Donald T. Sterling's wife of 58 years, Rochelle Sterling, who co-owns the Los Angeles Clippers via a trust, gave an interview to the New York Times, along with her lawyer Pierce O'Donnell.
NYT: Have you spoken with any other N.B.A. owners since your husband’s suspension was announced?
Mrs. Sterling: No, I haven’t. But I often wonder: If the wife of one of the owners had done this, and if the roles were reversed, would they take the team away from the man? Is it something sexist? Is it the man’s club? The owners are afraid of their own issues. Because I’m sure if anybody goes into all their records, they have skeletons in their closets. ...
O’DONNELL: The situation here from a legal perspective is unprecedented. No professional sports league has ever terminated an owner’s interest involuntarily. And what Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, means when he refers to a “slippery slope” is that if they can do it to Shelly Sterling, they can do it to any other owner. And that invokes a precedent that could then be cited. I’m sure other owners have said things in private. We’ve had owners who have taken anti-civil rights stands on certain issues over the years. So is there dirty laundry? When the owners think about this in the quiet of their thoughts, and they have to render a vote, they have to think about the implications of it.
NYT: So if you sue the N.B.A., would you depose other owners and their team personnel?
O’DONNELL: I’d certainly be entitled to discovery. Any fair administrative process would allow us to get discovery. And I want to know a lot of different things about the records of the N.B.A. and what information they have about the conduct or misconduct of other owners that was not acted upon. The N.B.A. is as much at risk as Mr. Sterling to have this whole thing aired publicly. So it’s not risk-free for either side. To answer your question, of course I’ll ask for discovery. But it’s in everybody’s best interests to avoid Armageddon.
Not everybody. NBA Owner Armageddon is totally in my best interests. These depositions and email discoveries could provide years of great blog material.
Ar-Ma-Geddon! Ar-Ma-Geddon!
UPDATE: Pssst! Counselor O'Donnell ... You know who probably has some great tapes of Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov's most heinous phone calls? I mean, I don't know for sure, but it's my impression there's this guy who seems to have a lot of embarrassing wiretaps at his fingertips: Victoria Nuland, the EU lady, lots of good stuff.
Vladimir Putin.
Heck, Putin's probably got some hilarious wiretaps of Michael Jordan, too, just to play as an icebreaker at summit conferences with Netanyahu and Lieberman. (And, I hope, some scandalous stuff on Paul Allen: I hate that guy.)
Depose Putin. The Stiviano Precedent says that anybody's secrets obtained anyhow can be splashed in the press if they are politically incorrect enough, right? So, FSB wiretaps are fair game. And by that point Putin might be like, "Ukraine is game to you, Obama? How about I take your little NBA and smash it?"
I'd cut and paste for months.
This could be awesome.
UPDATE: Pssst! Counselor O'Donnell ... You know who probably has some great tapes of Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov's most heinous phone calls? I mean, I don't know for sure, but it's my impression there's this guy who seems to have a lot of embarrassing wiretaps at his fingertips: Victoria Nuland, the EU lady, lots of good stuff.
Vladimir Putin.
Heck, Putin's probably got some hilarious wiretaps of Michael Jordan, too, just to play as an icebreaker at summit conferences with Netanyahu and Lieberman. (And, I hope, some scandalous stuff on Paul Allen: I hate that guy.)
Depose Putin. The Stiviano Precedent says that anybody's secrets obtained anyhow can be splashed in the press if they are politically incorrect enough, right? So, FSB wiretaps are fair game. And by that point Putin might be like, "Ukraine is game to you, Obama? How about I take your little NBA and smash it?"
I'd cut and paste for months.
This could be awesome.
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Off-topic, but here's the final part of a BBC radio documentary which if nothing else shows how even liberals (i.e. the presenter) are more, well, relaxed on this side of the Atlantic, on some subjects: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042zsxv
And here's Nicholas Wade on the telly last night: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b043wg0z (just 6 days to watch the latter, the former stays up for a year, I think).
It's Steve's world, and we all just live in it.
I with you, Steve.
Let's start shovelling the dirt!
Sorry Steve but you're off by one letter.
I'm sure the NSA has lots of info on what a lot of what the owners have said.
