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well said, Kareem (Donald Sterling discussion thread)

bobknightfan said:
That has nothing at all to do with the 5-year contract that Paul signed last year. Chris Paul was under no obligation at all to sign that 5-year contract.
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Except it wasn't a contract he could get anywhere else IIRC. Wasn't that deal still under the old CBA? The Clips could offer him a bigger max deal than anyone else.
 
BillBrasky said:
I wouldn't go as far as 2&2 did but the NBA absolutely rebranded itself as more corporate America and family friendly. The press conference/sideline dress code is a part of that.
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I think they got more charismatic players. As much as people rag on Iverson, Duncan was probably just as much of a problem by not being an outgoing guy like DAWIGHT Howard. Duncan is a great ambassador for the game, but he has almost always chosen not to be.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Did you send your social security checks back to GWB?
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giphy.gif
 
bobknightfan said:
You are just making my point....which is that money trumps all this other stuff when push comes to shove. And in professional sports, it's not just "money", but "obscene money". It's not like Paul was going to be in a bread line if he took a contract somewhere else for $90 million instead of $107 million. Paul didn't care what kind of a person that Donald Sterling was....all he was interested in was the $107 million. He would have signed that contract instead of one that paid $106.9 million from another "good" owner. The money was all that mattered. All this other stuff is just for chat boards, blogs & the media to have something to write about. The players don't like what Sterling said, I'm sure, but they don't dislike it enough to sacrifice a dollar from their eight-figure contracts because of it.
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What's your point?
 
bobknightfan said:
If you can connect that to anything we are talking about here, I would be interested in your reasoning about the matter.
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It's a larger problem with the mentality of Chris Paul "took Sterling's money" to play basketball. It's not necessarily Sterling's money. CP increased the value of the franchise by much more than he was being paid. If anything, Sterling took money from CP. In the same way that your SS checks were coming from someone you disagreed with, but they were your money. Chris Paul was traded to the Clips (instead of the Lakers), and he took the best deal on the table for him and his family. There's no reason to consider that hypocritical behavior. It's a pretty ignorant argument.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Not sure what that has to do with anything. The NBA either disapproves of certain behavior and is willing to punish the offender for that behavior within its power, or it doesn't. I think choosing to punish behavior that, while abhorable, is nonetheless an opinion while not punishing or (relatively speaking) minimally punishing actual violent crimes sets them up for future image problems. If the position is that he is being punished for the criminal housing discrimination then okay, but neither the law nor most people would put housing discrimination on par with assault or gun charges, so the punishment is way out of whack when looking at the crimes. Again I'm not saying that Sterling's punishment was harsh, I'm saying that this forces the NBA to rachet up punishment for violent crimes or else have a continuing image problem on their hands that, literally, the inmates run the asylum.
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The NBA does punish players once they have been found guilty or plead out. Arenas was suspended for months. Spree was punished. Many other have been suspended over the years.

You are simply wrong.
 
bobknightfan said:
Well, if all that really matters is money...which you just now admitted was the case...why are we even talking about all this other stuff, which...by your own admission, doesn't even matter?
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Don't be so dense.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/clippers/2014/04/28/clippers-sterling-state-farm-carmax-withdraw-sponsorship/8413967/

As the condemnation of Sterling and his racially insensitive comments spread Monday, major financial supporters of the NBA franchise announced they were severing ties with the Clippers.

In rapid succession, the mass exodus included used car seller CarMax, State Farm Insurance, Kia Motors America, airline Virgin America, P. Diddy's water brand, AQUAHydrate, Red Bull, Yokohama tires and Mercedes-Benz.
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http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/4/29/5666862/warriors-planned-boycott-clippers-game-donald-sterling-lifetime-ban

The Warriors were going to go through pre-game warm-ups and take part in the national anthem and starting line-up introductions. They were going to take the floor for the jump ball, dapping up the Clippers players as is customary before games.

Then once the ball was in the air, they were just going to walk off. All 15 of them.
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bobknightfan said:
OK, bmoneydeac, DeaconSig, DV7, Townie & DeacFreak07.....
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Yes. I am so worried about being politically correct. That's why I mind my Ps and Qs at all times, I suppose.

