Friday, May 2, 2014

The Great Distraction of the Donald Sterling Plantation



As a former college basketball coach, a college basketball player and a human being, I find LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling and his racist remarks in which he commanded his girlfriend to not associate with people of color in public at his LA Clippers games or on Instagram, to be personally offensive. Sterling also commanded his girlfriend, who is young enough to be his granddaughter, to not publicly associate with former LA Lakers great, Magic Johnson at Clipper games because he is black.
Sterling’s remarks are unbelievably ignorant and downright stupid. The NBA rosters are primarily made up African-Americans. Forty three percent of its head coaches are African-American. What could this owner of an NBA franchise, valued at $575 million, have been thinking as he was secretly taped by his girlfriend making these racist remarks?
Magic Johnson told ABC/ESPN “There’s no place in our society for it (racism), and there’s no place in our league, he’s put his own team in a tough situation. So I believe that once Commissioner Silver does all his due diligence, gets all the information gathered, he’s gotta come down hard. [Sterling] shouldn’t own a team anymore. And he should stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to own a team anymore.’ Especially when you have African Americans renting his apartments, coming to the games, playing for him, coaching for him. This is bad for everybody.”

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