Unfortunately its the NBA that will be examined.
And unless the 'B' has and keeps such records this fishing trip will wind up hungry.
And, right on cue, Stiviano's in a car wreck! A week after Tommy Lasorda wished she'd get hit by a car.
Can't make the stuff up.
Now if it turns out it was the Nets' Russian owner doing a favor for Sterling to help make the problem disappear, then we've come full circle.
Depositions are the sword of Damocles in these cases. Powerful public figures will do anything to avoid discovery and be deposed. They don't want the Paula Dean treatment. Anyone who has been involved with one of these knows that is always a topic of discussion.
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that the NBA agrees to let the wife keep the team as long as Donald is not involved. She'll be dead soon anyway so that effectively kicks the can down the road.
PC has become a state religion which has replaced belief in the rule of law with a theocracy built on racism, sexism and homophobia as the main sins defined on a whim by a corrupt priesthood.
There's no legal defense against accusations of heresy against the state religion hence the blatant threats and blackmail in that article - vote against Sterling and we'll use discovery to find out your secret sins and drag you down with us.
What normal, middle-class American male would not like to see Armageddon in this case? Problem is judges are buddy-buddy with the elites and take all kinds of measures to protect them. Like the case here in Boston of the billionaire businessman who is a well-known figure in the sports world who was seeing a black prostitute for years. She threatened to spill the beans if he didn't pay her money. The billionaire john got his friends in the federal court to hush her up. Hon. Judge Marc Wolf even got a list of the people who would know the john's name and threatened them all with prosecution and jail if they revealed the name.
Damn. Steve absolutely nailed this whole thing from day one. Again. The gap between Steve and the 2nd most insightful journalist in the world is a large one.
Illegal wiretaps are fair game, but 60 year old CIA foia memos are heavily redacted. Seriously, I want to know stuff.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-housing-bubble-tanked-the-economy-and-the-tech-bubble-didnt/
"""""""What normal, middle-class American male would not like to see Armageddon in this case? Problem is judges are buddy-buddy with the elites and take all kinds of measures to protect them. Like the case here in Boston of the billionaire businessman who is a well-known figure in the sports world who was seeing a black prostitute for years. She threatened to spill the beans if he didn't pay her money. The billionaire john got his friends in the federal court to hush her up. Hon. Judge Marc Wolf even got a list of the people who would know the john's name and threatened them all with prosecution and jail if they revealed the name. """"""
You do know that some anonymous third party source could simply leak the man's identity online via social media or wherever? And it would be extremely difficult to prove who directly leaked the man's identity? The internet makes that a reality. Especially if the lady wanted to go for the jugular.
Still can't believe that Stiviano was in a car wreck. Right on cue it came.
And, right on cue, Stiviano's in a car wreck! A week after Tommy Lasorda wished she'd get hit by a car.
Can't make the stuff up.
Ahhh, the power of Tommy Lasorda. Now if only he would have wished away Johnny Bench, Pete Rose and George Foster back in the '70s.
Her feud with fellow writer Lillian Hellman formed the basis for the play Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron. The feud had simmered since the late 1930s over ideological differences, particularly the questions of the Moscow Trials and of Hellman's support for the "Popular Front" with Stalin. McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on The Dick Cavett Show:
every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'.
Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy, which ended shortly after Hellman died in 1984. Observers of the trial noted the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that it brought significant scrutiny, and decline of Hellman's reputation, by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to prove that she had lied.
May it be.
BTW, Reggie Love played for Krzyzewski at Duke, and Krzyzewski coaches the NBA All-Stars in the Olympics, so is there any chance that we could subpoena the Soetoro-Love Sex Tapes to see how they laugh and joke and banter about all of those poor clumsy mulleted mustachioed big-butt-butrifull white bulldykes?
Maybe we can get them on record making wisecracks about Donna Shalala or Janet Napolitano or - gasp - Hillary Rodham?
Barkley recently had similar things to say about the chicks down in San Antonio.
So you just know that they joke about it on Air Force One.
I don't know why the NBA thinks that pushing Sterling to sell is a good idea.
The tapes generated their five minutes of hate, but making the dude incur an early hundreds of millions tax bill is serious business. (If he had to sell early, and then died he'd be paying tax for the team twice).
