We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.

It’s kind of crazy to look back and realize that Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson played just two seasons together. The Clippers drafted them 15 picks apart in 2000—Darius third, Q 18th—and split them up in the summer of 2002 when Darius was dealt (along with Harold Jamison) to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Andre Miller and Bryant Stith. In those two seasons, the Clippers won 70 combined games and did not make the playoffs. Miles started 27 games, Richardson 28. From a basketball standpoint, it was barely a ripple—the anticipated Clippers revival (or perhaps vival, wasn’t no “re” about it) never really transpired, at least not until the rise of Lob City. But you can’t just measure impact by Ws and Ls or points or any of that.

As they tell it, Darius and Q were on their way to being AND1 guys when Michael Jordan himself made sure they joined Jordan Brand. Jump, men. They got all sorts of rare retro PEs, head-tapped their way into the public consciousness back when Melo was still hoopin’ at Towson Catholic, landed a well-deserved KICKS cover. They were an unlikely pairing who meshed in unlikely ways; Miles a willowy 6-9 rim runner who ate up the court with huge strides, Richardson a solid 6-6 with a seemingly bottomless post-up bag and three-point range.

It’s kind of crazy to look back and realize that Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson played just two seasons together. The Clippers drafted them 15 picks apart in 2000—Darius third, Q 18th—and split them up in the summer of 2002 when Darius was dealt (along with Harold Jamison) to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Andre Miller and Bryant Stith. In those two seasons, the Clippers won 70 combined games and did not make the playoffs. Miles started 27 games, Richardson 28. From a basketball standpoint, it was barely a ripple—the anticipated Clippers revival (or perhaps vival, wasn’t no “re” about it) never really transpired, at least not until the rise of Lob City. But you can’t just measure impact by Ws and Ls or points or any of that.

Miles was the one with the superstar vibe, the one who ended up on the “Roc L.A. Familia” SLAM cover alongside Lamar Odom and Elton Brand, all wearing each other’s jerseys. Elton was far from alone in rocking an oversized Miles 21 jersey, wasn’t even the only one to wear it backward. Miles had Iverson’s vibe and Pippen’s game, a long, lanky stat-sheet filler who on his best nights looked like he could very well fulfill the promise that led to Sports Illustrated putting him on their cover with Kevin Garnett peeking out from behind.

Want a wild stat? The Clippers weren’t very good, only had four nationally televised games in Darius’ and Q’s two seasons—one in their first season, three in their second—but the Clippers went 4-0 in those games, including a win over the Shaq and Kobe two-time defending champion Lakers in January 2002. In their final national TV game, against the Mavs a week later, they both played 30-plus minutes off the bench, both scored 15 points, both filled every box-score box—hit a three, had at least one rebound, assist, steal and block.

Their Clippers promise went mostly unfulfilled—which perhaps should not have come as a surprise given a young team in the Donald Sterling days. A rose might grow from concrete, but it is not a common occurrence. As for expectations, those are ours, something separate from the careers that actually play out. So after the summer of 2002, Darius and Q wound up journeymen on their own journeys: Darius with injury-plagued years in Cleveland, Portland and Memphis; Q breaking the Suns single-season three-point record in Phoenix before playing in New York (twice), Miami and Orlando. Darius played his last game at 27, Q at 33; both of their final seasons mere epilogues.

But their stories didn’t end, their journeys weren’t over. And a full decade-plus after their final games, they’d reunite—on a podcast this time—as the Knuckleheads, both giving flowers to former teammates and opponents as well as receiving their own. They’re both active on social media, often in SLAM’s IG comments showing love to both active and retired hoopers. Maybe Darius and Q were never All-Stars and never won championships, but they found one another, they bent basketball culture in their direction, and honestly? That’s more than enough. 

Photo via Getty Images.

The post THE 30 PLAYERS WHO DEFINED SLAM’S 30 YEARS: Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson appeared first on SLAM.

We compiled a group of individuals (programming note: 30 entries, not 30 people total) who mean something special to SLAM and to our audience. Read the full list here and order your copy of SLAM 248, where this list was originally published, here.

I called Chris Paul the “Forrest Gump of the post-2005 NBA” in a 2020 cover story about him. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory but figured I should spend some time here to explain that, because it sets the table for the reason CP3 is on this list.

Let’s quickly run through what earned him that distinction. In 2005, he’s drafted by New Orleans, but due to destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, he spends most of his first two NBA seasons playing home games in Oklahoma City. In NOLA, he becomes homies with Lil Wayne, becomes an All-Star, becomes arguably the best PG in the League, becomes a playoff contender. Then he’s traded to the Lakers, un-traded by David Stern (I can’t emphasize enough how big a deal this was on 2011 NBA Twitter), then traded to the Clippers, becoming the heart of Lob City (another massive part of early 2010s NBA Twitter) and a perpetual postseason contender. He becomes president of the NBA Players Association, signs a long-term contract, and then the Donald Sterling racist audio incident happens, and he’s in the middle of that saga. Eventually he’s traded to Houston, then OKC. Then Covid happens, and Chris is in the middle of setting up the Bubble, lowkey a huge national public health story. Then, while in the Bubble, the Jacob Blake shooting takes place, and Chris—literally on national TV before a Thunder-Rockets game is about to tip—is a part of the group that holds the players off the court, and later as PA president, is the head of the group that figured out how to infuse social justice messaging and action into the NBA’s infrastructure. He leads the Thunder on an impressive run in the Bubble, then later joins the Suns, where he leads the team to the Finals, and is on the team when there’s another racist owner situation with Robert Sarver, who later sells the franchise.

A couple years pass and then CP3 joins the Warriors, where he’s currently attempting to help push the Steph-Klay-Dray group toward another ring. Along the way he played an iconic commercial character (Cliff Paul), amassed 22,000+ points and 11,000+ assists, made 12 All-Star teams and the NBA’s 75th Anniversary team and dropped 13 signature sneakers with Jordan Brand. And he was on the banana boat, because of course he was. The guy is everywhere.

“Forrest Gump of the post-2005 NBA”—undeniably accurate. But that’s not alone enough to make it to this list, because this is the “30 Players Who Defined SLAM’s 30 Years,” and if there wasn’t a direct SLAM connection, Chris would just be a guy who was around the NBA universe for a while, paying us no mind. But CP3 paid us plenty mind. He was first featured in SLAM in April 2003 as a high schooler with a one-page PUNKS article in the back of the mag; his brother CJ once told me that his family had that page framed in their house.

He was on his first SLAM cover in 2006, his second in 2008, his third in 2009, his fourth in 2011, his fifth in 2012 (alongside Blake Griffin), and his sixth in 2020. In his prime, he had a fun, uptempo point guard game that a magazine like SLAM was practically created to celebrate, and in his veteran years, he’s been a methodical game manager who almost exclusively plays on teams we cover deep into the playoffs. He was always relevant in the sneaker world—the aforementioned 13 sigs—and he was early in the tunnel fit game, becoming an @LeagueFits regular during our fashion account’s salad days. (The three hoodies he wore in his most recent cover shoot were produced in collaboration with SLAM and LeagueFits and sold on slamgoods.com, with the profits going to charity.)

A player who’s seemingly everywhere, finding his way into every crevice of basketball culture and NBA happenings for almost two decades, and a publication that covers every crevice of basketball culture and NBA happenings for exactly three decades. It makes perfect sense that the two would have a great, symbiotic relationship.

So, of course Chris was going to be on this list. The guy is everywhere. 

Photo via Getty Images. Portrait by Kyle Hood.

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BREAKING: Billionaire mortgage lender Mat Ishbia is finalizing a purchase of the Phoenix Suns, sources tell ESPN. The deal, expected to be completed in the near future, would end the tumultuous tenure of owner Robert Sarver.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 20, 2022

The deal is reportedly worth $4 billion per Woj. Ishbia will be bringing in his brother, Justin, as a significant investor and alternate governor for the Suns, per Shams Charania of The Athletic.

ESPN Sources: Ishbia’s purchase price is in the neighborhood of $4 billion. https://t.co/HzH2XSspHp

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) December 20, 2022

Sarver and Ishbia also released their own official statements. Sarver called Ishbia “the right leader to build on franchise legacies of winning and community support,” while Ishbia said that he’s “honored” to be the “next stewards of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury.”

Official: Mat and Justin Ishbia reach agreement to buy majority stake of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury from Robert Sarver: pic.twitter.com/dEe6QGfZJP

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) December 21, 2022

Sarver has been looking to sell the Suns since he was suspended for a year and fined due to the League investigating allegations of a hostile workplace within the Phoenix front office. The fine and suspension were met with many mixed emotions from players, the players union, and even a chairman of the Suns’ ownership group.

Ultimately, Sarver’s decision to sell won’t go down as infamously as Donald Sterlings’ ouster, but it does clarify that the NBA won’t stand down to allegations of racism and allegations within franchise front offices in the League.

The post REPORT: Robert Sarver Set to Sale Suns to Billionaire Mat Ishbia appeared first on SLAM.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver issued the following statement: pic.twitter.com/ykBrsEoxc0

— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) September 21, 2022

Robert Sarver has announced that he’s “beginning the process” to sell his majority stakes in the Suns and Mercury. Sarver is currently serving a one-year suspension after the NBA concluded its investigation into Sarver’s “workplace misconduct and organizational deficiencies.” during his 18-year tenure as owner of the Phoenix franchises.

“Words that I deeply regret now overshadow nearly two decades of building organizations that brought people together – and strengthened the Phoenix area – through the unifying power of professional men’s and women’s basketball,” Sarver said in a public statement. “As a man of faith, I believe in atonement and the path to forgiveness. I expected that the commissioner’s one-year suspension would provide the time for me to focus, make amends and remove my personal controversy from the teams that I and so many fans love.

But in our current unforgiving climate, it has become painfully clear that that is no longer possible – that whatever good I have done, or could still do, is outweighed by things I have said in the past. For those reasons, I am beginning the process of seeking buyers for the Suns and Mercury.

BREAKING: In a statement, Robert Sarver writes, in part:

“I am beginning the process of seeking buyers for the Suns and Mercury.”https://t.co/fMhWdDIM5M

— Baxter Holmes (@Baxter) September 21, 2022

Sarver’s stunning announcement comes after the NBA players union, LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Draymond Green expressed disappointment in varying degrees about his punishment. Green specifically called for the owners to vote Sarver out; James believed the League “definitely got this wrong,” while CP3 tweeted that “the sanctions fell short.”

“I do not want to be a distraction to these two teams and the fine people who work so hard to bring the joy and excitement of basketball to fans around the world,” Sarver said.

“I want what’s best for these two organizations, the players, the employees, the fans, the community, my fellow owners, the NBA, and the WNBA. This is the best course of action for everyone. In the meantime, I will continue to work on becoming a better person and continuing to support the community in meaningful ways. Thank you for continuing to root for the Suns and the Mercury, embracing the power that sports has to bring us together.”

There were always concerns that Sarver’s stubbornness and desire to paint himself as the victim would make him willing to continue as a pariah in the NBA community, but his decision to sell the Suns and Mercury bails out the league and his ownership peers. https://t.co/LD7o1OYhQ0

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 21, 2022

Suns vice chairman Jahm Nafaji also came out and called for Sarver to resign as the owner of the Suns and Mercury. Commissioner Adam Silver let it be known that despite the precedent he set in 2015 when the NBA banned Donald Sterling due to his racist remarks, he didn’t “have the right to take away” Sarver’s ownership stakes.

Ownership in Phoenix should be more attractive after back-to-back brilliant seasons where the Suns recorded the best record in the League. According to NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, League execs believe Phoenix could be a monster free agent destination with the proper ownership due to its warm weather climate

The post Robert Sarver ‘Beginning the Process’ of Selling Suns and Mercury appeared first on SLAM.

Sarver was caught using several offensive languages around his respected organizations. With reports coming out stating he used the ‘N-Word’ frequently, as well as misogynistic comments, Draymond Green opened up about how this makes a representation of the NBA.

“That’s bulls–t. You can’t continue to represent way more people than yourself with those views,” said Green. “With speaking to people the way he did, with treating African Americans and women the way he has. That’s not OK.”

The NBA has been able to address racial justice matters pretty seriously; however, this recent polemic on behalf of Sarver has the basketball community believing he should be removed from his position and banned for life.

The support of the Black Lives Matter movement since 2020, and the termination of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling back in 2015 make this case look rather simple for League commissioner Adam Silver. However, he ponders the idea that removing the rights to Sarver’s ownership of the teams is too much to get behind. Essentially, Silver believes the $10 million fine and one-year suspension will serve as a lesson for the inappropriate acts caused by Sarver.

“What it would take to remove that team from his control is a very involved process,” said Silver. “and it’s different than holding a job. It just is. When you actually own a team, it’s just a very different proposition.”

Green called on League governors to vote on Sarver’s position. A vote is required from at least three-quarters of the board to remove him, per Baxter Holmes of ESPN. Draymond Green continues to shed light on matters that need to be discussed around the League, and his input will certainly re-adjust the decision of Adam Silver.

The post Draymond Green Reacts to Robert Sarver’s Suspension on His Podcast appeared first on SLAM.

Basketball fans hope he’d be terminated altogether, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes he has ‘no right’ to remove Sarver from his position in ownership of the teams.

“I don’t have the right to take away his team,” said Silver. “I don’t want to rest on that legal point because, of course, there could be a process to take away someone’s team in this League. It’s very involved, and I ultimately made the decision that it didn’t rise to that level. But, to me, the consequences are severe here on Mr. Sarver.”

The NBA has faced racial misconduct amongst ownership in the past, most notably from Donald Sterling, former Los Angeles Clippers owner. The racist comments he made to his mistress on a leaked audio recording forced the NBA to take action and ban Sterling from any NBA events for life. Many feel that Sarver’s comments have been just as bad, if not worse than Sterling’s, and the League is now facing questions about whether or not they are handling ethical guidelines solemnly.

When asked why termination wouldn’t apply to an owner but would to an average employee of the League, Silver said: “What it would take to remove that team from his control is a very involved process, and it’s different than holding a job. It just is. When you actually own a team, it’s just a very different proposition.”

Further investigation of the case revealed that Sarver had been using the N-Word pretty openly and allegedly used it ‘five times’ around the workplace.

Although Sarver has already pledged to take complete accountability and practice ethical values, many fans and leadership across the League will not condone the moral decision to give him a one-year suspension. A suspension of that nature and donations to organizations addressing race and gender-based issues shouldn’t overcome the harassment tolerated by employees in Phoenix. Further action may be in store from Commissioner Silver.

The post Adam Silver: ‘I Don’t Have the Right to Take Away’ Suns From Robert Sarver appeared first on SLAM.

I thought a lot about the concept of leadership over the next week or so. You can’t really teach it. There’s no “AP Leadership” in high school, and any “Leadership 101”-type college courses are focused more on famous leaders throughout history than learning to be the best leader you can be. I know you can become a better leader—there’s a hundred-million-dollar category of the book industry to prove it—but there’s an innateness to leadership, like you’re either someone who’s naturally interested in bringing people together and uplifting the people around you or you aren’t. Maybe that’s a little too rigid of a way to look at it; there’s clearly some gray area here. But I wasn’t sure.

So I decided I’d ask someone who would know.

Fast-forward two weeks to a blazing-hot Tuesday in Los Angeles. I’m sitting in an airy photo studio when Chris Paul walks in to take some photos for the cover of this magazine. He cycles through a few looks curated for him by his stylist Courtney Mays, then sits down to talk about the past year. Obviously the first thing I ask about is leadership—is it innate or taught? Nature or nurture? Born with or learned?

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“I think there’s a combination of both,” he says. “I say the best teacher is experience. I don’t know if it’s fortunately or unfortunately, but I’ve been in a lot of crazy situations.”

Let me pause Chris right there to zoom into that fact. Not only has Chris been in a lot of crazy situations—he’s basically the Forest Gump of the post-2005 NBA. It’s also the first thing his brother CJ says when asked about the evolution of Chris’ personality over the course of his playing career. “It’s nothing that he hasn’t already seen at this point in the NBA,” CJ says.

THE HOODIES CHRIS PAUL IS WEARING IN THESE PHOTOS ARE AVAILABLE NOW AT SLAMGOODS.COM. A PORTION OF THE PROCEEDS ARE GOING TO THE CHRIS PAUL FAMILY FOUNDATION.

To run through it quickly: Chris is drafted to New Orleans, but spends huge portions of his first and second seasons playing home games in Oklahoma City because of devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Then he becomes an All-Star, becomes friends with local NOLA hero Lil Wayne, becomes the best point guard in the League and makes the playoffs a few times. Then he’s traded to the Lakers, immediately un-traded from the Lakers when David Stern vetoes the trade on behalf of non-existent Hornets ownership, then is traded to the Clippers where he forms Lob City with Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan. The Clippers become a perennial playoff team, Chris becomes president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and signs a fat contract to stay in L.A. for a while. But drama follows—tapes of Donald Sterling saying horribly racist things are leaked to TMZ, and CP, Griffin and Doc Rivers lead the team through what would eventually be a lifetime ban of the franchise’s now-former owner. Eventually Chris is traded to Houston, where he plays alongside James Harden, and two seasons later he’s traded to Oklahoma City in exchange for Russell Westbrook, landing back in the city he spent so much time in as a rookie.

