Donald Sterling

@hawkeye10,

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Cut the crap Firefly, the scales of justice were not exhaustively evaluated in four days by a NBA commissioner who was just beginning to get comfortable pissing in his new executive toilet

Sterling's not complaining about that, or saying the NBA was wrong. He made that very clear with Anderson Cooper. This is your usual hot air posturing, it's not Sterling's position.

He's banned for life, regardless of whether he gets to hold onto his team. He can't even attend a game again. And he accepts that.

He knows that the NBA's actions weren't unjustified--he said that very clearly during his interview--but he's likely much smarter than you are, and he's also a lawyer who knows how the NBA operates.

His lawyer's saber-rattling is likely just a bargaining tactic, because he may want to retain some control over exactly when he has to sell his team. But he said, at his age, there's no point in a long legal battle, because, in the end, what will it get him. He won't have his reputation restored, people won't like him any better, and he knows that. The damage is already done--it was done by his own mouth and he can't undo it. He's banned from the NBA for life. If the other owners vote to force a sale of his team, he knows he's not going to win, or to win anything meaningful to him, by dragging out a prolonged legal fight.

And, since he hasn't paid the $2.5 million fine, the other owners have even clearer justification to vote to oust him under the NBA constitution.

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Donald Sterling had to scramble to get a new lawyer, and at least one top firm turned him down as a client because they feared representing him would be bad for their business, in addition to his being difficult to work with.

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Donald Sterling is expected to launch what could be a long and contentious legal battle with the NBA over his ownership of the Clippers without the support of the big, politically connected law firm that has been with him for more than three decades..

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips will no longer represent Sterling and his wife, Shelly, because of the couple's diverging interests from each other and from the team that is now being run day-to-day by Chief Executive Dick Parsons, who was appointed by the NBA.

The conflict leaves Manatt partner Robert Platt as chief counsel for the Clippers, but no longer a representative of the longtime owners.

The shift sent Donald Sterling scrambling for representation, according to several people familiar with the situation. Another top Los Angeles law firm spurned the Clippers' controlling owner, according to people familiar with the situation, before he landed this week under the wing of an old ally, the veteran antitrust lawyer Maxwell M. Blecher. Those who told of the situation asked to remain anonymous because their discussions with Sterling and his allies were supposed to be confidential...

Before turning to Blecher, Sterling attempted to hire at least one other big Los Angeles law firm. A partner at the firm recalled talking to Douglas Walton, Sterling's longtime Beverly Hills lawyer, who said Sterling needed help to get through the crisis. Walton could not be reached for comment.

But the lawyer, who requested anonymity to discuss what was supposed to be a confidential conversation, said the firm turned Sterling down because he had a reputation of being difficult to work with. Additionally, the lawyer said there was a worry other clients might not want the firm associating with someone who made comments so widely decried as racist. "I just declined to get involved, before it even came to talking about all the other issues," the attorney said.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-sterling-lawyers-20140517-story.html

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@firefly,

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But the lawyer, who requested anonymity to discuss what was supposed to be a confidential conversation, said the firm turned Sterling down because he had a reputation of being difficult to work with. Additionally, the lawyer said there was a worry other clients might not want the firm associating with someone who made comments so widely decried as racist. "I just declined to get involved, before it even came to talking about all the other issues," the attorney said.

What a scumbag lawyer, on several levels!

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@hawkeye10,

You,

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What a scumbag lawyer, on several levels!

You have to spell out those "several levels" of scumbag that lawyer deserves.

You're a scumbag on every level.

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@hawkeye10,

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What a scumbag lawyer, on several levels!

Assuming there was a lawyer instead of a reporter pulling this out of his ass I agree with you.

However given he is now using the lawyer who won for him before in a conflict with the NBA I think it unlike he would had gone to another law firm first.

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@BillRM,

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Assuming there was a lawyer instead of a reporter pulling this out of his ass

could be I guess. I dont know if this is me noticing more or if this problem is on the increase, but it sure seems like unethical lawyers are an increasing problem. I know that lawyers are pretty stressed these days with the economic condition of their craft, in part because law schools are graduating way too many students, but is seems that standards are going by the boards.

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@hawkeye10,

Sorry I do not buy it as hard as he might be to deal with and the chance of some bad PR thrown in we are talking about many millions of dollars of billing hours just to start with.

For any law firm to turn him away mean that it must be a big and wealthy law firm indeed who lawyers should know not to talk to reporters!!!!!!!!!

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Quote:
What a scumbag lawyer, on several levels!

Assuming there was a lawyer instead of a reporter pulling this out of his ass I agree with you.

