The last time the Clippers were investigated... or the last time

History is a cycle of reincarnation, at least for the 40-year-old unlucky Chris Paul. Paul has experienced four times in his 19-year career, and now he has been away from Los Angeles for most of his life. He still has to assist in the investigation when he returns. But I don’t know if Chris Paul will recall the distant afternoon when the head coach took him to hold a player meeting.

In September 2013, Steviano, a Mexican-born mistress of Clippers owner Sterling, uploaded a photo with Lakers' legendary Magic Johnson on Instagram; about half a year later, the well-known gossip website TMZ broke out between Sterling and Steviano on the matter:

"You can sleep with black people, you can take them home, you can do whatever you want. But I only have one small request, don't put these things in public to spread, don't bring them into my venue to hype. On your dirty Instagram, you don't need to post photos with black people everywhere. Even the magician can't do it."

Many years later, in the fx drama "Sterling's Rhyme", Sterling's mistress turned against him and was exaggerated as the product of family marriage conflicts and emotional entanglements: this recording was leaked, but in fact, the mistress deliberately committed it under the pressure of the palace queen Shirley Sterling - the woman in the Vanity Fair did not have a little white rabbit, she was unhappy and she wanted to make trouble, so the recording came to TMZ.

The famous scenes were restored in the online drama "Sterling's Rhyme" produced by FX TV in 2024. Of course, there are few sentences in the classics. The actors may not dare to say that

At this time, TMZ's performance in gossip in the entertainment industry was quite prominent. The news of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston's death was first released, but in the sports circle, it was still the foundation-building period when they first looked at the path. At that time, TMZ's reporters didn't even know that Sterling was the owner of the Clippers, but their excellent news sense made them leak some recordings before the end of April 25 (the next day was Sterling's 80th birthday, which was too cruel...). The complete recording was released on the 27th, and finally this big news was created.

TMZ chose to first reveal the key part of the recordings. Most of the reasons why it may be that Stiviano has many "spoken" fishing enforcement in the long recording. Sterling initially only expressed the trouble that the mistress may bring to the team and herself, but the conversation went out of control in Q&A one by one, and Sterling's disgust for black people was infinitely amplified.

TMZ started by focusing on exposing the key points that directly triggered social conflicts, which had the effect of "squirting directly without following the process". By the time the full recording was disclosed, it was completely unimportant to the occasion and how Sterling said these words on all walks of life and the NBA. What was important was that the words came from him, and he happened to be a racist with a dark history with a dictionary that was thick and almost clear.

is also the web drama "Sterling's Rhyme", Doug Rivers and JJ Redick, played by Lao Mo in "The Matrix", complained about Sterling's ridiculousness

This is not the first time Sterling went crazy. A few years ago, before Redick joined the Clippers, Sterling tried to prevent Rivers from completing the signing on the grounds that "has hated white people, they are not worth that much money." As early as 2002, the security manager of a real estate company under Sterling claimed that he had heard Sterling say "Black people are full of stinking and extremely swelling."

Sterling's men have long been accustomed to his madness and stinginess. He will find a way to pay back after fans hit the midfield shot (double or nothing), and the Clippers staff also revealed that Sterling would instruct the Clippers' home technical station operators to deliberately lower the technical statistics of the home team players, so that the team can spend less money when renewing the contract...

After being fired by the Clippers in 2009, former Lakers legend Elgin Baylor also sued Sterling and the NBA. Not only did he reveal that his annual salary was only $350,000 and the then white head coach Dunleavy's salary was as high as $5.4 million a year, he even claimed in the lawsuit that Sterling hoped that the Clippers were "a bunch of black poor boys from southern Africa and white head coaches."

The bitter and revengeful Baylor

, but it has to be said that even so, Sterling's mistress Stiviano gave Sterling enough time to respond. A 30-page accusation document released by the NBA in May 2014 showed that as early as April 9 (two weeks before the revelation), Stiviano gave a copy of the recording to a Clippers employee. The team's president Andy Rother then got the recording, but he deleted the recording according to Sterling's instructions. The document pointed out that the Clippers believe that the recording is just a "dialogue between two adults" and has no impact on the NBA.

After the recording caused a lot of trouble, Roser issued an urgent article on April 26 to express Sterling's apology for the matter, but the problem was that the statement secretly mentioned "We don't know whether the recording is legal, nor do we know whether it has been tampered with."

Obviously, all sectors of society will not pay for this level of crisis public relations, and Sterling wasted the golden time of self-rescue.

Soon, Kobe bombarded Sterling: "I won't play for Sterling"; James said: "If I were playing for Sterling, I would choose to strike"; celebrities including Jordan and Magic also fired one after another; Earl Loyd, the first black player in NBA history, concisely used "stupid X" to describe Sterling; Obama, who was visiting Malaysia, used a press conference to say that American society is still troubled by racial conflicts, and believes that the NBA can handle this incident properly.

As an old man said: A person's destiny must of course rely on self-struggle, but it also takes into account the historical itinerary. Sterling was beaten by a wall, but on the one hand, it was because this old boy had long been infamous among NBA players, but on the other hand, it was determined by the times. There were too many contradictions between this year and that period..