And all of that was before this past year. On March 11, Chris was getting ready for a home game against the Utah Jazz when it was announced that opposing center Rudy Gobert had tested positive for Covid-19, leading to the shutdown of all sports and a permanent reference point for the beginning of the national quarantine. As president of the PA, Chris was essential in establishing and setting up the Orlando bubble, where regular season play began in mid-August. On August 26, following the sickening news (and video) of the police shooting of Wisconsin resident Jacob Blake, the Milwaukee Bucks stayed in the locker room and didn’t play, which led to the entire world turning on the news to see what would happen next. And what happened next, at least on our television screens, was a video of Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook—who were supposed to star in the Thunder-Rockets game later that day—walking down a hallway after deciding that their teams wouldn’t be playing, either. Chris set up a meeting for all players in the bubble to talk about the situation (more on that later), and days later play did return, and the bubble wound up being a massive success—there were zero Covid cases with the exception of a couple of players who arrived with it, the actual gameplay was amazing, important social justice messages were promoted, and, according to Chris, the players learned that as a group they’re way stronger when they’re together and unified than when they aren’t (more on that later, too).

So if experience is the best teacher, Chris has a head start, at least in terms of NBA happenings. His history of leadership goes back before his time hooping professionally, though.

Before Chris really saw a future in basketball, he played football and gravitated to middle linebacker—the leader of the defense. In the 10-and-under Pop Warner leagues he’d play quarterback, too—though as he got older he played receiver. But he was also the back-up quarterback, not even because of his passing skill so much as his natural ability to lead a group.

In seventh and eight grade, Chris was class president at school. He didn’t do it as a freshman, then picked it back up as a sophomore and held onto the role as a junior and senior. In 11th grade he was in charge of planning the junior prom, which fell on the same day as his AAU state championship game. He had to wake up at the crack of dawn to set everything up for prom at the convention center, then head to Charlotte to play (and win), then hustle back to Lewisville, NC, to pick up his prom date a few minutes late and book it to the party.

“But it seems like that,” he says, referencing his tendency to take on tons of responsibilities and deal with ’em one by one, “has sort of been the story of my life.”

After the NBA sent everyone home in mid-March, the NBA and NBPA together transitioned into “what do we do next?” mode. Chris was ready for the moment. He describes the process as a series of Zooms and phone calls, starting with a small group and gaining more and more consensus from a wider group as the bubble was becoming a reality. He credits good communication as integral to that exercise.

“I almost try to overcommunicate,” he says. “Communicating is something that I felt like we always can continue to get better at. Make sure everybody at least knows what’s going on, making sure that there’s an unbelievable team around to execute all of it. That’s the thing that I had to learn, and I’m still getting better at: You have to be able to delegate.”

“The most challenging [thing] was dealing with real-life issues,” he adds. “There’s a lot of people out there who were concerned with, Are the games gonna happen? Is basketball gonna be played? But all the players, the conversations that we were having was about real life and the social injustices that were taking place and leaving our families and the health risk because of Covid. I think that was the toughest part. Yeah, everybody wanted to hoop, but everybody’s mental health and physical health and family came first.”

The bubble got started mostly seamlessly—there were a couple of reported Covid cases when everyone descended upon Orlando, but after a mandatory quarantine time, zero players tested positive during the entirety of the remainder of the season. And then games started, and even without fans in the arena the action was truly entertaining—whether it was less travel helping with rest, the consistency of the court they played on helping with shooting percentages, or just general competitiveness built up from the time off, the players really went at it and the result was high-level gameplay.

But it was all happening very fast. Once games started, the schedule had teams playing basically every two days, and a lot of the motivation of the bubble in the first place—to bring players together so groups could more easily get together and plan social justice initiatives—weren’t happening as much as some would’ve wanted. “Guys are down there competing every day,” Chris says, “and real life is happening outside. So when the Jacob Blake situation happened, guys didn’t have the opportunity to really process it. So that gave us a chance to stop, like, Everybody stop. Let’s get in here and talk.”

After the Bucks decided they weren’t coming out of the locker room to play on August 26 and following the rest of the teams’ decision to do the same, Chris once again had to figure out next steps. One of his first calls was to NBA EVP of Events Kelly Flatow. “Kelly, we need a ballroom,” he told her. “We can do the chairs with social distance, whatever we need to do. But we need to talk.”

That meeting has been reported on many times by now, but it was an undoubtedly heated exchange. Coaches were present for the beginning, and then they left and it was just players—all the players in the bubble at the time. “The amount of quote-unquote star power that was in that room,” Chris says, “and actually in the beginning of that meeting it was coaches and players—that’s never happened. Ever ever happened.”

The group met again the following day, and by now we all know what happened next—the players did indeed stay, deciding to formulate a plan to address racial injustice issues (putting their support behind the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act) and demanding more from team owners regarding using NBA arenas as voter registration and voting hubs. “It was needed,” he says. “Without those meetings, I don’t think any more games would have been played. That gave us a chance to stop, like everybody stop, let’s get in here and talk. How are you feeling emotionally? Like, what are you feeling? And we got a chance to do that, and sort of do a reset, and to talk to the other governors about how we felt they could help support us and what some of our goals and our missions were.”

The bubble finished off successfully. The players spread important social justice messages everywhere they could—in commercials, on the backs of jerseys, on the court, and more. Plus, the fact that it was able to happen at all meant the players were able to provide for their families and loved ones. And as for Chris, he showed that at 35 years old he’s very much still got it, too. He led the Thunder, who most discounted would never make the playoffs in the first place, to a seven-game battle with the Houston Rockets. He averaged 21.3 ppg, 7.4 rpg and 5.3 apg during the series.

I asked Chris what he thinks will be the legacy of the bubble. “I think it will be something that future players will always draw back to, like, I don’t want to say defining moment, but, like, an awakening for players in understanding how powerful our voice is and how important it is to communicate with one another,” he says. “Just because we compete so hard against each other on the court doesn’t mean we have to compete like that against each other off the court. There are a lot more like-minded guys in our league than not. The ability to collaborate and partner and do things together, it will change a generation.”

Which brings us back to the idea of leadership. It can’t be easy to lead a room with a couple hundred NBA players in it, all of whom have their own strong thoughts regarding the best move for the group. On this, Chris preaches being definitive. He specifically says he refuses to sugarcoat decisions, and he won’t go to a player and say something is only happening because other people are pushing for it to happen; he’s willing to have tough conversations and say something is better for the group as a whole and it’s what needs to be done.

It’d be unfair to say Chris has a 100 percent approval rating across the League—DeMarcus Cousins has said repeatedly that he’s not a fan, and former teammate James Harden and Chris didn’t exactly see eye to eye before CP was traded to OKC in 2019. Still, his approval rating amongst a group of 400-plus millionaires—all of whom have well-deserved egos that come with being one of the 450 best basketball players on the planet—is off-the-charts high. Like, frankly, it doesn’t really make sense. It’d be almost too easy for Chris Paul to just hang out, enjoy being a basketball-playing rich guy who has a great job and a couple of iconic sponsorship deals. (Like it or not, Cliff Paul is gonna be remembered for a long time.) But instead, Chris is so consistently getting shit done that even during the two hours that we’re with him, he gets a text from one of the NBPA executives that he says he’ll “need to handle” later that day.

CJ Paul says Chris’ motivation for all of the off-court work comes in wanting to make sure the future is set up properly for those who follow in his footsteps. “I think just leaving something for the next generation of guys coming up [is his motivation],” CJ says. “As he’s been in the League, the pay has gone up—everything else has elevated. And I think he just wants that to keep happening for generations and generations and generations. What we don’t want to do is take a step back.”

And for Chris, none of this will stop anytime soon. At 35, he’s currently the only active NBA player from the 2005 draft lottery—and one of only a few still active from that draft altogether—but Chris says he has no plans to call it quits in the near future. He remains President of the PA, and who knows what challenges that’ll bring next. (For starters, there’s the 2020-21 season, which as of this writing is still totally up in the air in terms of timing.) Plus, he’s technically still class president—the senior-year class president is class president forever. Which is why in 2013, as a then-six-time NBA All-Star, Chris planned the West Forsyth High School Class of 2003 10-year reunion. “A guy as busy as him could just be like, Hey guys, I don’t have the time, y’all take it,” CJ says. “But he actually took the time to plan it out. Finding a DJ, all that.”

At the cover shoot, I ask Chris if he’s going to plan the 20-year reunion in 2023, too. “Yeah,” he says, chuckling a little. Kinda sarcastic, as if he’s trying to imply that maybe he won’t. But we both know that he’s going to do it.

—

Portraits by Atiba Jefferson. Buy your copy of SLAM 229 here.

The post Portrait of a Leader: Chris Paul on Guiding the Way appeared first on SLAM.

Rivers oversaw much of the Chris Paul Era in Los Angeles and helped the team navigate the potentially rocky phase between the team’s Lob City phase and its current rendition.

He was also the coach of the team throughout the ownership transition between Donald Sterling and Steve Ballmer.

Rivers’ first year at the helm of the Kawhi Leonard-led Clippers, however, ended in disappointment as the team once considered a heavy title favorite fizzled out in the second round.

The Clippers were 49-23 this season and never finished below .500 during Rivers’ tenure with the franchise. The iconic coach had a similarly dominant run with the Boston Celtics prior to his arrival in Los Angeles and is also a former Coach of the Year winner from his time with the Orlando Magic.

It’s unclear if Rivers will be on the lookout for another job right away but there are several teams that would surely consider him if he chooses to get right back in the saddle.

Related: All coaching vacancies in the NBA

The post Doc Rivers Out as Head Coach of Clippers appeared first on SLAM.

What gets lost when we stare too long at the instant classic Rock L.A. Familia SLAM cover or highlights of him finishing off lobs from Quentin Richardson, however, are the flashes of brilliance he showed when he suited up for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Miles’ career was derailed by a severe knee injury but not before he put the world on notice as a post-hype sleeper, dropping 47 points, 12 boards, five blocks and four steals on the Denver Nuggets one April evening.

Miles was as intriguing a candidate as any to drop a 5×5 performance and it’s a shame that his rise hit a snag before his 25th birthday. His stint in Oregon ended under bizarre circumstances but for a minute there he was a tantalizing piece of a franchise that boasted a number of them.

The post Greatest Hits: Darius Miles Drops 47 appeared first on SLAM.

Previous stories:

LIVE FROM MADISON STREET: Zach LaVine Talks Playing in Chicago

ALL OF THE LIGHTS: Remembering 1988 All-Star Weekend in Chicago

BORN & RAISED: Allie Quigley Has Been Repping Chicago Since Day 1

HOMECOMING: Kendrick Nunn’s Journey from Chicago to the NBA

—

Dear Chi,

We different. We know this. Not Paris different, not Harlem different, not Vegas, Lagos, Madrid, Sao Paulo, Sydney, New Orleans or South Central different. We stay a city within our own nation within our own world. Our flow, the way we roll, the way we think, feel about and react to things, the way we create, what we create, the reasons we create, different. We exist different.

This game ain’t just a game. It’s our export to the world. Our soul we keep. We bringin’ it back like it’s ’88. All-Star Weekend. Reminding the world who we are, where we stand and—more defiantly—what we stand on and for. We didn’t invent this game, just mecca’d it. GOAT’d it. Because we don’t follow our passion, we follow our effort. We don’t chase the end result, we embrace the process. While others trend set, we invent. We don’t just play D, we protect, baseline-to-baseline. Tony Allen and Pat Bev style. 

The mid-February classic that returns to us after a 32-year break is the culmination of decades of post-Jordan inspiration. It’s us contributing to the game in ways unmatched by any other place in the world. Since Jordan’s coming-out party that weekend (the same weekend that saw Mike Tyson marry Robin Givens here, too), the weekend where he ascended above the game and made the pound-for-pound alive title all his, all we gave to the game was the following: D-Wade, D-Rose, the Parkers: Candace and Jabari, KG via South Carolina, Tamika Catchings, three-time world champs Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. Antoine Walker, Evan Turner, Cappie P, Michael Fin, Q-Rich, Jon Scheyer, officials James Capers and Marc Davis, the aforementioned Allen and Bev, Morgan Tuck, Juwan Howard, Jalen Brunson, Tyler Ulis, Sherron Collins, Will Bynum, Corey Mag, Jewell Loyd, Jamie Brandon, Ronnie Fields, the Pargos (Jannero and Jeremy), the Browns (Shannon and Sterling), and oh yeah, a kid named Anthony Davis. And they say the Dream Team changed the game. 

Shy people run. Chi people run things. We live by truism, not by code. A truism that creates a different character of man, woman and child that shed sweat on the streets that we call neighborhoods, on these courts we call home. It reflects who we are individually; it reflects what we rep as a city. Our character is defined between the water of Lake Michigan and the concrete of Kedzie; by the wind that hits our skin but never touches our bones; by the chain nets that hang from iron halos and nylon that will create string music inside the United Center come February. 

We are represented by Jake and Elwood, Cochise and Preach, Kanye and Parkay, Jordan and Pippen. We live by the difference between taking a gamble and being ambitious. Doubt to us equals not being prepared. Something we know nothing about. Our “Big Shoulders” alias comes with pride because it wasn’t given to us: we earned it. The world has always been resting on them. Second City to no one. And for those who don’t believe it, just ask someone from here during All-Star Weekend. We are not ashamed to remind those who don’t know or forgot who we are. We don’t argue, we simply disagree. We don’t create enemies, we just have low tolerance for all things faux, fake or phony. We don’t “friend” or “like” people we don’t know. We believe in shaking peoples’ hands. Eye to eye, I for I.

The new awakening has arrived. In the form of a basketball showcase we call the “Black Super Bowl.” We are its host. Here to put on, display our coexistence with a game that is, to us, what hip-hop is to NYC, film and movies are to L.A., modern technology is to Silicon Valley, capitalism is to Wall Street, corruption is to Capitol Hill, coffee is to Seattle, Nike is to Portland, Mickey Mouse is to Orlando, Donald Glover is to the ATL. That connectivity, that association. That bond shared between our city and this game called “ball” that is inseparable, undeniable and unconditional. That love.

So let’s show the world how we do. The real we. Where we shoot hoops, not people. Where presidents are from, not prisoners. Where we open the city’s door and say, “Take your Jordans off. Relax. Watch the carpet. Don’t chill, Chi-IL.” And let all visitors know that while other places play the game, we live it. And that sound everyone will be hearing all weekend is not basketballs dribbling.

It’s our heartbeat.

—

Scoop Jackson is a senior writer for ESPN.

Photos via Getty and Matthew Yarnell.

The post DEAR CHI: A Love Letter to Basketball in the Windy City appeared first on SLAM.

As laid out in a comprehensive and recommended Forbes report, the NBA is now home to three different franchises worth more than $4B. Those three franchises – the New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors – are among the top five most valuable professional sports franchises in North America.

The leader of the NBA pack, James Dolan’s Knicks are worth a staggering $4.6B and franchise values across the board are up 14% versus what they were last year.

Put simply, while the disruption in the NBA-to-China dynamic is significant, neither that nor the supposedly struggling television ratings have been enough to curb the growth of the sport, at least as an investment for billionaires.

The NBA franchise that saw its proportionate value grow the most over the course of the past year is the Toronto Raptors, who’ve added a projected 25% to their overall value and now sit comfortably at $2.1B.

Even the Memphis Grizzlies, the least valuable franchise pegged at $1.3B, saw an increase of 8%.

All told, NBA franchises have grown in value 576% since 2010. That’s far beyond similar metrics for other professional sports leagues in North America. Major League Baseball saw 362% over that same span and the NFL 279%.

The game changed completely in 2014 when Steve Ballmer paid an unprecedented $2B for Donald Sterling’s Clippers and now a staggering 11 franchises are worth at least that amount. Five teams are worth north of $3B (the aforementioned teams in the $4B club plus the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics).

One franchise that saw relatively stagnant growth according to Forbes’ projections is the Dallas Mavericks but that pattern may not hold given the impact that Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis could have on the market. The Mavs, worth $2.4B, grew in value by just 7% versus 2019.

The post 11 NBA Franchises Now Valued At North Of $2B appeared first on SLAM.

West told Bryant he shouldn’t join a team owned, at the time, by the despicable Donald Sterling.

The Clips had an initial shot at nabbing a 17-year-old Kobe, but told him they were the wrong fit following a legendary pre-draft workout in 1996.

Per Bleacher Report and The LA Times:

“I remember when he was going to leave the Lakers, and I’ve never really mentioned this to anyone, he was going to come and sign with the Clippers, who I’m now involved with as a consultant. And I told him, ‘Kobe, under no circumstances can you do this,'” West said on Inside the NBA.

“And he was mad at everyone, the Lakers, the owner, everyone else. I said ‘Kobe you can’t go play with the Clippers. You can’t play for that owner, period.’ We had two conversations about it.”

In a “long talk” with Bryant after the workout, [Bill] Fitch said he shared with Bryant how impressed he was by what he’d seen, and also concerns about the organization as it was run by former owner Donald Sterling.

