Are you out of your mind?
Now that the precedent has been established that an NBA team owner can be taped and his private conversation leaked to the world -- with 98% of the world utterly unconcerned about the presumptive illegality of the recording -- and out-of-context excerpts from your confidential conversations used to globally demonize you and have your property taken away, tell me again why you would want to pay a billion dollars to be an NBA team owner?
Okay, I know what you're thinking:
I'm not some elderly eccentric tightwad like Donald T. Sterling, I'm Larry Ellison. I'm not some small-time billionaire like Sterling, who is only #296 on the Forbes 400, I'm #3. I don't come across like criminal attorney Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad, I come across like the archvillain in a James Bond movie. I'm not some feeble octogenarian with Elderly Tourette's who can't keep from blurting out in private how I truly feel about sensitive topics; I won't turn 70 until August! I don't date skeevy gold-digging mulatto* strippers who outsmart me into spilling my guts, I date Stanford coeds.
Okay, you're right, Larry, forget I ever mentioned it. Best of luck buying the Clips!
* I can still use the world "mulatto," right? I mean, I read it in a science book when I was 12 in 1956. But I have to admit I've been mostly thinking about business since then. Maybe I'm not up to date -- it's just that we don't have a lot of mulattos in Silicon Valley (except in HR). I mean, don't get me wrong, I love mulattos! Hell, I'm bidding on the Clippers mostly because I want to own Blake Griffin, and he's a mulatto. (Luckily, he inherited his dad's jumping genes. White women can't jump!) What else would you call Griffin? He's a mulatto, just like my good friend President Obama. ... Maybe I should ask one of my Stanford girlfriends if "mulatto" is still the word used by kids these days before I make Griffin my property. Yeah, it could get awkward if I don't know what to call him until after I've bought him. Madison is a sociology major so she'll know if "mulatto" is still okay. I'll text her right now.
Ellison evidently has better taste in women than Sterling does.
ReplyDeleteEllison is dreaming, the fix is in. Magic, or Oprah will own the team.
ReplyDeleteThe debate raged in sili valley for years who the biggest scumbag was, Ellison or Bill Gates. Ellison actually produced software that worked and wasn't out to rule the world. However his sociopathic personality, business practices, treatment of his employees and personal behavior put him over the top. It would be gory if the media were to vet him.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure what Larry Ellison actually does.
ReplyDeleteLike Steve Jobs, Ellison does not know how to program or anything technical about computers. But Jobs was pitching marketable consumer products, so giving speeches and being the public face was kind of doing something. Oracle sells database enterprise software.
1 billion for Clippers = a lot of bread eaters and circus watchers on the horizon...
ReplyDeletehttp://snltranscripts.jt.org/93/93fsinatra.phtml
ReplyDeleteFrank Sinatra: Your money's on the dresser, baby, I'm done with you!
Larry Ellison: Your Lexis is on the drive way, baby, I'm done with you!
I'm not really sure what Larry Ellison actually does.
ReplyDeleteNot sure about the companies you have worked at. But at the ones I have that used Oracle DBs, I would say Larry personally "interviews" every single ex-college cheerleader he hires to rep his products.
Why do you say he was a leftist? He was a registered republican.
ReplyDeleteEllison is dreaming, the fix is in. Magic, or Oprah will own the team
ReplyDeleteI'm cool with that if they will just shut up about this already.
The debate raged in sili valley for years who the biggest scumbag was, Ellison or Bill Gates.
ReplyDeleteEllison, to my knowledge, has never connived to screw-over a partner dying of cancer. And even if there is no real daylight between the two in terms of real scumbaggery, Ellison at least has style: he's a racecar-drivin', fighter jet-flyin' virile man that most men can identify with and fall in line behind. Gates, on the other hand, is a creepy thumb-sucking nasty nerd with whatever personal perversions that implies. I mean, who would you rather bow down to- Henry the VIII or Caligula? (BTW, Steve, when do you think there will be a reassessment of the cross-dressing emperor Eliogabulus now that WWT is in full swing?)
Also, if Magic Johnson is the "ultimate cleanser" with unique moral authority to redeem the tarnished Clipper brand, does that make him, in effect, a Magic Negro?
SWPL Dork: Shhhh!
Me: But his name really is "Magic"!
SWPL Dork: Shhhhhhhh!!!
That which had a sale price of $12.5 million 33 years ago could have a sale price of $1 billion this year.
ReplyDeleteThe big white elephant angle to this story is the sports bubble.
"I come across like the archvillain in a James Bond movie."
ReplyDeleteLets agree to use Hank Scorpio from the Simpsons.
Sterling was a major donor to the NAACP, and Obama, and Dems. So the naming of him as a liberal Dem.