Sterling was a trial lawyer, a sleazy Mairrage lawyer. He wolnt go down without a fight. Not only would he be entitled to all of the dirt on all of the other owners in discovery, he also has other chips to play. If he were to release the team's books, the would undercut the owners in the next collective bargaining agreement.
Speaking of making things disappear, any thoughts on Clay Aiken's opponent dying mysteriously during a close 300 vote recount?
Didn't Michael Jordan just say that he hated white people? Subpoena Michael Jordan on his admitted history of race hatred. Of course that sort of Jonah Goldbergian "bounces of me and sticks to you" never convinces anyone, but it would be entertaining.
OT: Steve, did you catch the last episode of Mike Judge's Silicon Valley? One subplot featured a "Satanic baptism." The low-rent nature of the thing perfectly predicted what happened with the Harvard Black Mass as reported in the Crimson.
Mike Judge's prophetic powers remain undiminished.
We can only dream.
How wonderful if every big time Jewish guy had a mistress who secretly recorded everything they said.
One thing for sure, if I'd secretly recorded the conversations of Liberal Jews I grew up with, people would think they're listening to a Klan rally.
What they REALLY think about blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, etc is hilarious.
Stand by your man... if he's worth billions.
"Not everybody. NBA Owner Armageddon is totally in my best interests. These depositions and email discoveries could provide years of great blog material."
Mr. Sailer, do take care of yourself; don't burn yourself out.
Looking forward to years more of entertainment and enlightenment.
That aint no wife. It's one tough moll... like Catherina Zeta Jones character in TRAFFIC.
"Problem is judges are buddy-buddy with the elites and take all kinds of measures to protect them. Like the case here in Boston of the billionaire businessman who is a well-known figure in the sports world who was seeing a black prostitute for years. She threatened to spill the beans if he didn't pay her money. The billionaire john got his friends in the federal court to hush her up. Hon. Judge Marc Wolf even got a list of the people who would know the john's name and threatened them all with prosecution and jail if they revealed the name."
To be fair, blackmail is illegal. Blackmailers often suffer a worse fate then the people they blackmail because the blackmailer is involving himself in a criminal conspiracy.
That means magic is Dennis quaid in traffic.
"Depose Putin." -Steve Sailer
Finally, Steve has seen the wisdom of the Neocon approach.
I'd love to see Armageddon. I'll even suggest some choice lines...
To the last I grapple with thee, from hell's heart I stab at thee,
Let me die with the Phillistines!
I can't believe that my Reggie Love komment got kontrolled.
What's next?
No Scots-Irish jokes?
All it takes is one Obama phone call and no discovery. Don't think for a minute Obama does not want Magic or Oprah owning the team, maybe both.
This is a nation of PC and power, not laws. Silly Sterling, thinking that laws and rules apply to power. They don't.
map said...
To be fair, blackmail is illegal. Blackmailers often suffer a worse fate then the people they blackmail because the blackmailer is involving himself in a criminal conspiracy.
No doubt. But the lengths the federal judge went to protect the high-profile John...
"Several legal specialists are complaining that this that this case illustrates how a prosperous individual with high-level connections can marshal the formidable resources of federal law enforcement to turn the tables on a criminal and preserve his good name - even if he himself had repeatedly broken the law by paying for sex. In contrast, the alleged prostitute's name is all over court records and the press."
Does anyone know if Pierce O'Donnell has won anything since the Buchwald case? If the only available theory is that other owners might have once voiced sentiments similar to Sterling's, the case seems really weak.
There is a WWG aspect to this. I have heard a couple of complaints that the guy who owns the Orlando team gave some money to pro-traditional marriage outfits ( a sure sign of haaaaaate obviously). Don't think the Magic is worth anything though.
Oops, no it didn't kontrolled.
Sorry, Steve!
Methinks this is all poetic justice for Mark Cuban's NBA after he made the sacrilegious statements about the impending implosion of the NFL. Thou shalt have no other gods... Please bring Armageddon to Mr. Cuban's league.
I'd love to know what kind of scoop President Putin has on Bathhouse Barry's alternative lifestyle. If Uncle Samantha and the EU get too belligerent over Ukraine, we might just find out.
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