“He knew where we were coming from,” Fitch said. “He knew the Clippers were in need of a lot of help and were in dire need of a lot of things, including ownership. We had a lot of long talks about what he should do and where he should go and I said, ‘I can take you and you can play 48 minutes a game with anybody I got here, but it’s not going to be the career I want for you.’

“He benefited from us not taking him and money-wise he probably got more getting drafted where he did than he would have gotten out of Donald Sterling. I didn’t want him to have to go through all the things we were going through there.”

Related Jerry West Wanted Tracy McGrady to Join Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal

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“When it was brought to us, it was like, Yeah, we gotta do that. That’s a must,” Patrick Beverley tells SLAM.

It’s a Thursday afternoon in January and we’re at the Honey Training Facility, the Clippers’ headquarters in Playa Vista, CA, a city located about 30 minutes southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Montrezl Harrell has just walked through a door that leads into the media room, which is adjacent to the team’s practice court. With every step he takes, there’s a clanking sound from the plethora of chains that are stacked together around the 25-year-old’s neck.

He’s wearing a red velvet durag with a white headband over it. The ties hang down his torso. Harrell’s also wearing Beverley’s jersey. In comes Pat, a sleeve on his right arm and two headbands placed over one another, with a diamond-encrusted Cuban link and Lou Williams’ jersey on. And Lou, with no accessories other than his assortment of ice, is sporting Harrell’s home jersey.

In 2002, Elton Brand, Lamar Odom and Darius Miles graced SLAM 57 wearing each other’s jerseys backward to represent an era that was the epitome of fashion. Brand posed with a fitted; L.O. rocked a Sean John headband; and D-Miles wore the untied red durag with the white headband. Nearly two decades later, Beverley, Harrell and Williams are posing in a similar manner, paying homage to the aforementioned cover. 

“They represented a culture back when they played with the Clippers,” Beverley, who’s spent the last three years with the team, says. “We reinvented something and added our own little swag to it.”

“I look at it in retrospect,” Williams adds. “Once it’s all said and done, you can look at that cover, look at us recreate it and having an opportunity to do it with this group and possibly to make history will be dope.”

The history Lou speaks of: bringing the Clippers their first ever title. After acquiring Kawhi Leonard and Paul George this past summer, the Clippers  are considered championship contenders. 

“This is a Laker town,” Williams, who played with the Lakers from 2015-17, says. “There ain’t no confusion about that. That’s perfectly fine with us. We prefer it for the odds to go against us. I think that brings the best out of us. I think that’s just the difference [between] playing for the Clippers and the Lakers. So much is expected of the Lakers from the beginning and it’s, like, surprising if we do something.”

To be born and raised in Los Angeles and root for the Clippers can seem taboo, especially when there’s already an established basketball team that’s been here since 1962. The Lakers’ résumé speaks volumes, too—16 championships, 11 retired jerseys, the Magic Johnson-led Showtime era, Kobe and Shaq, and five statues (four players and one broadcaster) that are enshrined outside STAPLES Center, serving as a reminder of who the superior team in L.A. is. 

It takes a special kind of group to cheer for a team that relocated here 22 years after the Lakers did. A special kind of group to devote its allegiance to a squad that’s never made it past the second round of the playoffs, one that was plagued by injuries when it had promising pieces and ultimately left a lot of “What if?” hypotheticals. 

Despite everything that’s happened within the organization—underachieving seasons, parting with franchise players, the demise of Donald Sterling’s ownership—there’s still a loyal fan base that reps Clipper Nation. 

“They let us be us,” Beverley tells SLAM. “Not only does the team allows us to be us, but the fans do, too. We come into games, we wear chains, sweat suits—[we’re] locked in and trying to get a win—and they embrace that, and I think that’s the biggest thing.”

The fanbase Beverley speaks so highly of is something he appreciates about the city. Last season, while sitting in his locker answering post-game questions after a win over the Lakers, Pat dedicated the victory to those who, like himself, got it out the mud.

“The people in the back,” Beverley told reporters. “The blue-collar people who don’t have a lot given to them, who work for everything they deserve. And that’s what we’re doing right now. We do it for them.”

Earlier this season, he partnered with Honey, an L.A.-based tech company, to offer fans tickets at an affordable price. For all 41 home games this season, $10 tickets have been made available to purchase an hour and a half before tip-off. 

“I grew up in situations where we weren’t able to [go to games],” Beverley says, reminiscing on his childhood. “I remember when I was in Chicago trying to get to Bulls games, my mom had to work and do all that to try and get tickets so [I’m] fortunate to give back and inspire more.”

The Clippers have continued to serve those who are underprivileged throughout the city. To date, there are about 150 refurbished basketball courts throughout the greater Los Angeles area that feature the team’s interlocked logo (first introduced in 2015), with that number set to double later this year.

The team also has a mobile optometry shop that shows up to local schools in the county. The shop started with five schools in Watts, then expanded to serve children in Inglewood and Long Beach. The Clippers are also set to relocate to a new arena in Inglewood by 2024, and have rebranded their identity and marketing to connect with those who may feel overshadowed by the city’s glitz and glamour.

“We don’t have to be one way off the court and be a whole completely different way on the court,” Harrell says, referencing what the team’s “L.A. Our Way” mantra means to him. “What you see is what you get, and the fans have done a great job of embracing that and being able to follow that culture.”

What’s evident within the first few minutes of being at the photo shoot is that the relationship between the trio isn’t fabricated. The conversations flow freely, ranging from praise to distant memories to just joking with one another, like they’ve been friends since childhood. 

“I put up 40 on his head, that’s what I remember,” Williams recalls about the first time he played Beverley. “I like to check people’s temperature. I don’t really talk a lot, but me and Pat got the same DNA—we just go about it a different way.”

“I thought bro was crazy to be real with you,” Harrell adds.

“I thought you were crazy, too,” Beverley claps back. 

To understand how strong the camaraderie between the three is, the birth of it dates back to 2012, when the Houston Rockets signed Beverley, a hard-nosed 6-1 point guard by way of Chicago who had stints in Greece, Ukraine and Russia.

Three years later, Houston took Harrell, a 6-7 power forward from Louisville with an unlimited motor, as the 32nd pick in the 2015 draft. The following season, the Rockets received Williams, a reserve journeyman on his fifth team, via trade from the Lakers. The 2015 6MOY would play 23 games in H-Town before being on the move back west, this time to the other L.A. franchise.

In 2017, the Clippers traded Chris Paul to the Rockets in a seven-player deal that also involved a first-round draft pick. Among those players were Beverley, Harrell and Williams. Fast forward to 2020 and they are the only three players remaining from the trade, making them the longest-tenured Clippers on the roster.

As of this writing, the Clippers are 30-13 and sit in fourth place in the Western Conference. Montrezl Harrell is averaging career highs in points (19.3), rebounds (7.1) and minutes (28.7) per game. He’s tied his career-high 34 points three times this season and has six double-doubles. 

“I’m a dog, bro—no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Harrell says. “I don’t chill. I don’t do vacations and stuff like that. When the season is over, I go home and be with my kids and family for that first week and…I’m right back playing in the Pro-Ams and in the gym with my trainer.”

Harrell’s on-court play—the way he attacks the glass to corral rebounds for second-chance opportunities, facilitates to shooters on the perimeter when the defense helps in pick-and-roll situations, uses his motor to outwork opponents or shows his expanded offensive repertoire—has paid dividends across the L. 

“He’s gotten better every year,” Williams says of Harrell. “I praise him for accepting the position that he’s in for the betterment of our basketball team as a whole.”

Williams—the three-time 6MOY winner who’s averaging 20.0 ppg and 6.2 apg in his 16th season—will go down as one of the best reserves the game has ever seen. Last March, Lou passed Dell Curry for the most bench points in NBA history. He currently has over 200 career games with at least 20 points off the bench—an NBA record—and, along with Harrell, has formed one of the best one-two punches in the Association.

The pair joins Kawhi (26.9 ppg) and PG (23.5 ppg) on the only team to have four players averaging at least 19 ppg. Lou and Trezz have propelled the Clippers to rank first in bench scoring (51.7 ppg) and second in boards (20.5 rpg).

“The chemistry just continues to build because we’re able to build the work in when other people are vacationing,” Harrell, who established that rapport with Williams at the AEBL Pro-Am in Atlanta, says. “We’re playing the game that we love to play in general and it gets to convert within what we do in our actual workspace.”

“Entertaining,” is the word Beverley uses to describe the tandem. “The things that they do on the basketball court, you couldn’t even find a [more] perfect match. The energy they bring, the professionalism they bring. In a lot of ways, the starting unit will come out dry and they pick up the pace. We’re up 8 and the lead goes to 20—something like that you can’t find that anywhere in the League except here.”

Beverley is the head of the snake who embodies the Clippers’ gritty ethos. His defensive assignments consist of guarding the League’s best—LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook—and pestering anyone else on the court. Mr. 94 Feet, a nickname he received for his prowess locking up, has abided by a duck-no-fades mentality that only true competitors can appreciate. 

“I gotta say, when I was growing up in Chicago,” he says, when asked about his approach to the game, “the group of guys I [hung] around with was always all or nothing. That’s how it’s always been since I was growing up. I was fortunate to make it out, make it to the NBA and it’s my same mindset.”

Later in the interview, the trio talks about what a Clippers championship parade would look like in L.A. Williams says it’d be interesting because they’re splitting a city with another team; Harrell believes they’d hear cheers along with boos depending on where in Los Angeles they’re at; and Pat claims that they’d be so turnt that they wouldn’t even care. 

“It makes sense for our whole mantra and everything that we stand for,” Williams says. “We’ll be the first team in NBA history that it’s L.A. our way and we can possibly hear boos at our own parade. I want to win it for the experience.”

With a culture change and the right pieces, the experience to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy could be a reality come June. 

—

GRAB YOUR COPY OF SLAM 226 FEATURING THE CLIPPERS

Drew Ruiz is an Associate Editor at SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @DrewRuiz90

Portraits by Atiba Jefferson

The post HUSSLE & MOTIVATE: Lou Will, Trezz and Pat Bev Cover SLAM 226 appeared first on SLAM.

Disgraced former team owner Donald Sterling had nixed a three-team deal to acquire JJ Redick in 2013, prompting Rivers to threaten leaving the organization.

Doc says the Clips had been “the worst organization in basketball for the last 20 years” when he joined them.

Per The LA Times:

“I was on the job for six days and I quit,” Rivers said. “The deal went through and everyone said it was a great deal. I flew back home to Orlando for a couple of days and I got a call from [former Clippers president] Andy Roeser saying Donald Sterling decided he didn’t want to do the deal. I said, ‘What do you mean? The deal is already done. JJ is a free agent. He backed out of a deal to sign with us. If we don’t do this deal we’ll never get another free agent. It’s our word.’”

Redick had been acquired from the Milwaukee Bucks in a sign-and-trade after agreeing to a four-year, $27-million deal with the Clippers. Redick turned down similar offers from teams that were no longer available. Rivers, who was also the vice president of basketball operations for the Clippers, thought he had ultimate authority over the roster.

“I got on the phone with Donald and he was telling me how great his word was,” Rivers said. … “I was in the airport parking lot screaming, ‘No, no, no, no! You’re not going to do this! This is my reputation!’ He just went on and on about his reputation and how great it was.

“Finally at the end of it I said, ‘If you don’t do the trade, I quit.’ He said, ‘You can’t quit, you signed a five-year deal, I’ll make sure you don’t coach anywhere!’ I said, ‘I’m fine with that. I’ll find a job. I’ll do something, but I’m not going to do this. I gave the guy my word. I shook his hand.”

The next morning, Roeser told Rivers the deal was done. “I still have no idea what happened,” Rivers said. “I guess Donald just changed his mind, but I had quit.”

Related Doc Rivers: Clippers Knew ‘Oklahoma City Wanted to Break Their Team Up’

The post Doc Rivers (Briefly) Quit as Clippers Coach After Just Six Days appeared first on SLAM.

He is still searching today.

“Searching for the truth is what the end goal is,” he says. “The end goal is equality for people on the planet.” 

Hodges believes it was inequality that resulted in the premature ending of his NBA career. He was a two-time champion with the Bulls and one of the best shooters in the game during his prime, going back-to-back-to-back in the three-point contest at All-Star Weekend. But he was out of the League by the age of 32—a result, he maintains, of blackballing by teams due to his activism and outspokenness on issues beyond basketball. Though the forms of protest and surrounding circumstances were different, Hodges’ situation mirrored that of Colin Kaepernick’s. 

Instead of taking a knee, Hodges pursued several other means to shed light on injustice. He tried to convince his teammates—and members of the opposing Los Angeles Lakers—to boycott Game 1 of the 1991 Finals, so as to emphasize the lack of black NBA owners and executives. When the Bulls made their championship visit to the White House that October, Hodges wore a dashiki and delivered an eight-page letter to the staff of President George H.W. Bush, highlighting discrimination in America and encouraging the administration to do more for black communities. 

“You have a chance in this life to make choices,” says Hodges. He’s now 58-years-old but remains as passionate as ever about sharing his story. 

“The choice that I made was: I wanted to be on the right side of history. When people are oppressed, somebody has to stand up.” 

Born in Chicago Heights, Illinois in 1960, Hodges was raised in a segregated America. He vividly remembers the rules passed down to him by his aunt and uncle—when he had to be home, where he could and couldn’t go, what he should and shouldn’t say. He remembers, as an eight-year-old boy, seeing his mother and grandmother weeping “like they never had [in their lives]” the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. He remembers marching in protest of “Whites Only” lunch counters; even if, at the time, he wasn’t old enough to fully grasp the purpose. 

As he grew older and more knowledgeable about the civil rights movement, Craig looked back on his childhood and recognized that he had been a part of something bigger. He made it his mission to continue the fight, to never let oppression and discrimination slip from his mind as he led a successful basketball career. 

Hodges played for head coach Tex Winter (later an assistant with the Bulls and the mastermind behind the famed triangle offense) at Long Beach State University from 1978-82. Prior to his senior season, the death of Ron Settles—a friend of Craig’s and a running back on the school’s football team—sparked protests among the student body. Settles, who was arrested for speeding in June 1981, was found severely beaten and hanging in his jail cell the following morning. The police maintained that it was a suicide but an autopsy showed Settles had been choked to death.

“It was something that we had to have a firsthand approach on, not a second,” says Hodges. “We can’t be sitting around, watching. We have to put our lives into the movement if we want it to sustain itself and to get to the point where we get solutions as opposed to continuing to have conflicts about the same issue.”

The team allowed Hodges to miss practices so he could participate in protests and other organized events. When Craig transitioned to the NBA in ‘82, his commitment to racial and political issues never wavered.

“That’s been me,” he says. “It’s always been. It’s a part of me. So when I put on my uniform, under that uniform is who I am.”

His perspective on basketball, even while the accolades piled up, did not change. It has always been a “game”—one that he’s grateful for, of course, largely because of the platform it afforded him. He worked hard to be successful but would not let his craft distract from the bigger picture. That meant staying informed and keeping his eyes open to the world at all times and in all places—the court included. 

“I’m still having fun [while playing] but at the same time, when we’re standing in line and we’re singing the national anthem, I’m saying, The land of the free and the home of the slaves,” he explains. “We’re still in politics. While we’re sitting there [on the bench], I’m still talking politics. It might be a timeout and I see something that’s going on out there, like, Bro look at that. Come on. You don’t see that?” 

Following the 1991-92 season and coming off his second straight championship, Hodges went unsigned. No team would return his calls or offer him a tryout. This came in the wake of his actions at the White House during the summer of ‘91, a moment that highlighted his reputation for being outspoken. 

“The purpose of this note is to speak on behalf of the poor people, Native Americans, homeless and, most specifically, the African Americans, who are not able to come to this great edifice and meet the leader of the nation where they live,” Hodges’ note to the President read. “This letter is not begging for anything, but 300 years of free slave labor has left the African American community destroyed. It is time for a comprehensive plan for change. Hopefully, this letter will help become a boost in the unification of inner-city youth and these issues will be brought to the forefront of the domestic agenda.”

At 32-years-old, a career 40 percent three-point shooter with incredible experience was gone from the League for good. He filed a federal lawsuit four years later, charging the NBA with racial discrimination and asserting that “the owners and operators of the 29 NBA member franchises have participated as co-conspirators” in ”blackballing” him ”because of his outspoken political nature as an African-American man.” The claim was eventually dismissed as the judge ruled that the statute of limitations in this case was only two years. 

“The ramifications of our actions often times promote things that don’t help us or elevate us,” Hodges says, noting that he missed out on millions and millions of dollars because of his activism. 

“One of the things that gasses me, man, is: How could Donald Sterling be a racist and get two billion dollars? But Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Craig Hodges and other unnamed players I’m sure who have been discriminated against—our careers ended and [we weren’t] compensated at all for it. We sacrificed.”

Abdul-Rauf is a former NBA player from the 1990s who, like Hodges, fell out of the League under atypical circumstances. In the middle of his career, he made the decision not to stand for the national anthem prior to games, as to him the American flag represented oppression and conflicted with his Muslim faith. When others began to take notice, Abdul-Rauf was suspended. He eventually reached an agreement with the NBA that dictated he stand for the anthem but could pray with his head down while it played. Just two years later, however, the talented scorer (Abdul-Rauf averaged 18 or more points in three separate seasons) went unsigned at 29.