However given he is now using the lawyer who won for him before
in a conflict with the NBA I think it unlike he would had gone to another law firm first.

Yes. Of course. It is ez for a reporter to make it up,
if he is not attributing it to any source.

David

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@hawkeye10,

After you throw a tantrum of mud, you say

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but it sure seems like unethical lawyers

.

Seems like? You are scum!

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Sterling seems in his proper place as the butt of a joke...

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John Kerry Takes Priceless Jab at Donald Sterling in Yale Speech

Secretary of State John Kerry took a poke at the NBA's controversy surrounding Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling during a speech at Yale University's Class Day.

Joking about college and pop culture at the start of his speech Sunday, Kerry told the Ivy League graduates: "You are ... the most diverse class in Yale history. Or, as it's called in the NBA, Donald Sterling's worst nightmare." The comment drew laughs from the audience.

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@firefly,

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Joking about college and pop culture at the start of his speech Sunday, Kerry told the Ivy League graduates: "You are ... the most diverse class in Yale history. Or, as it's called in the NBA, Donald Sterling's worst nightmare." The comment drew laughs from the audience.

Our highest officials have no problem picking on individual American citizens, whether for laughs or to make the next hours news. I imagine that the Europeans rank this right up with capital punishment as signs that we Americans are uncivilized.

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@hawkeye10,

Where in the world do you live? You've never heard of citizens making fun of our politicians? Our president?

You need another life! The one you have is worthless.

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@cicerone imposter,

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You've never heard of citizens making fun of our politicians? Our president?

Stirling is a public figure but he is not a politician and from watching the interviews of him he is a sick old man who brain is not functioning well.

The whole thing is amounting to a PC driven case of elder abused and little else.

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@BillRM,

Government officials holding private citizens up for ridicule in a public speech??? Maybe Castro, Hugo Chavez, people like that, but this is simply not done in first world countries. It certainly should not be done by us.

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@BillRM,

Don't you ever get tired of defending racists, and trying to make them all seem like poor innocent victims of the media?

First it was George Zimmerman, then Paula Deen, now Donald Sterling.
You're a racist's best friend. Always ready to try to drum up sympathy for them.

Where's your sympathy for the black players on Sterling's team, who had to listen to his racially insensitive and offensive comments? Or your sympathy for all the black Clippers fans who heard him say he didn't want his girlfriend bringing blacks to the games?

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he is a sick old man who brain is not functioning well.

Well then, perhaps a court should declare him incompetent, appoint a law guardian for him, and have someone handle the sale of his team for him, because, according to you, he's obviously too sick, old, and neurologically impaired, to attend to his business affairs.

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@hawkeye10,

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Government officials holding private citizens up for ridicule in a public speech???

Sterling is a public figure--he's part of pop culture. He was before this fiasco, and he certainly is now.

Awww... suddenly you don't believe in free speech.

Do you think that Kerry wasn't being "PC" enough? Laughing

It's Sterling's offensive racist remarks, both past and present, that should bother people, not Kerry's little joke.

One way to deal with a bigot is through ridicule.

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@firefly,

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One way to deal with a bigot is through ridicule.

Fun as it is to watch citizens be ridiculed by kings in court on Game of Thrones, I would like to think that we are better. We used to be.

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@firefly,

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Where's your sympathy for the black players on Sterling's team, who had to listen to his racially insensitive and offensive comments?

Says who? I have been hearing that Sterling in 30 years was rarely heard saying anything racially insensitive to payers or staff. Even when he thought I was talking in private we dont hear him talking negatively about blacks on his team, which makes be doubt that he would talk negatively about them in public, to their faces.

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@hawkeye10,

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Says who? I have been hearing that Sterling in 30 years was rarely heard saying anything racially insensitive to payers or staff.

I was talking about his racially insensitive and offensive comments on the recently leaked tape. And those comments certainly did affect his own players, as well as the players on the other teams. They haven't been silent on that score.

And racial allegations were made against him by Elgin Baylor, a member of the NBA Hall of Fame, and former Clippers general manager, in a 2009 lawsuit. You don't seem able to remember or integrate information already posted here, quite recently posted, if it's something you don't want to hear about Sterling. You and BillRM just try to deny or block out info that contradicts your victim narrative of Sterling.

Elgin Baylor lawsuit among Donald Sterling's past racial issues
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-elgin-baylor-donald-sterling-20140426-story.html

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@firefly,

hawk is a rabble rouser with no memory of recent events or any history.

He shoots his mouth off without understanding much of anything. Any one who hasn't heard Sterling's racially charged tapes just doesn't 'get it.' It's been played many times on the media.

Not only that, but Sterling admitted it was his voice.

1 Reply

Donald Sterling

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