LOS ANGELES — A stream of sponsors cut ties with the Los Angeles Clippers as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver prepared to mete out sanctions against team owner Donald Sterling for remarks about blacks attributed to him on an audio recording posted online over the weekend.
At least one fellow owner has called for Sterling’s ouster ahead of Silver’s scheduled Tuesday morning news conference, where the new commissioner, just three months into the job, will address one of the most unsettling crises the NBA has faced.
While NBA bylaws give the pro basketball league the power to expel owners outright in limited circumstances, experts said Silver could hit the Clippers’ owner with a sizable fine and a lengthy suspension, perhaps with the intent of pressuring the real estate magnate to sell the franchise he has owned for 33 years.
“He’ll tell Sterling, ‘If you choose to stay, I won’t let you go to any games,'” predicted Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economic professor and former consultant to the NBA Players Association. “‘I won’t let you make any personnel decisions. I won’t let you communicate with the general manager, hire anybody in the front office or talk to the media. You could do that, or sell the team … and walk away with a $700 million capital gain.'”
Sterling paid $12 million for the team, which Forbes magazine now values at $575 million. Some in the sports world believe it could be sold for as much as $1 billion.
Speculation on what action Silver will announce came three days after the gossip website TMZ posted an audio recording of a man it identified as Sterling, chastising a female friend for publicly associating with black people. The conversation took place after the woman, V. Stiviano, posted an Instagram photo of herself posing with Los Angeles Lakers great Magic Johnson.
Criticism of Sterling continued at the start of a new week, with at least 14 Clippers sponsors saying they had terminated or suspended their relationship with the team.
Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander told Silver that he wants Sterling out of the NBA, telling the commissioner he should stab “a sword” into the heart of Sterling’s ownership of the Clippers, the Houston Chronicle reported.
“I thought that there’s got to be a way to disrupt him from owning the team,” said Alexander, who after 20 years owning the Rockets is one of the longest tenured owners in the NBA. “I gave him the sword to deal with this. I said, ‘Let the players become free agents.’
“If you’re a player in the NBA, you don’t want to play for somebody like that. If you worked for a company, you would walk away and say, ‘I’m gone.” I think the players should have that right.”
Alexander told the newspaper that the goal was not to break up the Clippers but to back Sterling into a corner from which he will choose to sell the Clippers.
“This kind of behavior can’t be allowed in the NBA by owners, players or anybody,” Alexander told the newspaper. “This guy has no place in the family of the NBA. Whatever it takes, we have to make sure this kind of event never happens again.”
The NBA’s bylaws allow for owners to be expelled from the league, though that power is reserved for limited circumstances — financial inability to operate, gambling on a team or fixing games, said Gabe Feldman, director of the Sports Law Program at Tulane University.
Under Article 35 of the NBA constitution, the commissioner could indefinitely suspend an owner for “conduct prejudicial or detrimental to the association,” according to Irwin Raij, a sports business attorney with Foley & Lardner in New York.
Team ownership is a privilege, not a right and damage done to the cartel of 30 teams and owners — such as the loss of advertising and sponsorships — can be cited as the first evidence of harm to the NBA, Raij said.
“The NBA is a very powerful brand. These statements clearly are prejudicial and can negatively impact the business of the NBA,” Raij said. “As a result, I think the commissioner has a very strong argument to say the statements are detrimental to the league.”
Several experts said that an indefinite suspension — barring Sterling from the arena, or overseeing management of the team — might be enough to persuade the owner to give up his hold on the team.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called on the league to take the most “severe action … they can.”
Garcetti welcomed a change in ownership and said that, for the time being, the NBA should suspend Sterling for the remainder of the playoffs for comments unacceptable in a city where many people came “escaping prejudice, racism, discrimination.”
And if any more evidence was needed that the owner had put a serious crimp in his relationship with his team, one Clippers player wondered in a conversation with the Los Angeles Times on Monday whether he could get out of his contract by claiming Sterling had created a “hostile work environment.”
Sports law expert Gabe Feldman says there is no clause in the collective bargaining agreement that would allow players to void contracts because an owner made racist comments.
Some NBA agents said it was highly unlikely they would send any of their free-agent players to the Clippers if Sterling still owned the team.
“I could see where guys would say, ‘I don’t want to go to that place,'” one agent said.
Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups, a former Clipper, had strong comments on ESPN Radio, saying there is no way he would have played in Sunday’s Game 4.
“It’s more than basketball,” Billups said. “It’s bigger than Game 3, or Game 4 or Game 5 of a first-round series. Billups played for the Clippers in 2011-12 and 2012-13.
“It’s really disheartening, to hear what I heard,” Billups said. “Really, my stomach was in knots, listening to that conversation. It’s crazy. He was always pleasant to me and anybody else around, you know, any of the players. You wouldn’t think, what you heard, on that tape … at the same time, when you hear that, you gotta say, ‘OK, well, that’s who he is.'”
Sterling maintained his silence Monday. The team issued a statement Saturday, suggesting that the audio recording might have been altered and that the feelings allegedly expressed by Sterling were the “antithesis” of his true beliefs.
The statement also suggested that Stiviano leaked the tape (which she has denied) in retaliation against Sterling because his wife filed a lawsuit accusing her of embezzling more than $1.8 million.
Players for several NBA teams said they would show solidarity with the Clippers players by wearing their shooting shirts inside out, as the Clippers did before their losing playoff game Sunday in Oakland.
Emotions promised to be high before Tuesday night’s fifth game against the Golden State Warriors. Fans have lived through decades of mostly losing basketball and this team was believed to be a championship contender.
Clippers coach Doc Rivers said Monday he had slept for only 45 minutes the night before the team’s Sunday game and the team clearly seemed distracted during a blowout loss. Rivers said he is struggling to decide whether he or a member of the team should address the crowd before Game 5.
“We want to make the right decisions here,” Rivers said. “We’re doing our very best to try to do that. If we feel like that is something that will help our fans, then it will be done. If we feel like that’s something they don’t need, then we won’t do it.”
Tribune news services contributed.