“We have to look at the power structure that doesn’t want change,” Hodges says. “It is so evident that the powerful don’t want to speak to the issue of race, the issue of oppression, the issues of reparations because that’s the bottom line in America—the reason America is struggling so much is because they haven’t done the right things when it comes to poor people, disenfranchised people.

“We sit here now and they say, Oh, you’re free. But are we really free?”

So yes, Craig Hodges is still searching for the truth. He is still searching for freedom and equality. But he’s also encouraged by the progress that’s been made and by the increasing number of athletes who are using their platforms to promote change. 

Over the past few years, several basketball players have delivered powerful messages during times of racial and political tension. At the ESPYs in 2016, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade took the stage for an opening monologue that addressed the alarming amount of police shootings with black victims.

“Let’s use this moment as a call to action for all professional athletes to educate ourselves. Explore these issues. Speak up. Use our influence. And renounce all violence,” said James.

Members of the NBA and WNBA wore shirts backing the Black Lives Matter movement, despite potentially facing fines for doing so. Utah Jazz guard Kyle Korver published a piece in The Players’ Tribune earlier this week that examined white privilege and urged society to be more conscious and active as a whole.

“Everybody has to carry the mantle where they are,” Hodges says. “That’s the energy that’s vibing today, when I see young white people talking more consciously than I was and considering issues with black people and people of color. That’s the promise that Martin Luther King put in the dream, that that would happen one day.”

With the rise of social media and outlets like The Players’ Tribune, modern athletes have an easier means of communicating messages than Hodges did. Support can be garnered in a quicker, more direct way. Hodges’ story didn’t get the exposure in the 1990s that it would have today. There’s no denying that.

So on a Friday morning in early-March, Hodges, who most recently coached hoops at his old high school, Rich East, is happy to recount his tale to SLAM. He talks passionately about the history of racism in this country and the effect it had on him personally, not only in the NBA. He continues to tell the hard truth to those who will listen and came out with a book about his life entitled, Longshot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter. He has no regrets about the choices he made and takes it as a “sign of redemption and grace” to see people like Colin Kaepernick getting paid by the NFL. 

“A lot of this stuff is changing as we speak,” he states. “The fact that we’re having this conversation. The fact that social media is what it is. The fact that Colin Kaepernick can get paid when Mahmoud and I didn’t get a dime. That should let us know that people can impact change.

“I just applaud the young brothers and sisters that are standing up and standing on principles that are bedrock and solid,” he adds. “When you stand on the right side of [the truth], there shouldn’t be any fear, because you know you’re doing the right thing.”

—

Alex Squadron is an Associate Editor at SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @asquad510.

Photos via Getty.

The post Former Chicago Bull Craig Hodges Tells His Story, Opens Up About NBA Activism appeared first on SLAM.

“Let’s use this moment as a call to action for all professional athletes to educate ourselves,” James told the audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and the millions of viewers watching at home. “Explore these issues. Speak up. Use our influence. And renounce all violence.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCjMvEdPi30

The ESPYs are usually a fun offseason event for major professional athletes to celebrate some of their greatest accomplishments in the past calendar year; but on this evening, the opening monologue would make way for four of the biggest NBA stars to share a powerful message.

That message: It’s time to fix a broken system that has resulted in too many black lives lost in fatal police shootings. A week prior to the ESPYs, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A day later, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was pulled over while driving in Falcon Heights, Minnesota and shot seven times while he reached for his license and registration.

“The shoot-to-kill mentality has to stop,” Wade said. “Not seeing the value of black and brown bodies has to stop.”

Wade mentioned Sterling and Castile, along with several other black victims of fatal shootings: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Laquan McDonald.

“The urgency to create change is at an all-time high,” Anthony added.

Paul talked about following in the footsteps of athletes like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali when it came to being ambassadors for social change. The ESPYs moment was applauded and celebrated. Four of the most recognizable faces in sports, conveying an influential message to millions, and surely inspiring others, in their own positions, to stand up for what they believe in. The impact can’t be quantified, but it surely hit home for a lot of people watching that evening.

What is more important is that all four of them were not just delivering words, they have followed up with their actions. Last year, Paul reflected on the monologue.

“It was very meaningful what we said and what we did,” Paul said. “But what we concentrated on more after that was: Then what? It was one of those things that was out of sight, out of mind. The four of us continue to do different things to help the cause.”

In 2015, Anthony returned to Baltimore, the city where he grew up, to join protesters in a march after Freddie Gray, a black man, sustained spinal injuries while in police custody that resulted in his death. In 2016, not long after the ESPYs, Anthony also organized a meeting between community leaders, athletes and politicians in Los Angeles to have an open forum to discuss the rise of police shootings in the United States.

A month after the ESPYs, the issue of gun violence hit home for Wade. His 32-year-old cousin Nykea Aldridge was an innocent bystander when she was shot and killed in Wade’s hometown of Chicago. Wade has remained one of the most outspoken advocates for gun control and stopping the violence around the country. Last year, he and his wife Gabrielle Union donated $200,000 to help allow students from Chicago to join a “March For Our Lives” gun control rally in Washington, D.C.

They need our help! I'm asking my NBA fam to join us in raising money to send kids from underserved communities to March….@gabunion and I will start w/$200K for Chicago. every dollar counts! Who else is in?? Or donate here: https://t.co/pu10Gp76on #GetTheBallRollin

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) March 10, 2018

The reach of the four athletes has only expanded. Paul has advocated for stricter gun control on several occasions and the Chris Paul Family Foundation has continued to support communities by partnering with organizations to foster education and health and wellness initiatives, among other things. During the summer of 2018, James and his charity, The LeBron James Family Foundation, partnered with Akron Public Schools to open the I Promise School to help at-risk youth in Akron, OH.

This partnership, like everything else James, Wade, Paul and Anthony are doing off the court, will change the lives of kids and families for generations to come.

Like any call for social change, there has been pushback, and the criticism from the other side has been loud and rampant thanks to an increasingly divided landscape in the United States. Last year, FOX’s Laura Ingraham said she was uninterested in political advice from “someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball,” in response to a video of James and Kevin Durant criticizing President Donald Trump. Ingraham told James to “shut up and dribble.”

James responded shortly after: “We will definitely not shut up and dribble. I mean too much to society, too much to the youth, too much to so many kids who feel like they don’t have a way out…The best thing she did was help me create more awareness. ”

James, Wade, Anthony and Paul have been setting the example for years now. At the ESPYs in 2016, they made everyone aware of the power of using your platform to speak up. And the impact of that speech can still be felt today.

—

GRAB YOUR COPY OF SLAM 220 HERE!

Alex Wong is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @steven_lebron.

Photos via Getty Images.

The post BHM 2019: How Four NBA Stars Used the 2016 ESPYs to Deliver a Message appeared first on SLAM.

Click here for our 2018-19 Women’s College Basketball Top 10.

10.  Syracuse Orange

While Syracuse is typically ravaged by early exits, this time the Orange return every major contributor from last year’s Elite 8 team. Tyus Battle, Oshae Brissett and that vexing zone defense should be enough to have Jim Boeheim’s crew pushing for the ACC crown and a Final Four berth.

9.  Michigan State Spartans

The Spartans lost two lottery picks but return the elite inside-out duo of point guard Cassius Winston and big man Nick Ward. They give Tom Izzo the Big Ten’s best team and one that should clear the NCAA Tournament first weekend hurdle that has tripped them up the last three seasons.

8.  Villanova Wildcats

The reigning national champions lost four players to the NBA draft but have the talent for a quick reload. Starters Eric Paschall and Phil Booth are back, while freshmen Jahvon Quinerly and Cole Swider enter the mix. Jay Wright’s team is eyeing a third national title in four seasons.

7.  North Carolina Tar Heels

Senior Luke Maye and freshman Nasir Little give the Tar Heels an edge in the frontcourt, especially with Sterling Manley ready to take the next step. The ACC is deep this season, but if the backcourt can support the interior, UNC can wear the league crown.

6.  Gonzaga Bulldogs

The trio of Killian Tillie, Rui Hachimura and transfer Brandon Clarke give the Zags more depth and experience in the frontcourt than any team in the country. It’s no question that their returning talent is among the nation’s best, but will a weak conference schedule doom them in March?

5.  Nevada Wolfpack

After nearly making last year’s Final Four, the Wolfpack may even be stronger in 2018-19. Caleb and Cody Martin are back, as is double-double threat Jordan Caroline. The depth should be better too, as Nevada adds five transfers who averaged double-figures in scoring and McDonald’s All-American Jordan Brown.

4.  Virginia Cavaliers

Yes, they lost as a No. 1 seed, but they also return the key pieces that earned them that top seed. Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome control the backcourt, while sophomore De’Andre Hunter is the next Cavalier destined for the NBA. Virginia’s experience and stifling defense make them the ACC favorite.

3.  Duke Blue Devils

The Blue Devils have a brand new starting five, which includes freshmen RJ Barrett, Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and Tre Jones. With Joey Baker, those five make up as talented a recruiting class as you’ll ever see, but winning league and tournament games has proven to be difficult for teams without experience.

2.  Kentucky Wildcats

John Calipari has his kind of team, as there’s experience in PJ Washington, Quade Green and transfer Reid Travis to go along with impact freshmen led by Keldon Johnson and EJ Montgomery. The SEC is tough, but it shouldn’t slow up a group that is a legit national title threat.

1.  Kansas Jayhawks

Bill Self has Kansas looking stacked, as the Jayhawks add in the transfer duo of brothers Dedric and KJ Lawson from Memphis to team up with 7-footer Udoka Azubuike and five-star freshman guard Quentin Grimes. It’s a better group than last year’s Final Four team and one that can cut down the nets.

—

David Casillo is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @dcasillo. 

Photos via Getty.

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The agreement between Cuban and the NBA came in lieu of a fine — the League’s maximum fine is $2.5 million, the figure that former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling paid.

After the initial allegations regarding the Mavericks’ toxic work environment came to light last March, Cuban initially refuted the report, saying ““I am deeply disappointed that anonymous sources have made such outright false and inflammatory accusations against me” in a statement. This resulted in former employee Melissa Weishaupt shedding her anonymity and calling out Cuban directly:

I’m using my name because I’m still not sure the Mavericks get it. Since the story broke, owner Mark Cuban has repeatedly claimed he oversaw only the basketball side of that franchise, not the business side.

Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. You own 100% of the team, Mark. The buck stops with you. When I worked on the Mavs’ business side, all marketing, promotional and broadcasting decisions went through you. Nothing was decided without your approval.

RELATED: Ex-Mavs Employee Goes On-Record About ‘Hostile Workplace Culture’

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The Clips went through a lot as a team in the last few years, beginning with Donald Sterling’s racist comments. They dealt with devastating injuries, off the court drama and an embarrassing playoff loss to the Houston Rockets in 2015.

Reports of a damaged locker room have circulated for a long time. In a new piece on ESPN, Zach Lowe interviewed Blake Griffin, Redick and Rivers about their internal drama that always seemed to be publicized.

“Players start looking at each other’s faults instead of covering for each other,” Rivers says. “When we lost to Oklahoma City [the year before], we were fine. No one cared what others on the team couldn’t do. It was fresh. I was new as coach. They were listening. They were following. But the next year, you fall apart again. Maybe you still want to be coached, and to play together, but you also want to try out different things on your own. That is the natural progression of a team growing apart.”

 

“There are times players don’t want to be coached by you anymore,” Rivers says, without mentioning Paul’s name. (Paul declined comment through his representatives.) Rivers has seen Paul’s remarks about the team’s culture. “Who controls the culture?” he asks. “The players. Always the players. And even with Chris’ comments, he thought about coming back. JJ [Redick] was begging to come back.”

 

(Redick disagrees. “There was never any indication from my agent that I wanted to go back,” he says. “I didn’t beg to come back. I didn’t want to come back.”)

 

“We haven’t won,” Griffin says. “So I don’t know if you could call what we had a winning culture.”

Redick signed a one-year contract with the Sixers this summer.

h/t ESPN

The post Doc Rivers Says JJ Redick ‘Was Begging’ to Re-Sign with Clippers appeared first on SLAM.

As the events unfolded, NBA players took to Twitter to echo the feelings of shock, fear and disgust that the majority of the public was experiencing. Donald Trump fueled the fire by refusing to immediately condemn the supremacists, claiming at a press conference that there was violence on “both sides.”

Days later, LeBron James spoke at his foundation’s annual family reunion and used his platform to call Trump the “so-called president of the United States.” James then made a plea for those in attendance to take a look in the mirror and ask, “What can we do better to help change?”

NBA players—and professional athletes in general—have a long history of being involved in social, political and race issues. Over the past few years, more and more marquee players have been using their status to voice their views and help promote change. LeBron, along with friends and fellow superstars Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade, stood on stage at the 2016 ESPYs—just one week after the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the hands of the police—and called on celebrity athletes to “Speak up. Use our influence. And renounce all violence.”

The acts of those four superstars have had a trickle-down effect, with more and more NBA players getting involved in community efforts, speaking out against racist violence and actively participating in protests, following in the footsteps of activists like Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Isiah Thomas.

“We all have feelings and we just want to talk about [issues] the right way,” says Karl-Anthony Towns, who penned a piece for The Players’ Tribune following the violence in Charlottesville. “I just try to be positive and do it the right way. I don’t want to bash anyone. I want to spread love and respect to everyone. I want to remind people of our situations and do that with love and respect.”

In the NFL, America’s most popular sports league, quarterback Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned as of press time as more and more no-name quarterbacks take the field. Kaepernick has become the center of attention following his decision to protest the National Anthem by sitting during the playing of the song before a 2016 preseason game. Later on, he started taking a knee before games as the Anthem played. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL media in late August of ’16. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Kaepernick is widely believed to have been blackballed from the NFL because of his protest. Throughout the preseason, players across the NFL showed their support for the quarterback by kneeling for the anthem and saying that Kap should be on a roster if team owners and general managers are serious about winning games. It’s clear that keeping Kaepernick off the field is not going to silence his message or simply make him go away.

With the NBA season looming and players becoming increasingly politically active, it begs the question as to whether we’ll see more activism on the hardwood in the same vein as Kaepernick’s.

“I think there are some players that have enough courage to follow [Kaepernick’s] lead or help him on his journey,” Nuggets forward Wilson Chandler says. “I think if you were doing something to symbolize Kaepernick and what he’s done and what he’s trying to accomplish, a player would have to take a knee or something in that regard during the National Anthem. To be honest, I don’t think any of the players are going to do it. But if it were to happen, it would probably be something similar to that.”

But before we continue to look forward, it’s important to look at how the NBA has handled cases of activism and protest in the recent past.

Before the 1991 Finals against the Lakers, Craig Hodges, a three-point specialist for the Bulls, asked Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson not to take the floor for Game 1 as a way to protest the beating of Rodney King by four white LAPD officers. When the Bulls visited the White House in ’92 to celebrate their second-straight NBA title, Hodges wore a dashiki and handed President George H.W. Bush a letter that urged him to address the problems of poor and minority communities.

The Bulls would later release him and he never played in another NBA game.

‘’I thought we improved ourselves [at Craig’s position],’’ Phil Jackson told The New York Times in 1996. ‘’I had the highest regard for Craig, though. He was a great team player, never caused any problems and I respected his views. I’m a spiritual man, and so is he. But I also found it strange that not a single team called to inquire about him. Usually, I get at least one call about a player we’ve decided not to sign. And yes, he couldn’t play much defense, but a lot of guys in the league can’t, but not many can shoot from his range, either.’’

In 1996, Hodges filed a $40 million lawsuit against the NBA claiming that “the owners and operators of the 29 NBA member franchises have participated as co-conspirators” in “blackballing” him from the League “because of his outspoken political nature as an African-American man.” The case was later dismissed. Hodges bounced around internationally throughout the rest of the ’90s, but did find his way back to the NBA as an assistant with Jackson’s Lakers from 2005-11.

Also in 1996, Denver Nuggets point guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was suspended by the NBA for refusing to stand during the playing of the National Anthem. Abdul-Rauf, a practicing Muslim, had been skipping out on the ceremony throughout the season, opting to stay in the locker room or stretch on the sideline. When asked by a reporter about his actions during the playing of the Anthem, the point guard said that the American flag was a symbol of “oppression, of tyranny.” Abdul-Rauf and the NBA came to a compromise: Mahmoud would stand for the Anthem, but would pray silently to himself with his hands cupped in front of his face.

Unlike Hodges, Abdul-Rauf was a starter—a damn good one at that. He averaged 19.2 points and 6.8 assists for Denver that season. The reaction to his protest divided NBA fans, and the controversy soon spilled out to the public sphere. Abdul-Rauf was met with death threats and had the letters “KKK” spray-painted close to the construction of his home in Gulfport, MS. He never moved into the home and in 2001, the vacant house was burned to the ground.

Abdul-Rauf, who was in his sixth season at the time, was traded to Sacramento and was out of the League by 1998. He returned for a brief stint in Vancouver in 2001, but his career was never the same after what happened in Denver.

“It’s a process of just trying to weed you out,” he told The Undefeated last year. “They begin to try to put you in vulnerable positions. They play with your minutes, trying to mess up your rhythm. Then they sit you more. Then what it looks like is, well, the guy just doesn’t have it anymore, so we trade him.

