In 1996 a female employee sued Donald Sterling alleging “he touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable and asked her to visit friends of his for sex.” He also asked her to find massage therapists who will “you know, let me put it in, or suck on it.”
In 2003, Donald Sterling filed a lawsuit to try to get back gifts he gave one of his former mistresses. He claimed she was just a prostitute and didn’t deserve to keep them now that they were no longer together. Here’s a sample from that deposition: “When I’m in a limousine, she takes all her clothes off…and she started sucking me on the way to Mr. Koon’s house. And I thanked her. I thank her for making me feel good.” “Sir, the question was, is this your handwriting?” said the attorney. Sterling eventually concluded “You’re paying her for a few moments to use her body for sex. Is it clear? Is it clear?”
Later that same year, a discrimination lawsuit was filed against Sterling by 19 tenants in a housing center he acquired. One of Sterling’s top property supervisors testified that Sterling “wanted tenants who fit his image.” His image was allegedly no blacks, no Mexicans, no children and no government-housing subsidy recipients. Sterling instructed employees to make life difficult for unwanted tenants by refusing rent checks then accusing tenants of non-payment, refusing repairs, and harassing them with surprise inspections. Upon purchasing the building he remarked about an odor in the air “That’s because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they’re not clean…And it’s because of all the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day…So we have to get them out of here.” When a tenant reported her apartment had flooded Sterling asked his property supervisor “Is she one of those black people that stink?…Just evict the bitch.”
Around this time a hostess who worked for him in the 1990’s said “Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life…He asked me for semi-nude photos and made it clear he wanted more.” A different former female employee once stated under oath “If I made a mistake, I needed to stand at my desk and bow my head and say ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Sterling. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’ll try to do better.”
In February of 2009 NBA Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor sued Donald Sterling and the Clippers after working for the team as an executive for 22 years. He said Sterling had a “pervasive and ongoing racist attitude” and that he ran the team as his “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure.” The lawsuit, which was originally obtained by the L.A. Times, also claims Sterling told his GM Baylor that he “wanted the team to be composed of poor black boys from the South (with) a white head coach.” In negotiations with Danny Manning, AND IN FRONT OF THEN NBA COMMISSIONER David Stern, Sterling allegedly said “I’m offering a lot of money for a poor black kid.”
And then there is the fiasco of this past week on top of all that.
After the swift action of Commissioner Adam Silver, I was hoping and praying there would be some dipshit who would come out and give the ol’ “Donald Sterling isn’t all that bad” defense and within minutes Mark Cuban was on the scene. Cuban thinks all of this amounts to “being a moron” and he is scared a precedent has been set, “a slippery slope” to which billionaires might actually have to be accountable for their words and actions, just like everyone else. Former NBA Commissioner David Stern spent his whole life whoring his soul for people like Cuban, standing idly by and doing nothing while pieces of shit like Donald Sterling were doing reprehensible things that pieces of shit like Mark Cuban don’t understand the moral gravity of because they are detached from the real world and pieces of shit like David Stern who are supposed to be in a position of authority, are really just, well – pieces of shit. Donald Sterling should have been sent packing a long time ago. His expulsion reiterates that the NBA is a private club and can kick out anyone they want, but it’s only a slippery slope if you equate racism, sexism, discrimination, and slum-lording with simply “being a moron.” Pithy as this article may be, I feel very comfortable ending it by saying “no, Mark Cuban, you’re a moron.”
Article By: Anthony Schiano