ReplyDeleteAs far as what Jobs did, he was the design decider. Jobs, with a love of design, seemed to know what worked with non-technical people which was what Apple's customer base was/is.
Ellison? More like Oracle's product feature/cost structure decider. Oracle's main advantage was to court DB developers and give DBA's lots of tools.
And yeah, he's more masculine than Gates. Who has no real presence at all.
I once worked for a SF lawyer who was defending Oracle against an employment claim. I asked him if they paid their bills. He said, "sometimes."
ReplyDeleteI believe "mixed race" or "multi-ethnic" is the politically correct term nowadays.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Victor Davis Hanson says he is seeing more full blooded non-Spanish speaking Central American Indians in the San Joaquin Valley nowadays.
"Ellison? More like Oracle's product feature/cost structure decider."
ReplyDeleteAnd chief booker of sales that hadn't closed yet back in the early days as I recall.
As to Oracle's cost structure, the answer to "How much money does it cost?" was always "How much money do you got?"
Clippers will go for closer to 2 billion.
ReplyDeleteEllison is angry for losing the Warriors bid, and he overbid. Ellison bought the Astor Newport mansion which had been turned into a museum. He shut it down and turned it back into a private residence. I toured it as a museum wondering how anyone could live there. Ellison once turned his swimming pool into a woofer to watch movies outdoors because Bill Gates wouldnt do it. He's eccentric and will shower money on the nba to get it. I still think Milken gets it, but the price will be closer to 2 bil.
Anyone else think it's odd brand new commissioner throws out the longest tenured owner in his first 90 days? It is as if Sterling woukdve had dirt on Stern (85 draft fix) so Silver had to do it on his watch.
@Dave Pinsen:
ReplyDeleteWhy do you say he was a leftist? He was a registered republican.
You have brought this up many times. I think that anyone who is for immigration is a leftist. If that means most Republicans, then most Republicans are leftists.
Because being a conservative means you want social stability, and it also means that you want to conserve something. Well, mass immigration means that the survival of the original stock of the country, as well as their culture, is less than assured, and immigration directly threatens social stability. So there will be nothing left to conserve, no matter how hard you try.
AFAIK Sterling supports (or supported before the scandal) immigration. So he could not be and could not ever have been a conservative.
Am I missing something?
reiner tor:"You have brought this up many times. I think that anyone who is for immigration is a leftist. If that means most Republicans, then most Republicans are leftists."
ReplyDeleteAll of the elites in the USA support mass immigration: Republicans, Democrats, Labor Unions, The RC Church, Big business, etc.
The "legitimate" debate on immigration in the USA is restricted to:
1. Mass Immigration
2. Open Borders
Advocating anything else makes you an extremist.
I have a two questions: How many people did Magic infect? and how many of those died from HIV?
ReplyDeleteRe: Reiner Tor's comment:
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. That's why there is no conservative political party in America, in my view.
If I wished to radically change a country in a hurry, short of dropping a few dozen H Bombs on it to set it back 50 years and kill 80% or more of its' population, massive and fast immigration is the way to do it. It changes the language, culture, race, music, cuisine, religion, myths, cultural beliefs- you name it. It is by definition a radically transformative event. As the only difference between the parties' positions on immigration (if there even is one) is over how much and how fast, both parties are radically transformative parties in any normal use of the word. Which is why there is no conservative political party in America in any real sense. There is a huge constituency for such a party, but it is being suppressed through social stigma at this time. This will change-whether in time or not, remains to be seen.
The current defeatist wisdom that "it's too late" is not true. A policy of massive deportations, cultural/legal changes (along the ideas of Larry Auster), along with a stated pro-white immigration policy (massive amount of Eastern European White immigration)and buy-outs to encourage self-deportation, plus reverse Affirmative Action, could indeed reverse the mess we're heading for. The only issue is whether we have the will, which at the moment we clearly do not.
A few more billionaires getting wake-up calls on the true nature of where this multicultural paradise is heading, and we all might be surprised how quickly things can change.
Let me just make one correction. Stiviano is not a mulatto. She would actually be referred to as a Zambo which is a Negro/Indian mixture used in those countries in the northern part of S. America that formerly had Negro slaves.Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was a Zambo. Or Zimmerman whose mother is a Zambo.
ReplyDeleteSerious question:
ReplyDeleteAre there ANY Jewish billionaires who don't push open borders & mass immigration?
Yes. It's my understanding that they live in Israel.
DeleteJohnDSee
The elephant in the room is that people tend to have a limited grasp of compound interest.
ReplyDelete12.5 -- > 560 over 33 years is 12.2%
12.5 --> 1000 over 33 years is 14.2%
12.5 --> S&P 500 over 33 years is between 11% and 12%.
The return on the Clippers was excellent, but not out of line, compared to a passive investment in the S&P. Probably also LA real estate.