“It’s kind of like a setup. You know, trying to set you up to fail and so when they get rid of you, they can blame it on that as opposed to, it was really because he took these positions. They don’t want these type of examples to spread, so they’ve got to make an example of individuals like this.”

In 2014, players including LeBron, Derrick Rose, Kevin Garnett, Kyrie Irving, Deron Williams, Jarrett Jack and Alan Anderson wore “I Can’t Breathe” shirts during warmups after a grand jury decided that the officer who choked Staten Island, NY, resident Eric Garner to death would not be indicted. None of the players were fined for violating the League’s apparel rules.

Also in 2014, the Los Angeles Clippers staged a silent protest before Game 4 of the first round of the playoffs. The team was showing solidarity after audio of former Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist comments was leaked to TMZ. The comments sparked outrage throughout the NBA, with LeBron saying at the time that “there is no room for Donald Sterling in our League.”

Sterling was subsequently banned for life by commissioner Adam Silver.

Based on recent history, the NBA has become more progressive and understanding of protest, and Silver and National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts recently sent a letter to the players saying that the “Players Association and the League are always available to help you figure out the most meaningful way to make the difference” when it comes to social issues. But it is impossible to totally look past the treatment of Hodges and Abdul-Rauf. There has been an increase in big-time players using their platform to raise awareness, but there has not been an NBA protest as divisive as Kaepernick’s kneeling during the National Anthem.

“[What happened to Abdul-Rauf] wasn’t that long ago,” Chandler says. “I would like to put my faith in the NBA and owners, it’s a wonderful organization and seeing how they handled the Donald Sterling situation, hopefully if a protest happened now, they wouldn’t blackball a player for exercising his constitutional rights.”

While we would like to believe that the NBA would act much differently than the NFL, we won’t really know until a marquee player takes a dramatic on-court stand.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told The Washington Post, in regards to Kaepernick, that he’s “glad the NBA doesn’t have a politician litmus test for our players. I’d like to think we encourage our players to exercise their constitutional rights.”

With more and more people seemingly in tune with what’s going on in DC thanks to social media and 24/7 news coverage, it seems as if you can’t go anywhere these days without stepping into a conversation about politics. Will that carry into NBA arenas this season?

“I don’t think it will have much of an impact,” Cuban told SLAM via e-mail. “Most people follow political commentary as much as they follow cricket scores. For those of us who pay close attention, it seems like a big deal. For everyone else who goes to or watches games for the love of the team and game, it’s not something they pay attention to.”

NBA players have a chance, now more than ever, to use their platform to raise awareness about issues that hit close to home. As events become politicized and cause friction amongst the general public, we may soon find out if players are given an opportunity to speak up and spread a message of hope—or if they’re subtly discouraged from doing so.

–

Peter Walsh is a Senior Editor at SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @peter_m_walsh.

Photos via Getty Images

The post Stand Up For Your Rights appeared first on SLAM.

It's sad what's going on in Charlottesville. Is this the direction our country is heading? Make America Great Again huh?! He said that

— LeBron James (@KingJames) August 12, 2017

White nationalist groups descended on the college town, inciting violence and chaos, and a woman was killed (with 26 others suffering injuries) when a car drove into a crowd of protesters.

James says the country’s youth deserve better.

Our youth deserves better!! Flat out

— LeBron James (@KingJames) August 12, 2017

Per Cleveland.com:

James has emerged as one of the NBA’s most high-profile voices on social issues. In the past, along with his Miami Heat teammates, James wore a hoodie after Trayvon Martin’s death. While with the Cavaliers, James donned an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt in honor of Eric Garner. In 2015, following a Cleveland infant being killed by gunfire, James called for greater regulation of firearms.

 

Last summer, James tweeted in support of Black Lives Matter and said he “shed multiple tears” after police shot and killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Then during the ESPYS, James, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony called for social change in a powerful, heartfelt speech.

 

The Charlottesville tragedy, as chaos boiled over at what is believed to be the largest group of white nationalists to come together in a decade, becomes the latest to impact James, driving him to share his thoughts on social media.

 

Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who had declared a state of emergency in the morning, said at an evening news conference that he had a message for “all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville: Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.”

The post LeBron James: ‘Make America Great Again huh?!’ appeared first on SLAM.

Murray was drafted No. 7 overall in 1994 and spent five seasons in Los Angeles, then played for the Cavaliers, Raptors and Nets before retiring in 2006.

We caught up with him during the game to talk Clippers, Shaq memories, James Harden or Russell Westbrook for MVP, the Clippers Curse and more.

Scroll through the gallery above to check out photos from the “Paint the Town Platinum” event, and keep reading below for our interview with Murray.

SLAM: What’s life after the NBA been like for you? 

Lamond Murray: Life is awesome. I get opportunities like this to come up here and represent for American Express and the Platinum Experience, do clinics and camps with the kids and I give back in all those different type of ways. Life is good for me. My company, Stream World, we’re doing our thing with the streaming device—just all over the place with different projects and different opportunities and I’m just happy to be around.

SLAM: You’ve done a lot of youth camps with the Clippers in the past. What’s something you make sure the kids take from you during that experience?

LM: First thing, with the kids nowadays, you just want them to have an understanding of not leaning on their parents as much as they’re used to and taking ownership of who they are as people and understanding that they have to stand alone when they come into our camp. Once mommy and daddy leave for the day, they’re going to be held accountable for everything they do at the camp—good or bad. It’s just one of those things where I feel like I’m a teacher to not only the game of basketball but of life experience and making [the camp] a life experience for them so they can take with them anywhere.

SLAM: And what about for your own kids? They play ball too, right?

LM: It’s good for them because they’ve been around the sport for so long. They were born into the game of basketball and have been in the back with Kobe and Shaq, walking around hallways. They’ve already kind of been given that opportunity to see that limelight from the backstage and see all the pitfalls that can come with it. Just their life experience alone, I really don’t have to say much. They’re good kids, they take care of business and they’re always ready for opportunities. That’s one thing about them growing up in that atmosphere I’ve taught them and they’ve been able to prosper from then on.

SLAM: Speaking of Shaq, his statue now hangs outside of Staples Center. Do you have any Shaq stories from your time in the NBA?

LM: My rookie year, he was in Orlando and you walk on the court and you don’t really expect him to be as big as he is and he’s there. Then you don’t expect him to be as dominant as he is and I remember trying to come up from behind and block one of his dunks, trying to sneak him from behind and I remember hitting his body and bouncing the other way and him dunking the ball. He was looking around like, ‘Who’s that little fly that just hit me?’ [Laughs]. It was one of those things where you say you’ll never do that again and just move on and stay away from that guy.

SLAM: What’s it been like to see the growth of guys like Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan?

LM: It’s funny because I had the opportunity to see DeAndre before he got drafted to the Clippers. He was working out at the gym at Spectrum, a sports club out here back in the day, and just to see what he looked like then to what he’s become now in terms of his body, being the ultimate professional, being in shape, watching him play and develop his game to where he’s able to hit shots now and being a better free throw shooter than he was when he came to the team. It’s always a progression with the younger players and after two or three years, you get to see that in person. It’s just a beautiful thing to watch for them to become All-Stars and all that stuff.

SLAM: The Clippers are currently the 5-seed in the West. How do you think they’ll fare come playoff time?

LM: The biggest thing is just making sure they’re ready towards the end of the season. They’ve dealt with a lot of injuries last couple of years and again mid-season, so just making sure everybody is healthy is half the battle. Moving forward, I think they know this is one of those opportunities that their back is up against the wall, and I think they play well when their back is up against the wall. I’m looking forward to what they do in the Playoffs no matter where they’re at.

SLAM: This might sound a bit weird, but do you think the “Clippers Curse” is real?

LM: You start to wonder. [Laughs] That’s all I gotta say. I’ve watched the collapse against Houston; we all saw what happened with Donald Sterling. We thought him moving on, the curse would disappear, but you know, it still seems like it’s still lingering around. The future will tell, but we’re hoping for the best.

SLAM: A lot of ex-players have strong opinions on the way the game is played today. What are your thoughts?

LM: Like anything, the game is always evolving and changing. The fans always want to see something different, you know? This is what we saw in the ‘70s and ‘80s in terms of a high-paced kind of the game, the 6-9 centers, and the 6-4, 6-5 and 6-6 players that just play all-around basketball. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this trend and the trend is going to change again. We’re going to get back to dominant [centers] inside, guys playing with their backs to the basket. The fans are going to want to see people fighting again, so it’s going to change every 10 years I think.

SLAM: Who is your pick for MVP this year, and why?

LM: You always look at the MVP on what they’ve done for their team, as well as the stats that they’re putting up. I would say whoever had the best record at the end of the season and whoever put up the best numbers. You always have to compare both—best record and best numbers—you can’t just have a guy like a [Russell] Westbrook who’s putting up triple-doubles, that’s amazing, but if they don’t have the same record as another guy that’s similar or comparable, it should always go to the guy with the best team and who has a chance at winning a championship.

SLAM: So you’re rocking with James Harden?

LM: Yeah, I’m rocking with James. [Laughs]

—

Photos courtesy of the AmEx “Paint the Town Platinum” event

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Again, this was 1944. That’s three years before Jackie Robinson first played for the Dodgers, 10 years before Brown v. Board of Education, 23 years before Duke accepted its first black scholarship athlete. The game had to be played in secret because everything about it was illegal. Anyone caught would be arrested or worse. The teams met behind bolted doors in the Eagles’ gymnasium on a Sunday morning, when most of the town was at church and, therefore, less likely to find out what was happening. The idea for the game first came up during secret prayer meetings between YMCA chapters of the two schools. At one gathering, the players started debating who had the best basketball team in town. The Eagles were 19-1 in the Colored Inter-collegiate Athletic Association but were not invited to the NCAA or NIT tournaments because those organizations did not allow black schools to participate. The Blue Devils had won the Southern Conference championship, but the medical school’s intramural team was actually considered to be better. The Army and Navy had set up special programs at Duke and at other schools to train doctors for the war, and many of the medical students were more talented than the Duke undergrads. The teams eventually agreed to the matchup, and they arranged the game for March 12 of that year.

The Eagles won 88-44, leaving no doubt which team was superior. Afterwards, the schools mixed their rosters and played a truly integrated game of shirts-and-skins basketball. Some school students had climbed up outside the building and watched this game through the glass, no doubt in shock at the sight of it. Edward Boyd, a team manager for the Eagles, spoke of the near-surreal nature of the illegal contests, saying, “For the first five minutes, you felt like you were the biggest sinner in the world, in the biggest church in the world. But then we found out that the black wouldn’t rub off and the white wouldn’t rub of.”[1] The Duke team ended up showering in the Eagles’ dorms and sharing drinks and laughs with the players afterwards.

Despite all the good will the game sparked between the schools, nobody talked about it. After all, everyone involved had just committed a crime, and the consequences could have been severe, even violent. The game stayed a Durham secret for more than 52 years until Scott Ellsworth first broke the story for the New York Times Magazine in 1996. He subsequently wrote a book about the game—The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph.

It’s tempting to look at the game as a sign of things to come, as the first step that led to wide scale integration, but this wasn’t the start of a movement. The Eagles and Blue Devils did not make any attempt to integrate the NCAA. They just wanted to know who the best team in town was and wanted to prepare themselves for the post-integration competition they’d eventually see down the road. That was it. They just wanted to play.

***

March 14, 2017. There are five NBA games being played tonight. The Pistons are in Cleveland facing the Champs, the Pacers are visiting the Knicks, the Thunder are taking on the Nets in Brooklyn, the Blazers are battling the AD-led Pelicans, and the Sixers are in Golden State challenging the struggling Warriors. What these games all have in common is that they’re diverse, they’re integrated, and they’re not being played in secret. This is something we’ve all come to take for granted, but this year, the anniversary of the “Secret Game” takes on an added significance because it comes at a time—and during a presidency—when diversity has come under attack in this country.

President Trump has consistently demonized and vilified Muslims, immigrants, and refugees from the earliest stages of his presidential campaign, painting them as fundamental threats to this country’s security, despite evidence that they’re not. What’s more concerning than any individual policy of his, though, is his constant use of fear to drive his agenda, to pit Americans against groups of people by continually pointing to an Other that should be both feared and fought. At its core, this is a battle over our popular imaginations of one another, over how we see the person next to us, and those conceptions must be driven by empathy, not fear.

Popular images are important. Popular narratives are important. They can shape how individuals perceive other individuals, and we’ve seen time and time again how those perceptions can turn deadly. In his piece for Mic on the death of Terence Crutcher—an unarmed black man shot and killed near his car by a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma—Zak Cheney Rice writes about how white imagination distorts black realities and perceives blackness as dangerousness:

In a 2015 interview with the Guardian, poet Claudia Rankine observed that “blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black people.” She was responding to a question about her poem, “Stop and Frisk,” part of which reads, “Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying.”

 

Her point was that black lives are beholden to white fantasies. Black people are imagined as inherently dangerous, she suggests, and killed because of the threat they are presumed to pose, even if it has nothing to do with who they are as human beings.

James Baldwin said something in “The Devil Finds Work,” his 1976 essay, “The root of the white man’s hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind.” It’s this popular image of blackness as darkness, as wrongness, as danger that led that man in the helicopter to say of Crutcher, “That looks like a bad dude.”

It’s the same reason George Zimmerman got out of his car in the first place. But it’s also the reason Adam W. Purinton shot two Indian immigrants in a bar in Kansas in February—killing Srinivas Kuchibhotla—after mistaking them for being Arab and taunting them about not belonging in the US (he also shot a third man who tried to apprehend him).

It’s the same reason a Sikh man was shot in his own driveway in Kent, Washington earlier this month by a man telling him, “Go back to your own country.” It’s the popular image of browness as darkness, as wrongness, as danger that has become common during Trump’s presidency.

Specifically, what we’re left to confront more and more these days is the non-Muslim’s imagination of the Muslim and the native-born’s imagination of the immigrant. And the NBA has the opportunity to shape those images in the public imagination every night, to create empathy, not fear.

There are more Muslims in the NBA—11 at the start of this season—than in any other major American sports league, but most casual fans probably have no idea who they are. The NBA could change that. The League could make a concerted effort to celebrate its religious diversity and use its platform to create positive images of Islam in America. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, The NBA on TNT ran a special broadcast celebrating MLK’s life and work. It was thoughtful, enlightening, and entertaining television. Surely, the network or the League itself could do something similar shedding light on Islam in the NBA. A broadcast featuring current Muslim players like Dion Waiters and Enes Kanter, past legends like Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Muslim activists or political leaders could help to combat negative stereotypes about Islam and create more positive popular images of the religion.

This may not seem like ordinary work for a sports league, but these are not ordinary times, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has already shown his willingness to engage important social issues when he banned former Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the League for life after racist comments of his came to light. Surely, Silver could be similarly bold now and could use the League’s reach and resources to help shape the popular imaginations of its fans.

The NBA wouldn’t be alone in these efforts. Elsewhere, on all levels of the sport, Muslims are using basketball to support one another and to change public perceptions of their faith. Two years ago, an all-Muslim AAU team in Michigan chose to name their team the “Motor City Muslims” to combat negative images of Islam and to prove that a Muslim team could be formidable on the hardwood. This year, the Chicago Muslim Basketball League—a rec league that raises money for charities and educates non-Muslims about Islam—is holding an interfaith tournament on March 25 and March 26 in Carol Stream, Illinois. In Dearborn, Michigan—home of the highest concentration of Arabic people in a city outside of the Middle East—Coach Osama Abulhassan has been leading an all-Muslim high school basketball team on the road for away games into rural Michigan towns, where the mother of an opposing player called one sophomore player a “terrorist,” counseling them about the difficulties and potential dangers they face in opposing gyms and periodically reminding them about his own struggles living in America after 9/11 with the name Osama.

At the end of those games in 1944, Boyd said, “The black wouldn’t rub off and the white wouldn’t rub off,” and that’s still true today. Skin is skin is skin. Faith is faith is faith. Anyone telling you otherwise—politicians, presidents—they’re all lying to you, and they’re doing it for specific reasons. Let’s all take a moment and celebrate the fact that tonight’s slot of games don’t have to be played behind locked doors, that no leader—however powerful—can hide this country’s diversity. It’s on display for millions of people every night. Finally, let’s all appreciate that if the NBA chooses to, the League can play an active role in shaping how Muslims and immigrants are depicted and imagined in this country, and making those associations positive and empathetic can actually save lives.

Those players in Durham were not trying to be activists, and nobody found out about the “Secret Game” until decades later, but it still had a profound effect on everyone involved. They bonded. They saw themselves in one another, even if they couldn’t tell anyone about it. And now, what went on for those students on a Sunday morning in the shadows when no one was looking, out of sight from the law and the land, is happening under bright lights in crowded stadiums and on national and international television, not so secret games being broadcast across the world to millions of people in almost 50 languages in over 200 countries.

Popular images are important. Popular narratives are important. The NBA has the opportunity to tell stories that matter, to affect how individuals perceive other individuals. That’s a tremendous power. Here’s hoping the League wields it for all it’s worth.

—

[1] “The Secret Game of 1944,” Duke Medical Alumni News. Spring 1998. 7.