Xiao Hua is so confident that he has done most of the team boss jobs in two days: after the punishment was announced, team owners including Bobcats boss Jordan, Magic boss DeVos, Knicks boss Dolan and Heat boss Arison all supported them. Even though Xiao Hua has received all the support of the team without the rumors, the league has stood at a moral commanding height among all sectors of praise. After the press conference, the players' union also provided insurance for the voting work that kicked Sterling. Roger Mason, then vice chairman of the Players' Union, said: If the NBA does not force Sterling to sell the Clippers, the players are ready to strike in the next three playoff games, and in addition, the players also need the bosses to give the specific time to impeach Sterling. Mason also said threateningly that the NBA Council's vote on forcing Sterling to sell the team would be surprised if it was not passed unanimously.

After Sterling was announced to have a lifetime ban, the words "WE ARE ONE" appeared on the homepage of the Clippers' official website, indicating that they supported the punishment and completely cooled down the civil rights movement.

At that time, the Clippers' homepage

The league basically told Sterling's wife to find the next buyer as soon as possible, but Sterling was still unstoppable during this period:

1. He first found his mistress on the third day after the incident, hoping to buy her with a certain reward and told NBA investigators that the recording he provided was forged. (This time the behavior of giving money has become one of the allegations in the league)

2. The team tried to use Sterling to carry out public relations with prostate cancer, but the media revealed that Sterling refused to help the Clippers assistant coach Kim Hughes, who also had prostate cancer, ten years ago. It was the Clippers player who invested 70,000 yuan to help the latter (so birth has always been born). Sterling himself refused to sell the team during an interview on May 2, and even said stubbornly that he regretted not giving his mistress money to solve the problem.

3, CNN broadcasts the full version of Sterling interview on May 12. He first expressed that he was framed and not a racist, and then he actually pointed out that he was a lot of output and doubts against the magician: "He (the magician) looks upright, but he just has sex with all the beautiful girls in the United States and has AIDS. Is this a role model? What did he do? A great magician, he has AIDS! Who has helped southern Los Angeles?"

The magician back then was probably as helpless as Luo Yonghao now. Why did you wipe your neck before I started squirting. The bad speech of the whole network once again caused ridicule, and even the host of the show had to post on Twitter: "The Magicians have donated large sums of donations to HIV and AIDS patients for many years and are committed to helping their lives and education." Rivers also commented: "Where is this apology?" The reporter of the team with the Lakers, who was a arch-rivaled rival in the same city, said bluntly: "I have never seen such a failed public relations case since I was born."

When Ballmer came up with a quote of nearly three times higher than the others in the first round, Sterling first agreed and then regretted selling the team. The alliance played a role this time, and according to the law, the Clippers actually belonged to the Sterling family trust, and Sterling's wife Shirley Sterling, who has alliance endorses, deprived Sterling of the management of her husband of Alzheimer's disease.

Although Sterling later tried to sue his wife and the NBA, it was rejected by a California court. Finally, under the green approval channel of the league and California courts, May 29, 2014 - One month after the NBA announced the penalty, Sterling Trust signed a Clippers sale agreement, and Microsoft giant Ballmer completed the acquisition of the Clippers for $2 billion.

The Clippers officially entered the Ballmer era

Even though eleven years have passed, there are still many things worthy of surprise and regret when looking back at this farce.

The amazing thing is the league's handling efficiency. Xiao Hua, who was two months old, has ushered in an absolute highlight of his career: he issued a statement within 12 hours, completed an investigation within 4 days, and turned the largest racial scandal in NBA history into the largest sports acquisition case in the NBA at that time and the second largest in the United States in the United States. At the same time, he also stabilized many forces including Rivers, investors and team owners, and created the tradition of NBA boss cashing out at a high position (the Suns boss sold the team many years later almost replicated this operation).

The regret is that this story is not a simple victory over evil. Putting aside the Sterling family sold the Clippers with a 160-fold yield; on the day after CNN revealed that Sterling bombarded the Magicians, the Clippers encountered the "514" tragedy left in the team's history in Goose City. The Tony brothers, as the referee, used a series of controversial penaltys to make the Clippers lose the Battle of Tianwang Mountain with a 7-point lead in the last 40 seconds of the game.

We cannot know whether the referees in this round of series are interested in favoring the Thunder to ensure that the Clippers get out of the way soon to complete the acquisition, but the number of free throws in this round of series shows some problems: they got 29 more free throws than the Clippers, averaging nearly 5 games; and in the first round they tied with the Grizzlies in the Grizzlies; when they faced the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, they only had 6 more free throws, averaging 1 game.

What is more interesting is that not long ago, the NBA revealed that Ballmer and Leonard were suspected of the Yin-Yang contract scandal. The NBA hired New York law firm Wochil Lipton to investigate the incident. As a long-term NBA partner, this firm was the same firm responsible for investigating the Sterling incident 11 years ago. However, in this investigation, we did not see the same efficiency as in the Sterling incident. Can the same "fairness" still appear?

History is a cycle of reincarnation, but sometimes it seems that it is not exactly.

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(text/Liu Chenguang)

source:ti so 7m