A decade ago, the NBA grew up.
That’s when a league known for its entertainment value featuring wealthy athletes of international renown morphed into a collective, influential voice that led to the ousting of a compromised team owner and players understanding that they, too, had power.
Credit the enigmatic Donald Sterling for the awakening. Already deemed a misfit as owner of the Los Angeles Clippers for 33 years, Sterling, a real estate magnate, became persona non grata when his personal assistant and mistress released audio recordings of him making racist comments that included telling her, “Don’t bring Black people to my games.”
What ensued was a scandal that has now been captured in a six-part Hulu series that premieres Tuesday. “Clipped” is a provocative account of a whirlwind four days that ultimately ended with the NBA forcing Sterling to sell his team.
The underlying theme, however — beyond illuminating Sterling’s unscrupulous ways and attitudes, and then-coach Doc Rivers’ steadfast leadership — is that the unprecedented removal of an NBA owner was engineered by players in general and the Clippers in particular. It was the result of predominantly Black players becoming so outraged that they spoke up in unison and vowed to not play in a postseason game. Up to then, players had been responsible for coaches getting fired — but this was different.
“For these NBA players, they have a platform and if they can speak up, they speak up,” said Rembert Browne, who was a writer on the series. His article with Wesley Morris in the now defunct Grantland.com at the time of the scandal inspired “Clipped” showrunner Gina Welch to create the series.
“But one of the compelling things is watching the team figure out what to do,” Browne said. “There’s a little bit of a cautionary tale in those moments where you’re caught in between this triangle of not wanting to make white people uncomfortable, but feeling very empowered into your Blackness to speak up — but also not wanting to risk the stability of your professional situation. It can be tough.”
As it turned out, the ousting of Sterling was “the beginning of the player empowerment movement,” Browne added. “The players began to realize that they had a lot more agency in terms of their contracts and where they play and all this other stuff.”
Included in the “other stuff” was taking a stand against Sterling and later other social justice issues. Renowned actor Laurence Fishburne plays Rivers, who was thrust into the position of leading his players and coaching them, too, as pressure mounted and emotions escalated.
A poignant moment in the series comes when Sterling, played by Ed O’Neill, yells at Rivers, “I’m your owner.” And Rivers yells back, “You don’t own me.”
That exchange powers the series.
“There’s an element of this show where it does feel reminiscent sometimes of what it’s like to be Black in a workplace,” Browne said. “You’re thinking about keeping your job, but you’re also thinking about representing, and that happens to all of us at work. That’s what ultimately happened to these guys.”
Sterling might still own the Clippers had V. Stiviano, who would sit courtside with him at home games with his wife, Shelly Sterling, on the other side, not grown angry after Shelly Sterling attempted to push her aside.
Stiviano, who had made a habit of recording Sterling without his knowledge, shared one exchange with TMZ, and it was explosive.
Sterling said: “In your lousy f---ing Instagram, you don’t have to have yourself walking with Black people. It bothers me a lot that you want to promote, broadcast that you’re associating with Black people. Do you have to?”
Eventually, Stiviano asks Sterling: “Do you know that you have a whole team that’s Black that plays for you?”
He responds: “Do I know? I support them, and give them food and clothes and cars and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Who makes the game? Do I make the game, or do they make the game?”
Four days after the release of the recordings, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver forced Sterling to sell the team and pay a $5 million fine. In those days, the players scrambled behind the scenes to find their collective voice.
Actor J. Alphonso Nicholson plays Chris Paul, the Clippers point guard at the time. Nicholson said it was during the scandal that Paul “grew from being just a basketball player to an advocate for basketball players and what they go through. That’s when he found his footing.”
Paul went on to become president of the National Basketball Players Association for nine years and led the union’s collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the league. His roleincluded expanding the league’s pension plan and providing health care for retired players. He also expanded advocating for social justice and identifying players to be voices on social justice issues. In 2014, Paul was instrumental in hiring Michelle Roberts, a Black woman, as the Players Association’s executive director, the first woman to lead a major sports union.
“It’s that kind of impact the event had,” Nicholson said.
Despite the strain of playing under Sterling after the recordings were released, the Clippers beat the Golden State Warriors in a playoff game, and then moved ahead with their plan, which was to take the floor at the start of Game 5, but then walk off the floor in protest. The Warriors were going to do the same.
“I was all in. Like shut down the whole season,” Andre Iguodala, a forward for Golden State, told ESPN. “Maybe that was too far, but as far as that game that day, you can reschedule it. You gotta sort this thing out, because there’s some deep-rooted stuff with him that had to be addressed.”
Unlike “Winning Time,” the dynamic but often overzealous HBO series that documented the Los Angeles Lakers’ glamor days of the 1980s, “Clipped” stays closer to actual events — with a touch of creative license — Browne said. Rivers and former Clippers forward Matt Barnes, among others, worked as quasi-consultants on the show.
“We were adamant, like so much of the prep and making the show was research, like we had to make sure that we were actually taking you to an accurate depiction of 2014,” Browne said.
The buildup to standing up to Sterling’s racism began the year before, when NBA players stood in solidarity after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Reacting to Sterling was taking action.
Nicholson said the impact of the series will extend beyond entertainment.
“I want people to understand that there are plenty of other owners of NFL teams and NBA teams, and especially teams that have majority Black players that literally feel like they have ownership over these players,” he said. “Obviously, we know that these players aren’t slaves and that they make a great living, but it’s the mentality that ends up traumatizing these gentlemen and women as well, I’m sure, or whoever works in these front offices.
“So it’s not something that we don’t know, but the series is going to bring a lot more clarity to a situation that I think that not only happened in L.A., but it’s happening in other places as well,” Nicholson said. “It’s just the history of our country, and racism is deeply embedded into our country, so we have to know how it affects us on all levels.”
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