Vinay Krishnan is an attorney and a writer living in Brooklyn. Follow him @vinayrkrishnan.

Images via NBAE/Getty

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The OKC Thunder guard is one of many NBA players who are excited for the season because they’re anxious to extend the movement started by San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick into the NBA. Their thirst to be a link in this chain is partly driven by a sense of social responsibility and outrage over the police killings of unarmed black men and women, but also by a sense of competitiveness. The NBA has always been the league that has been seen as the socially conscious corner of the sports world. Players take pride in the fact that they are the league of Jason Collins, the league of “I Can’t Breathe” shirts and the league that told Donald Sterling to take his ball and go home.

Now here is Colin Kaepernick, who by just taking a knee, expressed what he has also spoken aloud, which is: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” Dozens, by my count, of NFL players—some famous, some anonymous—have taken a knee or raised a fist during the anthem. We have seen the protest spread from middle schools in Beaumont, TX, to high schools in places like Seattle, Oakland, Denver and Prince George’s County, MD. We have seen it at colleges. We have seen members of school bands, cheerleaders and Team USA soccer player Megan Rapinoe all take a knee and say that there is a gap between what that flag represents and the reality of police violence in this country.

We know the NBA has players who are more than conscious about today’s issues. The League also has teams in Oklahoma and Charlotte, two places where the recent deaths of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott are sending shock waves through those regions. This is truly one of those moments where if a player—particularly a star—chooses to say nothing, it will be seen as political an act as them saying something. Already the League’s two most prominent coaches have made clear that they have no problem with players speaking out. Steve Kerr said, “No matter what side of the spectrum you are on, I would hope that every American is disgusted with what is going on around the country…Unarmed black people are being killed indiscriminately around the country. And that’s what happened two days ago. That’s the message. That’s what matters. Everyone should be trying to do something, whatever is in their power, to help in that regard.” Gregg Popovich told me, “Our players are well aware they are engaged citizens who must make their own decisions based on what they deem to be relevant, valuable and appropriate.”

The only outstanding question is how the League and fans will respond. Adam Silver and union chief Michele Roberts put out a joint statement that did not mention the anthem protests, but seemed to strongly suggest that players contact them if they want to do any activism; in other words, keep it off the court. The League has rules prohibiting players from protesting during the anthem, but that didn’t stop the WNBA’s Indiana Fever from all taking a knee before a playoff game, and they were not fined. My guess is that Silver will not punish anyone for any demonstrations. If the NFL isn’t doing it, then the NBA has to accept the fact as well that these are the times we are in.

The fans are a different story. The NBA is a majority black league with a majority white fan base. The hope is that white fans will make the choice to support players who are risking endorsements and inviting death threats by taking a stand. That’s the hope. If you are reading this, argue with your white friends that the moment calls for solidarity, not ignorance and certainly not hate. If your NBA players are good enough to cheer, then they should matter enough to hear.

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Russell, 20, even told Bleacher Report that he used to play as Walton in 2K as a kid. Wait, hold up…he played as Luke Walton?

“I told him I remember playing with him on (NBA) 2K; I used to always play as him. I’m a fan. I’m definitely a fan. Because he was a point forward. I can’t speak on Elgin Baylor and all those guys, but my era, I know he was a point forward.”

Stephen Jackson, who competed against Walton for many years, is calling the young rookie’s bluff in a scathing post on Instagram.

Jackson on Instagram: “The new NBA. Brown nosing at its best. To be real Luke Walton didn’t pick Luke Walton on 2k. GTFOH. Smdh. U gonna start Kid u ain’t gotta do all that bruh. Man it’s sad I tell ya. Just be real with others and they will respect that.”

Jackson is known for keeping it 100 percent real, but acusing Russell of “brown-nosing” is a bit of a stretch.

Only one thing is for sure: D’Angelo Russell is very happy with his new head coach.

Related:
D’Angelo Russell: ‘Last Off-Season Was Looney Tunes’
SLAM Top 50: D’Angelo Russell, No. 49

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Listen DeAndre, you signed a huge deal—you are going to make over $150 million in your life. This is incredible. Still, you will never have the money or the power of your boss Steve Ballmer. Sure, he goes to games dancing like a lunatic, buying material happiness for his workers with locker room gifts, and he puts a big happy face on decades of Clipper-dom. That’s what the more fortunate animals on the farm get to do. Some animals are more equal than others.

Your Clippers successfully ousted Donald Sterling, a rare sports revolution where the public felt sympathy for young, gifted millionaires. In the novel, the farm animals rise up and get rid of the farmer. All’s well that ends well? Not exactly. On the court you’re still stuck behind Golden State, a reunited Durant and Westbrook, and the veterans down in San Antonio. It could take something as drastic as revolution to get the Clippers where they need to be. All the money in the world won’t make those ordered playoff fouls go away.

And then there’s your summer drama. When your whole public relations disaster with Mark Cuban unfolded, some people were like, “How dare this ungrateful spoiled brat make a promise and then not be man enough to look him in the eye!” You don’t owe Mark Cuban anything; you were a free agent, you took care of yourself. Look to your point guard, who you are supposedly feuding with. He’s the leader of the Player’s Union, not your enemy. “They” will try to divide and conquer you, keep you blind to the true power you have. That’s what they do on the farm. DeAndre, use your head, don’t just be a guy who runs and jumps and can’t hit free throws.

The season is taxing, but Animal Farm is a short read, something you could have done when waiting out that silly free-agent signing blockade. You said you killed time that day by playing video games and ordering food, which is fine, but if you make the time for Animal Farm, you might wake up to what’s happening all around you.

—

Sam Rubenstein is a SLAM contributing writer and a high school English teacher in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @SamRubenstein.

Previously:
LeBron James x Beowulf
Jimmy Butler x The Hobbit
Mike Conley Jr x A Separate Peace
Stephen Curry x The Outsiders
Dwyane Wade x MacBeth
Andrew Wiggins x The Call of the Wild
Kobe Bryant x Dracula
Kristaps Porzingis x The Crucible

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A three-judge panel ruled that Sterling can’t do anything to reverse the record-setting $2 billion sale of the Clips to Steve Ballmer.

Shelly Sterling negotiated the ownership transfer after the 81-year-old billionaire’s humiliating ouster.

Per the AP:

The 2nd District Court of Appeal said Shelly Sterling properly removed her husband from a family trust that owned the team and that the sale to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer prevented the trust from an “extraordinary loss.” […] Shelly Sterling took control of the family trust after a recording surfaced of Donald Sterling making offensive comments to a young girlfriend about blacks and other minorities.

 

The NBA fined him $2.5 million, banned him from the league for life and threatened to seize and auction the team. […] Shelly Sterling was able to take control of the trust after two doctors found her husband of nearly six decades had signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

 

The three-judge panel also noted that before Sterling refused to sign off on the sale he had congratulated his wife on the price she negotiated. […] “Wow, you really did a good job,” he exclaimed.

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In the late 1940s, the all-white Lakers had a widespread reputation as the nation’s best basketball team. George Mikan, a 6-11 big man as dominant in his time as Anthony Davis is in ours, was on the cusp of leading Minneapolis to five of six titles in the NBA and its predecessor league. Yet the 6-7 Clifton almost shut Mikan down while matching him on the boards when the two battled one-on-one in the pro basketball event of the decade.

Clifton was a headliner for the Harlem Globetrotters, which then attracted the nation’s best black players—not the NBA. The extremely talented Globetrotters were good, so good that on a single night in 1949 against a short-handed Lakers team, they rolled out to a lead so large that as the game wound down they started to clown around. Stuffing balls down jerseys and all that jazz. The win was filmed—still a rarity at the time—and shown to millions of Americans who soon realized the best black basketball players were just as good as the whites who would make up the entire NBA in its inaugural game in 1946.

Yet as accomplished as Clifton was, he wasn’t compensated at anything near the level of the League’s best white players. While among the highest-paid black basketball players of the time, his earnings paled in comparison to even the collegiate stars that the Globetrotters took on.

“We played an all-star game [in 1949] against a team Bob Cousy was on,” Clifton told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1986. “After the game, Cousy, who got to be a pretty good friend, asked what [owner] Abe Saperstein paid us. He showed me his check for $3,000. I was ashamed to show him mine. It was for $500.”

By 1950, New York Knicks president Ned Irish was ready to give Sweetwater a chance. He purchased his contract from the Globetrotters in May 1950 for $10,000, Clifton later recalled. Clifton became the first black player to sign an NBA contract. (He was technically the second to sign an NBA contract, but Harold Hunter, who did so beforehand, never played in an NBA game.) He followed Earl Lloyd as the second African-American to play in the League.

Sweets, as he was best known, had immediate impact. He helped lead the Knicks to three straight NBA Finals appearances while practically averaging a double-double. His long-time affinity for any kind of sweetened drink led to him becoming an ad pitchman for Coca-Cola, a nascent sign of the vast cross-cultural influence black NBA players would accrue in later decades, according to Martin Guigui, a director who has researched Clifton’s life for nearly two decades.

By all accounts, Sweetwater was a soft-spoken, hard working man whose professional conduct helped open the doors of opportunity for great black players like Elgin Baylor and Bill Russell who would follow him. “He was a pioneer for me and a lot of other African-Americans,” Oscar Robertson said in a tribute at the 2014 Naismith Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony.

While Clifton, who passed away in 1990, was comfortable with his role as a trailblazer, he wished he could have done more. He regretted not having a shot at more stardom in his own right. “I feel like I was the best player in the League in my day,” he told the Sun-Times. But “I was only allowed to shoot about six or seven times a game…Only when it was late in a tight game would they turn to me for scoring.”

The coaches didn’t design offensive plays for him despite the fact he occasionally chipped in more than 30 points a game. “All I was really allowed to do was to rebound, hand the ball over to my teammates and guard the toughest players on the other teams.”

The rare opportunities in which he showed his stuff left jaws dropped. “He could cross the court in five strides,” and had what today would be a three-point shot, Guigui says. Sweets also handled the rock better than most other players at his position. Guigui says he has footage of him bounding downcourt, throwing the ball off the backboard and slamming it down, à la the Tracy McGrady self alley-oops of the early 2000s. Such displays were generally not welcome by coaches and other players, as Clifton recounted to the Sun-Times: “I realized that, being the first black, I couldn’t do anything people’d notice. So I had to play their type of game—straight, nothing fancy. No back-hand passes. It kept me from doing things people might enjoy.”

Restraints notwithstanding, in 16 total years in the NBA, the Globetrotters and touring team spinoffs, Clifton secured a legacy as a critical figure in the evolution of basketball from brutal, floor-bound East Coast roots to the high-flying global phenomenon it is now. “More so than being one of the first African-Americans, along with Chuck Cooper and Earl Lloyd, he really shifted the game,” Guigui says.

Clifton developed his innovative style alongside basketball geniuses like Marques Haynes and Goose Tatum, who were his Globetrotter teammates. That franchise’s beginnings trace not in Harlem, but to the South Side neighborhood in Chicago where he grew up.

***

Since the age of 6, when his family moved from Arkansas, Clifton saw some of the finest basketball players of the Depression Era play in and around the South Side Boys Club.

Al “Runt” Pullins, a prodigiously gifted 5-8 scorer with the original Globetrotters, “was about the greatest I had ever seen. That’s who I copied most of my style from,” Clifton said on a 1985 episode of Once a Star.

Clifton took to heart what he watched the young men do, and became a star at DuSable High School and Xavier University in Louisiana. Not just in basketball, either. Sweets was considered an even better baseball player, so good that in the late 1940s, he was on the cusp of the majors after leading a minor league in home runs, total bases and batting about .350, according to Chicago sportswriter Sam Smith. He was even more intriguing to the likes of Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck after success in a higher minor league, batting over .300 and again leading in homers and RBIs.

Afraid he’d lose one of his star players, Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein quickly arranged for Sweets to play on a world tour, Smith wrote in the 2014 Hall of Fame enshrinement guide.

Clifton’s life changed forever in 1950, a year holding the same importance in basketball annals as 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s major league color barrier. Yet for decades, Hollywood has largely ignored this monumental turning point.

That changes soon.

Sweetwater, the first major motion picture focusing on the NBA’s first years—is now in production and is scheduled to come out next year, according to director Martin Guigui and IMDb.com. The plot centers on two eventful stints in 1950—the NBA Draft and signing of Clifton, as well as the week around Halloween when Lloyd, Cooper and Clifton “were sort of pitted against each other in a race to see who would be the first black NBA player,” Guigui says.

The roughly $20-million film will star the 6-3 Wood Harris, who’s perhaps best known as Avon Barksdale from The Wire and made his film debut in the 1994 drama Above the Rim with Tupac Shakur. The ensemble also includes Nathan Lane (Saperstein), James Caan (Ned Irish) and Ludacris (musician Louis Jordan).

Sweetwater will draw inevitable comparisons to the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic 42. Clifton, like Robinson, had to deal with persistent, vile streams of racism that could make even Donald Sterling blush. Yet both pioneers overcame the adversity. Robinson played in six All-Star games while Clifton played in the NBA All-Star Game in 1957 at the age of 34—to this day that remains the oldest age of a first-time All-Star.

“Sweetwater’s fight for acceptance in the basketball world is an example of the struggle faced by so many African-Americans at that time,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says. “As one of the NBA’s first African-American stars, he not only laid the groundwork for the League to become the diverse institution it is today but also help drive social progress across the country.”

But Clifton and Robinson got to this end in different ways. Robinson was famously stoic in the face of opponents’ taunts, especially in public and during games. Clifton usually was, too. Except when too much was too much.

Once, during an exhibition game against Boston, Sweets threw a dazzling pass past Celtic Bob Harrison. Harrison didn’t appreciate the style points at all, Clifton told the Sun-Times in 1986. “He said, ‘No nigger do that to me,’” recalled Clifton. “It was a one-lick fight. I was lucky enough to knock him out.”

Clifton was not only a fighter, but a lover who enjoyed the New York nightlife. Sweetwater will depict his affair with a high-society orchestra vocalist who aspired to sing the blues. “She’s a white woman who wants to live in a black man’s world and Sweetwater was a black man wanting to live in what was then a white man’s world,” Guigui says.

Clifton played in the NBA for eight seasons with the Knicks and then the Pistons. He spent much of the last 30 years of his life driving a yellow cab around Chicago, sometimes picking up the NBA stars for whom he’d help pave the road to millions. More than a few times, an older passenger would peer at him for a minute, seeing something familiar in his pronounced chin and massive hands.

They would ask, “Have you got a brother or something like that playing ball?’” Sweetwater told Once a Star documentarians while driving his taxi. Clifton would then tell the passenger who he was. They’d respond “No, you’re not Sweetwater.”

“I’ll say, Well, I guess I’m not then, if you say so.”

Sweetwater had reasons to be bitter but was not.

After decades of travel, he relished being back home, able to care for his ailing mother, his three children and later their children. Sometimes, he’d drive by Carter Playground, lift his overweight frame from the black seat cushion and play three-on-three with neighborhood kids.

Money was tight—he never made more than $12,500 in a year of pro ball and he didn’t receive the pension that NBA players who retired after 1964 would get—but he had family, he had a community and he had a craft. “I’m the best cab driver in Chicago and if I’m not, I’m at least the fourth or fifth best,” he told the Sun-Times in 1988, two years before he died from a heart attack while behind the wheel.

It wasn’t a life to which today’s NBA stars aspire, but it still held vast riches. Perhaps nothing shows this better than the end of the Once a Star episode. Sweetwater sits on his wooden front porch, beaming at his two young grandchildren as he holds them on his knees. Soon, his daughter, his mother and a small army of neighborhood children join them.

Clifton never got what he deserved while he was alive.

Yet he had what he wanted.

—

Photos via AP

The post The Sweetest Thing appeared first on SLAM.

The first quote I tagged from young Mr. James was that he wanted “to be a global icon like Muhammad Ali.” The second was that he dreamed of being “the richest athlete in the history of the world.”

I thought about this and wrote critically that while those were two great goals, they did not necessarily go great together. They were contradictory, I believed, because Ali was a global icon precisely because of what he sacrificed, not for what he earned.

I thought my thesis was a slam-dunk, an easy bucket. If the sports world had proven anything, I wrote, it was that you couldn’t be Ali AND Jordan. You had to choose one path or the other. Man or Brand.

In retrospect, I still don’t think this is wrong, but I also wasn’t right. I did not foresee that The King would have the power to shape the world and make his own rules. That’s why he is the only person on the SLAM Top 50 list who demands an assessment beyond the court: because hoops has just been a means to one of the most unique careers in the history of sports.

LeBron probably won’t end up the wealthiest athlete who ever lived and he will almost certainly never experience the level of sacrifice and pain Ali endured, but he is the only athlete who not only belongs on the Ali list and the Jordan list, but has created a new list all his own.

On the Jordan front, LeBron has the sneakers, the friendships with Warren Buffet and is effectively a Fortune 500 company with legs. When you fly into Cleveland’s airport, it is immediately apparent that you have entered a LeBron-based economy.

His face is everywhere. His gear is everywhere. He is one with his city like no athlete in the United States. He also wields a power worthy of such omnipresence. If Bill Russell was the first player/coach when LeBron is our first player/CEO. Decisions from his Comic Sans owner and his at times comically inept coach get cleared at his desk.