Sterling needs Ellison and others of his ilk to pump up the bid
Maybe I should ask one of my Stanford girlfriends if "mulatto" is still the word used by kids these days
ReplyDeleteYou kidding? I'll bet if you went into a Stanford classroom and chose kids at random, you wouldn't have to pick more than 3 or 4 before you found one who thinks "mulatto" is a drink you get at Starbucks.
Ellison is dreaming, the fix is in. Magic, or Oprah will own the team.
ReplyDeleteMagic probably couldn't buy a major league team in any sport, he isn't rich enough. I remember seeing a Forbes article last year and seeing that only two NBA teams, the Knicks and Lakers were listed in the top 50 most valuable sports teams, and the 50th team was still worth close to a billion dollars. The list is dominated by NFL teams throughout and top heavy with the most valuable European football ( Soccer to us Yanks ) teams such as Real Madrid and Manchester United. Given that Sterling HAS to sell and quickly I would imagine this would lower the price even more. Regarding Magic and/or Oprah, Ellison has a ton more money than either. Magic is basically a famous front man for that big investment group that bought the Dodgers, and Oprah even though much richer than Magic, isn't going to pour one third or more of her money into buying a sports team that she probably barely knew existed until last Sunday.
It's going to be either Ellison or maybe ex-Microsoft head Steve Ballmer who is worth around $20B. Ballmer tried belatedly to buy the then Seattle Supersonics after some Oklahoma oil guy bought the team and announced he was moving them to Oklahoma City, but it was too late, and he wasn't selling. Maybe the league wouldn't mind moving the team out of LA and out of the Lakers shadow and making Seattle less bitter about losing Kevin Durant going into his prime. Since Ballmer is no longer running Microsoft he could devote full time energy to actually running the team.
Pat Kittle:"Serious question:
ReplyDeleteAre there ANY Jewish billionaires who don't push open borders & mass immigration?"
Steve actually addressed a similar question regarding American billionaires in general.The answer, more or less, was no, American billionaires (of all ethnicities/religious backgrounds)all push mass immigration/open borders. There were a handful who seemed to be slightly skeptical of the idea, but they were very low key in their support of anything resembling immigration restriction.
Victor Davis Hanson says he is seeing more full blooded non-Spanish speaking Central American Indians in the San Joaquin Valley nowadays.
ReplyDeleteHell, I'm seeing them in my back yard.
The local illegal aliens I hire for yard work all speak Mayan.
Pat Boyle
I've known a couple of these Silicon Valley celebrities from a distance.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I were once close to Oracles' number three employee. The operational definition of close is naked in a hot tub drinking champagne. Mr. #3 was no dummy and no shrinking violet but when he spoke of Ellison it was as if he were describing a God that walked amongst us.
There is a book that I saw once at Borders - "What's the Difference between God and Larry Ellison - God doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison". Long title for a short book.
I think the guys who isn't sure as to what Ellison did, should think about that book.
Steve Jobs also seems to have been a guy with a big personality who made a big splash in whatever pond he was in. He wasn't of course a genius. He was rather more important than that. I know this because the real genius at Apple I knew quite well. He worked for me for a time.
Jeff Raskin was the 'Father of the Macintosh'. He introduced Jobs to all the important technology that made Apples special. He was the smartest guy I ever really knew well. But he wasn't going to become a world famous billionaire. He was more like Wozniak - a real smart nebbish.
Gates really was smart - but don't hold that against him. The first product of his I ever bought was Altair BASIC. He dropped out of school and learned 8080 machine code with which he wrote what came to be Microsoft BASIC. Later when he was rich and famous he used to challenge anyone in the world to write any significant program in any language and he would do it faster in BASIC. Not a lot of CEOs ever did anything like that.
But he did have a ruthless side. He was a kind of shark - a nerd/shark. I used to say he killed Gary Kildall. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but Microsoft is king and Kildall is in the ground.
Pat Boyle
". She would actually be referred to as a Zambo which is a Negro/Indian mixture used in those countries in the northern part of S. America that formerly had Negro slaves.Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was a Zambo."
ReplyDeleteI think she is more of a pardo.
In fairness, isn't it in the contract that ownership can be taken away by a vote of the owners?
ReplyDeleteOnly a fool would purchase a franchise under those conditions. Or someone with a lot of money to burn.
Griffin's mother is 6'2''.
ReplyDeleteAnd his blond baby momma USC women's basketball star is about 5'10".
hehe
ReplyDeleteNobody uses "mulatto" anymore, instead they just say "black".
ReplyDeleteThese days, nobody who can get away from the taint of whiteness fails to do so, even the President.
Why should Ellison buy the Clippers? Why not! He's got the money, he's got the time. It's a no brainer. No need to question at all.
ReplyDelete