I'll ignore the rest of your post about money and the NBA blah blah blah because you are an old moron and I don't feel you worthy of my time today.
 
keeper is the king, but bkf is pretty damn strong.....
 
bobknightfan said:
My point is that in professional sports, all that really matters is money. All this other stuff is only fluff.
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That's too simplistic. Money matters most to nearly all workers in nearly every profession. That's because we work first and foremost to get paid money. To make high-handed moral judgments based on that reality is of little value. But to say that nothing else matters at all is silly. I doubt that Paul and Rivers would've been on the Clippers next season had Sterling still actively owned the team. It's one thing to have a vague understanding that your ultimate boss, who you rarely if ever interact with, is a racist. Personally, I would not turn down millions for something so tangentially related to me at the time I was offered the money.

However, it's quite different to be present and a team leader when a public racist diatribe appears on every media outlet in the country, implicating your current job. Something that was quietly in the background -- a thing in the abstract for guys like Paul and Rivers as they went about their careers -- is now unequivocally at the forefront. Every person on earth has had an ugly reality that they ignored in the past -- because it didn't touch their life in any real way -- suddenly take on a new and accentuated relevance in a different context. That happened to every Clipper employee this week. To react to that new atmosphere isn't hypocritical, it's simply an acknowledgment of its new immediacy and importance. It's okay for the Clippers to be outraged by the outrageous even if they didn't react before. Tipping points exists for people, and those come most often when events directly affect them. To chastise Paul or any other current Clipper for taking offense here, and demanding action, is nonsense.
 
NEWSFLASH: Professionals care about money.


So glad we have these boards so that I could learn about that little tidbit. Life changing.
 
bobknightfan said:
Well, if all that really matters is money...which you just now admitted was the case...why are we even talking about all this other stuff, which...by your own admission, doesn't even matter?
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Because Donald Sterling was costing the other owners money.

I don't think I would like Donald Sterling personally, although I have never met the man. But I could not care less whether or not he is the owner of a basketball team- there are racists, assholes, and racist assholes in all walks of life and in every industry. One more or less is almost inconsequential. And for whatever offensive personal views he had, the guy wasn't discriminating against black folks in running his basketball team. So again, I don't care much about his personal views, other that to note they are pretty offensive (something even BKF would agree with, I would imagine).

But this is not about Chris Paul, its not about Mark Jackson, and its not about any other player or coach in the league. This is about the ownership of the NBA. Whether they have wanted to get rid of Sterling for years or whether they were just really scared about the long-term monetary losses potentially staring them in the face due to Sterling's comments, they decided they wanted him gone. And as long as they did it within the rules of the league and without violating any laws, then more power too them.

And Bob- forget the "too much money in sports" refrain for a bit- while it may be true, its not some sort of negative against Chris Paul that he was offended by what his owner said. Whether he knew or didn't know about Sterling's prior issues is also irrelevant. I worked for folks who had what I considered socially abhorent views during the early years of my law practice. I did it because I wanted and needed a job. And I wouldn't say I left solely because of the views espoused by one of the partners at that firm, but one particular comment did give me the nudge I probably needed to go somewhere else. You never know which straw will break the camel's back.

People need to chill out. This ain't about reverse racism. It ain't about what happens if Kirk Hinrich gets busted for driving while drunk, or if Dwayne Wade makes an offensive comment about Jason Collins. And it sure as hell ain't about the 1st Amendment. This is nothing more than a business (the NBA) deciding that one member of that business was no longer wanted and taking steps to remove that member.
 
Depending on who you believe, Sterling stands to make close to a billion dollars with this sale. That would be enough to make a lot of folks go quietly.

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.
 
DeaconSig said:
Because Donald Sterling was costing the other owners money.

I don't think I would like Donald Sterling personally, although I have never met the man. But I could not care less whether or not he is the owner of a basketball team- there are racists, assholes, and racist assholes in all walks of life and in every industry. One more or less is almost inconsequential. And for whatever offensive personal views he had, the guy wasn't discriminating against black folks in running his basketball team. So again, I don't care much about his personal views, other that to note they are pretty offensive (something even BKF would agree with, I would imagine).
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Elgin Baylor would disagree but otherwise I agree with your take.
 
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