And then in the tradition of Muhammad Ali, LeBron has also used this hyper exalted platform to be a thoughtful and outspoken critic of police violence and has lent his support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This started before the movement had a name, when LeBron and Dwyane Wade organized the Miami Heat to wear hoodies for Trayvon Martin and in protest of the state’s lack of desire to arrest Trayvon’s killer (no, I don’t write that disgusting person’s name).

LeBron’s support of Black Lives Matter has a powerful ripple effect: It brings the struggle to masses of people. It encourages those in the streets. And perhaps most importantly of all, it immediately provides political cover to any player who wants to use their NBA platform to speak out for this cause. If you don’t punish LeBron, then you cannot go after Jarrett Jack.

He has also recently had words about being fed up with gun violence, the alleged third rail of US politics, and has given massive sums of money to his hometown of Akron to make sure that the next generation has places to play.

I don’t think anybody outside of LeBron saw that he would be able to chart this kind of path. Hell, I think in many respects he didn’t know. James is a master of improvisation, analyzing the present with the same otherworldly situational awareness he brings to the court.

His instincts to speak out about Trayvon, Donald Sterling, and the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the Staten Island police, are as sharp as his call to David Blatt that with the game on the line, they should just give him the damn ball.

If there is one moment that defines the man LeBron has become it was before Game 3 of the 2015 NBA Finals, when the King took a moment to be humble. With the world watching, James lowered his head and bowed before the only Cleveland sports figure who has ever held a similar stature, 79-year-old NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown.

That moment encapsulates the genius of 2015 LeBron James. He showed respect for an elder. He showed respect to Cleveland. And he showed respect to one of most controversial figures in the history of sports and politics. And then once the ball went up, he was, in the words of the late, great Moses Malone, “All about that action.”

Jim Brown told me after the fact that he had no idea LeBron even knew he was in the building. That’s the improvisational genius on display. That’s LeBron James. And that’s why until further notice, he owns this spot at the top of the list.

RELATED: ANTHONY DAVIS IS THE NO. 2 PLAYER IN THE 2015 SLAM TOP 50

Rankings are based on expected contribution in 2015-16—to players’ team, the NBA and the game.

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Despite the celebrated ouster of former team owner Donald Sterling, there is reportedly still plenty of tension and dysfunction within the front-office.

2. With that said – since last summer, the Ballmer Clips have been just as much of disaster behind the scenes as the Sterling Clips were.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) August 25, 2015

3. Ballmer has shown ZERO evidence that he knows what he's doing. And it's been the best kept secret in the NBA for 15-16 months.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) August 25, 2015

4. The Clips organization has been as dysfunctional as ever – not just the team but especially off the court. It's a laundry list of things.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) August 25, 2015

The Clips’ PR folks deny that anything is amiss, of course, but according to TMZ, even the players themselves and free agents are growing tired of the drama between the execs:

Major turmoil behind the scenes with the L.A. Clippers … the players are fuming, the staff is confused … and multiple sources tell us all roads lead to a conflict involving Steve Ballmer’s first major hire (Gillian Zucker, the team’s president of business operations.)

 

Long story short … several players and key staffers feel she’s not just stepping on Doc Rivers’ toes, but she’s creating a divide … leaving many wondering who’s really calling the shots in Clipperland. […] Zucker was tasked with growing the business side of things when she was brought on back in November, while Doc — president of basketball operations and head coach — is supposed to control all things related to winning.

 

We’re told Zucker has been increasingly more involved on the basketball side … inserting herself into things like player development and playing time decisions … and it’s leaving many people confused, since she’s often not on the same page as Doc. […] In fact, we’re told one player was so frustrated with the power struggle, he actually made the decision not to re-sign with the Clippers because it wasn’t worth the headache.

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Clips owner Steve Ballmer said fans will simply have to get used to the new look, because it is here to stay.

Ballmer was anxious to alter the organization’s image immediately after taking over from Donald Sterling, but stopped short of changing the team’s name.

Per the LA Times:

“Change is always hard on some people. … But the truth is people get through change,” Ballmer said Thursday morning. “If you love the Clippers, you’ll love the new Clipper logo.” […] Ballmer passed out T-shirts with the new logo and cupcakes at a Sprinkles location in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday to promote the team’s new look, which was released earlier that day.

 

He said that when he bought the team in August for $2 billion, one of his top priorities was to create a new logo. […] “The number one feedback I got from fans was change, change, you gotta tell people it’s time for change,” Ballmer said. “Change the name, change the logo. Change, change, change.”

 

“I decided I didn’t want to change the name because I thought the name Clippers had come to represent a team that battled, people that battled through adversity,” Ballmer said.

The post Clippers Owner on Unpopular New Uniforms: ‘Change is Always Hard’ appeared first on SLAM.

.@ConanOBrien was the first to receive his all-new Clippers gear. Your chance is coming up… stay tuned. #GearUpLA pic.twitter.com/UDBm2OSves

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) June 18, 2015

The new Clippers uniforms. pic.twitter.com/xGMFtDJpPX

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) June 18, 2015

Ballmer says this is part of shedding the stain left by Donald Sterling on the organization.

Clippers All-Star forward Blake Griffin starred alongside his boss in a “Funny or Die” skit touting the team’s new look.

Per the OC Register:

Ballmer explained the rebranding in the interview with Conan O’Brien:

 

“Let’s face facts: You look back at the history of the Clippers, it’s not a happy history. I bought the team about a year ago in the unusual circumstance at the time, and we said, ‘Hey, something has happened here.’

 

“No. 1, this may have been a nutty thing, but people know who the Clippers are. But people want a new Clippers, they want a happy ending to the story. … I bought the team so late we couldn’t do much, but now we’re introudcing the new Clippers.”

The post WATCH: LA Clippers Unveil New Logos and Uniforms appeared first on SLAM.

He had as strong of an April as any prospect in the country, earning MVP honors at the prestigious McDonald’s All-American Game and Jordan Brand Classic.

More from the Kansas City Star: 

The prospective missing piece for Kansas basketball is a teenage big man who began playing organized basketball just five years ago.

 

Cheick Diallo, a Mali native and 6-foot-9 power forward, announced Tuesday that he will continue his basketball career at Kansas, completing the latest spring recruiting coup for KU coach Bill Self.

 

Diallo, who played his high school basketball in Long Island, picked Kansas over a list of finalist that also included Kentucky, Iowa State and St. John’s.

 

The latest recruiting domino fills a major need in the paint for the Jayhawks, offering size, length and athleticism. Rated as the nation’s No. 5 overall recruit by Rivals.com, Diallo comes to Kansas after a sterling finish to his prep career.

 

Diallo was selected MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game in early April before earning co-MVP honors at the Jordan Brand Classic in Brooklyn two weeks ago. His numbers in the Jordan Game were especially impressive — albeit with the All-Star game caveats. Diallo finished with 26 points on 12-for-16 shooting and snared 11 rebounds.

 

Diallo’s backstory, in broad ways, mirrors that of former Kansas standout Joel Embiid, a native of Cameroon. Growing up in Mali, West African nation of 14.5 million people, Diallo didn’t start playing basketball until around 2010 or 2011. He was discovered in Bamako, Mali, by Mali-American talent scout named Tidiane Drame, who has since guided Diallo’s path in America. After coming to the United States, Diallo landed at Our Savior New American High School in Long Island, N.Y., where he began refining his his raw game and lived with a host family.

 

Throughout the recruiting process, Self made it clear that the frontcourt would be a priority. The Jayhawks’ lack of inside scoring was a persistent problem last season.

 

The Jayhawks also lacked a true rim protector. The numbers are familiar by now. KU shot 46.4 percent inside the three-point line, which was the lowest mark of the Self era. Junior forward Jamari Traylor shot just 48.6 percent and finished on just 54 percent of his shots at the rim. Sophomore Landen Lucas was slightly better in a smaller sample, shooting 53 percent from the floor and 59 percent at the rim. But neither player profiles as a true low-post option — somebody that can catch with their back to the basket and score.

 

The post 5-Star Power Forward Recruit Cheick Diallo Commits to Kansas appeared first on SLAM.

You can only shake your head in disbelief over these Hawks and their startling rebound from calamity.

Last summer, when it came to being despised, they were worse than the Clippers. This is the hometown of Martin Luther King Jr, and for Hawks majority owner Bruce Levenson to declare black NBA fans were scaring away white NBA fans was abominable compared to Donald Sterling’s girlfriend rant.

Levenson’s e-mail missive about black fans being bad for white business, which was uncovered last July, was only part of the plague around the Hawks. There was also the dart from General Manager Danny Ferry. While reading from a scouting report, Ferry said free agent Luol Deng had “a little African in him.” Alarms sounded because Ferry didn’t choke on those words in mid-sentence.

That was enough to castigate the franchise, but then the Hawks added a smaller blunder in the eyes of the NBA mavens. They made the decision that they did not need a superstar to win in the NBA. They had really good players—Paul Millsap, Al Horford, Jeff Teague and Kyle Korver—but not a money man. Preposterous.

The crush of the negative vibe should have taken more than a year to subside, but it didn’t. On a recent Friday at 6:30 p.m., an hour before the Hawks were to take on the Cleveland Cavaliers in suddenly throbbing Philips Arena, Koonin had to push away from NBA execs, well-wishers, business leaders and joyous fans to get to an appointment. He was 10 minutes late for his appointment, a disgrace for a southern gentleman.

“It’s been one of those days,” he said. “I couldn’t get away. Sorry.”

It’s understandable, Stevie K, it really is. Hosannas for the Hawks have replaced barbs for the Hawks. Koonin got an e-mail from a CEO of local company, which does not have an advertising stake in the Hawks, telling him that he has proclaimed “Hawks Day at the office” or some such thing. Koonin’s CEO pal encouraged employees to wear their Hawks gear to work.

“That’s a watershed moment,” Koonin said, “when a major company with no stake in your business does something like that.”

Koonin has e-mails jamming his inbox from New York execs looking for tickets to a big game. In January, when the Hawks went the entire month without the scratch of a loss, he handled transactions for season tickets when friends called his direct line.

The rappers then rabbis bit is no lie. He does business with the likes of T.I. and hosted a Hawks Hanukah night.

Everybody loves a winner so, sure, everybody wants to wrap their arms around his team (the Hawks were cruising in the Eastern Conference with a 10-game lead in early March). But success on the floor is only part of the reason for the turnaround.

The Hawks are remodeling to fit the urban core of Atlanta, which is younger, more diverse, less bound by the conventions of race. Younger fans are flocking through the turnstiles at Philips Arena. Black and white.

“The target audience of youth, 18 to 34, is up 300 percent,” Koonin said. “The smallest audience is guys 50-plus years old, which is only up 94 percent. We have gotten much younger, more relevant to a young audience and that is key to building a brand, for advertising, and most important sustaining and building a fan base.”

The Braves and Falcons are moving into a new stadiums (2017), but the Hawks are getting something more vital to a franchise. New blood.

“We reflect what’s happening in Atlanta culturally,” Koonin said. “We’re diverse, we’re young, we’re social media driven.”

The music inside the arena reflects the diversity of the crowd with pulsating rap to the smoky soul of Adele.

The Hawks are in the ninth largest NBA market, but their attendance has been mostly in the bottom third while their TV audience has been in the top 5. They have struggled in recent years to close the gap, but it is closing. Quickly.

According to Stevie K, during All-Star weekend, Atlanta was No. 2 night in TV ratings and No. 4 league-wide. Attendance at games was 78 percent of arena capacity last season, but has soared to 94 percent this season. The Hawks’ television ratings are up 125 percent.

“That tells me we are a great NBA town,” Koonin said. “We’re not a great Hawks town. We are becoming a great Hawks town. We’re activating the latent demand.”

The issue of Levenson and Ferry is still to be dealt with. Levenson and the other Hawks owners have agreed to sell the team and the deal could be done by mid-summer. Ferry, the architect of this sudden NBA Championship contender, was put on indefinite suspension for his remarks and his fate will likely be decided by the new owners.

Around the concourse before a March game with Cleveland, the fans seemed ready to give Ferry another chance. A random sampling of 25 fans, found 20 giving Ferry a thumbs up, five a thumbs down.

The Hawks are taking nothing for granted as far as diversity. In December, they hired Nzinga Shaw to be the NBA’s first diversity and inclusion executive. It is not window dressing. She has set up a local council of 21 people of diverse backgrounds to help the franchise sort through issues of race and inclusion.

“I think I was very cognizant of the fact that people might think my job was to mask an issue,” Shaw said. “I would never take a position for show. I am very young. I have a lot of enthusiasm around the issue of diversity and inclusion. I knew that if I took this role I was going to make it real no matter what.”

Shaw’s mandate is to make sure “inclusion” also pertains to tickets. There are economic issues in the center of Atlanta and NBA fans can be priced out by tickets and concessions. The Hawks, who are selling out routinely, have allotted 1,500 tickets for $15 and not all of those seats are halfway to the moon on the top row of the arena.

Business is good. Digital connects—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Hawks.com—are up 300 to 400 percent. Retail is up 150 percent, Koonin said. There does not seem to be much leftover stench from last summer.

“There are a few people who dwell on the past and for those folks that is their mindset,” Koonin said. “As an organization we have moved on with the things that we feel need to connect us to the citizen. Things are going extraordinarily well.”

Ray Glier is a SLAM contributor. Follow him on Twitter @RayGlier.

image via Getty

The post No Mediocre appeared first on SLAM.

KD reveals that he called off his engagement to WNBA player Monica Wright; he also shares insights on love, faith, his killer instinct, #KDISNOTNICE, last season’s fantastic MVP speech, the looming free agency and growing up in D.C.

The most interesting part of the feature are Durant’s thoughts on the still-controversial departure of James Harden from OKC; the 26-year old Thunder superstar concedes that it’s tough leading a far less talented squad without The Beard:

And lurking over it all, the question of where he’ll be after his contract runs out in 2016. Everyone jockeying for his attention, his devotion, his loyalty. Loyalty being a word Kevin Durant has had to become wise to. He heard the (Donald) Sterling tapes like everyone else. “When that came out, we was just like, ‘Oh, so that’s how they feel about us?’ All this rhetoric about team, about loyalty. And then guys like Sterling basically acting in private like their players are property. “When players do stuff that benefits them, they’re looked at as unloyal, selfish,” Durant says. “But when a team decides to go the other way and cut a player, or not bring him back or not re-sign him, it’s what’s best for the team, and that’s cool. But what we do is frowned upon, you know?”

 

Don’t forget, Kevin Durant was not selfish: He signed a full extension in 2010, no opt-outs. He remembers that, even if no one else does, even as he anticipates the lurking storm of recrimination that awaits him if he doesn’t re-up again. “I was loyal. If it comes down to that, I mean: I was. My deal’s up in 2016. I’ll have been here nine years. I could have easily wanted out. I could have easily not signed the extension after my rookie contract. I could have not played as hard every night. But people tend to forget.” Same thing happened to LeBron James, when he switched teams and they burned his jersey. Kevin watched it like, Damn. “This is not just a game for us. This is life. Like, we live and die and breathe by basketball. We’re away from our families to entertain other people.”

 

Were the Thunder being loyal to Durant and his teammates when they traded James Harden, two and a half years ago, breaking up the best young core in the league in order to save a few luxury-tax dollars? Has the team ever really given Durant what he needs to win? Durant has been asked this question so many times he may not realize that he’s begun answering it honestly. “Players are paid to do their jobs, no matter who’s on the court. And as superstars, you gotta lead what you have. You gotta make them better. Some players might be better than others. Some teams might be better than others. You gotta do your job, and you gotta trust that the front office is going to do their job. It’s hard, though. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s like, shit, I want win. Obviously our players aren’t as good as, you know, than they were before. But you have to figure it out.”

The post Kevin Durant Says Thunder Players ‘Aren’t as Good’ as Before appeared first on SLAM.

Letterman grilled his guest (in a friendly way) on a number of subjects.

The NBA commissioner discussed the Donald Sterling fiasco, the Eric Garner silent protest by various players, and what can possibly be done to save the New York Knicks (hint: nothing.)

The post NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on ‘Letterman’ (VIDEO) appeared first on SLAM.

Prokhorov bought the Nets for $220 million back in 2010, and he brushed off losing some $144 million in operating costs last season.

Brooklyn’s hoops team and its lucrative arena are likely to fetch an astounding amount of money. (The Nets say that a sale is not imminent.)

Per Bloomberg:

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov retained Evercore Partners (EVR) to sell the National Basketball Association team he bought in 2010, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

 

Prokhorov, 49, the first foreign owner of an NBA team, holds 80 percent of the club and 45 percent of the Barclays Center, its 2 1/2-year-old arena which next season will house hockey’s New York Islanders. Only the team is for sale, the people said.

 

Because of their home in the No. 1 U.S. media market, and the infrequency with which marquee franchises become available, the Nets might fetch more than the record $2 billion former Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer paid for the Los Angeles Clippers in a frenzied auction sparked by racist comments made by former owner Donald Sterling, valuations expert Peter Schwartz said. […] “The fever of a trophy asset goes beyond financial analysis — as we saw in Los Angeles,” Schwartz said.

