. ... Learn to read GEED!
 
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