The post Report: The Brooklyn Nets are for Sale appeared first on SLAM.

The greatest basketball player, Bill Russell, the greatest football player, Jim Brown, the greatest college hoops player Lew Alcindor, and the man known simply as “The Greatest,” Muhammad Ali, were all part of what sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards called “The Revolt of the Black Athlete.”

In the intervening years, we have seen brave political athletes, particularly in the NBA. Craig Hodges, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Etan Thomas, Steve Nash and Jason Collins all come to mind. But the stars—Magic, Bird, Jordan, Shaq—were defined by their absence of political stands. As the movements in the ’80s and ’90s tended to simmer instead of boil, and as salaries and commercial opportunities skyrocketed for athletes—particularly black athletes—the leading lights used their platform to tell us what to buy far more than they asked us to think with critical minds.

This changed dramatically in 2014. Last spring, we had players threatening to walk off the court if the League did not finally deal with former Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Now the recent explosion of protests following the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Akai Gurley at the hands of police have brought this struggle back into the NBA. It started small, with Kings second-year player Ben McLemore writing the name of Ferguson’s Michael Brown on his sneakers. Then on Saturday Derrick Rose wore a shirt during warm-ups that read, “I can’t breathe,” the last words of Eric Garner as he was being choked to death by a police officer on Staten Island. On Monday in Brooklyn, it was LeBron James and Kyrie Irving of the Cavs and Jarrett Jack, Kevin Garnett, Deron Williams and Alan Anderson of the Nets all wearing “I Can’t Breathe” shirts during warm-ups. As they played the game inside hundreds were gathered outside, “dying in” for justice, disrupting the traffic flow to the arena. Both the protests inside and outside the arena seemed to be saying the same thing: There is injustice and there needs to be a response. Every night it seems there is another player (or in the case of the Los Angeles Lakers, another team) wearing the “I Can’t Breathe” shirts or speaking out.

Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” No, this is not 1968. But there is a similar rhythm and flow to what is taking place. Sports is reflecting the struggle in the streets and this reflection is showing its power to increase the confidence and sense of moral urgency of those on the outside as well as having the power to educate fans who would sooner roll their eyes than listen to what the protestors are trying to communicate.

One missing piece of this puzzle would be seeing NBA stars who happen to be white wearing a slogan of their own, maybe a shirt that could read “My Teammates’ Lives Matter.” As of these this writing, the Taiwanese-American Jeremy Lin is the only player not from African descent who has joined the fray. In the 1960s and 1970s white NBA players like Carl Braun to Bill Walton spoke out in support of the black freedom struggle. They believed that a world based on a universally recognized human dignity was worth standing for. Today, to take even a cursory look at the protests outside the arena would be to witness people black, brown and white coming together with the shared slogan that Black Lives Matter. It would be great to see white NBA players take their share of this weight. As LeBron James said, “It’s not a Cavs thing. It’s a worldly thing.” If you are part of this world, it is time to stand up and be counted.

A version of this story appears in SLAM 185, which hits newsstands in a couple of weeks.

Dave Zirin is a SLAM contributor and the Sports Editor of The Nation. Follow him on Twitter @EdgeofSports.

The post Fight the Power appeared first on SLAM.

And if you want to talk a little basketball, well, the man on the phone can do that, too. After all, long before he helped his wife, actress/dancer/producer  Debbie Allen, found DADA in 2001, Norm Nixon was a pretty good NBA player.

And long before that, he was an all-around athletic star. Born and raised in Macon, GA, Nixon was always on some sort of sports team as a young man. The ’50s baby played baseball, basketball and ran track. He really excelled, though, in football. By the time he enrolled at Southwest High, Nixon was a star. As a senior in 1973, he was named All-State in basketball and football. “I had more football offers than basketball [following graduation],” he says.

Despite his love for football, the 6-2 and slight Nixon veered toward basketball after visiting the University of Georgia’s football program. “I walked into the locker room and saw how big those guys were,” he says, “and decided right then and there that basketball was for me.”

While he didn’t have the same five-star rep in hoops, Nixon did have a few collegiate options. After considering his choices, the guard chose to head north to attend little-known Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Not  surprisingly, he started as a freshman. “Being at a small school helped me develop faster,” says Nixon. “I had to perform every night in order for us to win.”

After several solid years, Nixon really broke out as a rising senior. That summer, he worked as a counselor at a Red Auerbach basketball camp. During the nightly runs against his more famous co-counselors from better-known programs, Nixon more than proved he belonged. After that, in his final season in the Steel City, he averaged 22 points and 4 rebounds per game. Eventually, he was named the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League Player of the Year.

When it came time to graduate and join the NBA, Nixon received keen interest from the L.A. Lakers. The organization dug deep into his background. Positive scouting reports from legendary college coaches Jerry Tarkanian (UNLV) and Ray Meyer (DePaul) put Nixon over the top, and the Lakers selected him with the 22nd pick in the 1977 Draft.

While it was not surprising that Nixon started from the jump in college, it did surprise some that he did the same with the Lakers. As a rookie, while playing north of 34 minutes a night, Nixon averaged 13.7 ppg and 6.8 apg. For his efforts, he was named First-Team All-Rookie.

During the next five seasons, Nixon would become a key cog in L.A.’s Showtime revolution.

“Norm was a great teammate,” says current Atlanta Dream head coach Michael Cooper, a long-time Laker whom L.A. drafted a year after Nixon. “He was a tenacious offensive player and the fastest player I have ever played with. A terrific competitor.”

Playing alongside Cooper, Magic Johnson (who was drafted first overall after Nixon’s second season), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jamaal Wilkes, Nixon got to develop his game while piling up wins. From ’77-83, Nixon posted a line of 16.4 ppg, 7.9 apg and 1.8 spg. He was named an All-Star once and won two titles.

In the summer of ’83, after falling just short of winning yet another title under coach Pat Riley, the Lakers looked poised to return to the top of the League. While the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers were talented, L.A. had the aforementioned veteran talent, plus the promising James Worthy. On October 10, though, the Lakers sent Nixon down the I-5, packaging him to the then-San Diego Clippers for Swen Nater and Byron Scott.

“That trade hurt a lot,” says Cooper, who lived less than a mile from Nixon and spent a lot of his free time hanging with the guard. “We had developed something really special—he, Magic and I. We called ourselves the Three Musketeers. Ultimately we all understood the League is a business, but it was hard to accept at first.”

It’s hard to define the exact reason for the trade. According to one perspective, having two prolific ballhandlers was too much. The Lakers, by this point, wanted Johnson to run every single play. Others, however, say Nixon saw the writing on the wall and asked out. He reportedly requested a trade to an Eastern Conference contender.

“[He] kind of brought that trade on himself,” says Jeff Pearlman, author of Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s. “It’s kind of a shame that when people talk about the best players of that era, they don’t always bring him up. He was easily one of the top three point guards in the League.”

A third perspective is that of Nixon’s. He says that the trade was a long time coming, and not because L.A. wanted to get rid of him, but because San Diego really coveted him.

“I knew Donald Sterling because he was a good friend of Jerry Buss (the then-owner),” says Nixon. “He always told me if he ever got to own a team he would trade for me.” Sterling had purchased the team three years earlier for $12.5 million.

Nixon would be missed by his friends on the Lakers—”[He] kind of got overshadowed in ’82 because of what Magic brought to the team,” says Clay Johnson, a reserve on that team, “and that was unfortunate because [Nixon] was probably the best all-around point guard in the League”—but not as much as he would miss them.

In his first season on the Clippers, after becoming accustomed to playing deep into the Playoffs, Nixon played on a team that was lucky to go 30-52.

“I went from the best team in the League to the worst team,” says Nixon. “It was disheartening to say the least, but what else was I supposed to do but play my hardest and keep going?” Nixon averaged 17 ppg and 11.1 apg in ’84-85.

Though they would move to L.A. that summer, the Clippers didn’t get any better. In fact, in ’85-86 they finished 31-51 and switched coaches in the middle of the season. While Nixon would never play in another Playoff game, his personal skills were flourishing.

“I think the trade made Norm a better [overall] player,” says Jim Chones, who played with Nixon on the Lakers and is now a radio analyst for the Cavaliers. “He was Iverson before Iverson…and one of the three smartest players I’ve ever played with.”

Nixon’s on-court growth would come to a halt in the summer of 1986. Ever the athlete, Nixon was playing softball in New York City’s Central Park when he suffered a knee injury. The knee would become a semi-constant problem and cause Nixon to miss two full seasons. While he came back in ’88, the injuries proved too much to overcome for a player who relied on his speed and quickness. In 1989, at the age of 33, Nixon’s NBA career was finished, with per-game averages of 15.7 ppg and 8.3 apg, and at least a minor sense of what might have been.

That’s not to say he was done with basketball. Nixon would play one season in Italy. “It was a nice way to transition away from NBA basketball,” says Nixon. “I still had a little basketball left in me.”

Even after that, Nixon might’ve kept on going but he decided calling it quits would be the right move for his family. [They] wanted me back for another season but I had proven my point,” says Nixon. “My wife had just picked up A Different World (NBC’s follow-up to The Cosby Show) and it was better for us to do that than for me to play another year overseas.”

After a lifetime of playing sports, from biddy games on the red clay of old-time Macon to the Showtime Era in Los Angeles, Nixon had to figure out new ways to keep occupied.

“There weren’t too many African-American coaches in the game,” says Nixon, “so I decided to keep my hand in the game and become an agent.” He spent time learning at a large management group before forming his own operation. Over time, Nixon worked with a ton of talent, including NBA players Jalen Rose and Samaki Walker, football players Al Wilson and Peter Warwick and entertainers LL Cool J and TLC.

Even when he decided to hang up his suit and tie, Nixon found a way to stay near the game. In fact, like the heady guard he was, Nixon found a way to come home. He joined the Lakers’ broadcast team as a color commentator.

Nowadays, 25 years since he suited up in the NBA, Nixon spends a lot of his day at DADA. He is also the executive producer of Brothers of the Knight, a stage collaboration between his wife and singer/songwriter James Ingram. The show recently finished dates in Atlanta, New Orleans, Boston and DC to rave reviews and is actually set to go back on tour later this fall.

The success of DADA and Brothers of the Knight are just the latest proof that Norm Nixon will always be a winner, will always be moving, will always be cooking up something big.

Just call up the Academy and ask the cheerful male voice that answers.

Donnell Suggs is a SLAM contributor. Follow him on Twitter @suggswriter.

The post Fame appeared first on SLAM.

That does not mean, however, that it wouldn’t be interesting to also see the new NBA commissioner under oath for a question or two. While Silver has only been on the job for under a year, he was in the corridors of power, alongside David Stern, since 1992. That is 22 years with a front seat to the great NBA Soap Opera. So bring out the Bible and pull up a seat. Here are the topics I would address with the new commish:

1) Donald Sterling. The crisis that earned Adam Silver fulsome praise upon taking over for Stern was his quick dispatching of the former Clippers owner after audio was released of Sterling aiming racial invective at Magic Johnson. My question to Silver would be, “Sterling’s racism, whether through his interaction with players or in his capacity as a slum owner, has been an open secret for years. How did he stay an owner for so many decades? Why did David Stern coddle this man for so many years? Why was he handed Los Angeles? The Staples Center? Chris Paul???” You know there’s a story here somewhere, and Silver knows it.

2) The late-’90s. I want to ask Silver about how worried the NBA was 15 years ago when the best player in the land was no longer Michael Jordan and became Allen Iverson. I would ask, “In your own words, was there a seminar for League execs about corn rows and hip-hop music? How did that decision get made to airbrush AI’s tattoos off of his arms for a League-owned magazine? And how was the decision made to introduce a dress code for players? Please take us inside those discussions. We will get the popcorn.”

3) The Malice at the Palace. How remarkable would it be for Silver to take us behind the closed doors of the NBA’s Manhattan offices to gauge the collective freakout after Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson effectively went into the stands to fight the suburbs of Detroit. Both men, who would be known as Metta World Peace and Captain Jack, enjoyed successful “second acts” in the NBA. I would love to ask, “How close were they both from being permanently banned from the League? And was this ever seriously discussed?”

4) Goodbye Sonics. The absence of pro ball in Seattle is the great stain on the legacy of David Stern, and Adam Silver had a front row seat for the heist that delivered the team to Oklahoma City. It doesn’t take Easy Rawlins to detect that Stern and Thunder owner Clay Bennett had a plan for moving the team to OKC. But how involved were the NBA offices in this crime against basketball? Did Stern orchestrate this as soon as the people of Seattle refused to pay for yet another publicly funded facility, which was before Bennett bought  the franchise? Or did Stern step in only after it was clear that Bennett, who by coincidence had long been married into one of Oklahoma’s wealthiest families, planned to steal the franchise?

5) The Money. My last question for Adam Silver would be about the future of the League. NBA owners are about to get rich, even by their standards about what it means to be rich. The League just signed a television deal worth a staggering $24 billion over the next nine years. As a fan, I would want to ask Silver just how greedy his side is planning on being. The players will want their share of this gusher of wealth. Will people on Silver’s side of the table play nice or will this be a repeat of NBA owners crying poverty and locking out the players? Let’s hear it, Commissioner: Are the owners preparing for war or peace?

It is difficult to imagine Silver ever finding himself in a situation as dire as that of the endlessly incompetent Goodell, but we’re prepared in case it ever happens.

Dave Zirin is a SLAM contributor and the Sports Editor of The Nation. Follow him on Twitter @EdgeofSports.

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Silver spoke at length about the challenges he faces — the race issue in the L, domestic violence, prioritizing HGH testing over marijuana use — and the tweaks he’d like to implement.

High up on the Commish’s wish-list is an even harder salary cap, and a minimum age limit of 20 years old instead of 19:

“I would have a harder salary cap. I still think it’s unhealthy for the league when a team like Brooklyn goes out and pays an exorbitant luxury tax in order to give themselves a better chance to win. From a league-office standpoint, the ideal league would be for all thirty teams to compete based on the skill of their management and players, as opposed to one team paying more to get better talent. So creating a more even system would be at the top of my list. And I’ll give you one more: I think it would benefit the league to raise the minimum age from 19 to 20.”

 

“The reason we can’t unilaterally do it is because it must be collectively bargained. We bargained with the union many years ago in order to move it from 18 to 19. Going to 20 was on the table during the last bargaining cycle [in 2011], but it was an issue we parked, having already lost several weeks of the season [due to the lockout], and we were anxious to get the season going. But it’s something I hope to address in the near future.”

 

“(The union’s) principal argument is that it’s a restriction on players. And as a philosophical argument, I totally understand that. Of course it’s a restriction, in the same way a draft is a restriction. But our view is that it would make for a better league. You’d have more skilled players, more mature players. The draft would be better. It would be better for basketball in general. Strong college basketball is great for the NBA. And we know those players are eventually going to come to the NBA, whether they are 19 or 20 or 21.”

The post Adam Silver Wants a Harder Salary Cap and the Age Limit Raised to 20 appeared first on SLAM.

Who?

On October 31, 1950 the NBA changed forever, when Earl “The Big Cat” Lloyd stepped foot on a basketball court dressed for the Washington Capitals to face the Rochester Royals. Lloyd was the first African-American to ever play in the NBA. One day after Lloyd became the first black player to play in the NBA, Chuck Cooper of the Boston Celtics followed in his footsteps, and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton of the New York Knicks appeared four days later, too.

The untold story of Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the NBA, is set to premiere in the spring of 2015. The First to Do it: The Life and Times of Earl Lloyd, the first African-American in the NBA is a project by directors Coodie and Chike out of Chicago. The pair previously directed Kanye West’s “Through the Wire” music video and also recently directed the ESPN “30 for 30” feature on Ben “Benji” Wilson, a gifted basketball player out of Chicago whose life was cut short due to violence.

“When we’re able to tell this story of Earl Lloyd, kids will understand that this is bigger then basketball. The barriers that he broke, what he endured during that time period and understanding what he represented as an African-American” say the directors. “Segregation, immigration, riots and more these are experiences that Earl lived through. He can share this with the nation to expose our culture to other cultures and even get a better understanding of our own culture.”

In light of the Donald Sterling fiasco, this movie is releasing right on time. 80 percent of the NBA’s players are African-Americans, and the directors are hoping for this documentary to be a positive film revolving around black history in the NBA.

Two of the films biggest backers are former San Antonio Spurs swingman Michael Finley and current Spurs PG Tony Parker. They both have donated a large portion of money to fund this project along with signed jerseys, shoes and more as a reward for fans who donate. “I care about the NBA, the game and it’s whole history. Im a big fan of 30 for 30 features and all documentaries. I was surprised no one has already told Earl’s story,” Parker says. “I think he has a great story and when he entered the NBA it changed forever. I loved Benji’s 30 for 30 and I love the way Coodie and Chike told Benji’s story so I was completely comfortable investing in this project…I just want people to know this man existed and he did amazing things. He fought and worked hard for all us and I want kids to know that the rode Earl took can be the same for them.”

Finley, who was also involved with Lee Daniels’ “The Butler,” says he only invests in stories he wants to see shared with the world. “The Earl Lloyd story fits perfect in that,” Finley says.

Earl Lloyd isn’t just a retired basketball player, he paved the way for African-Americans to join the NBA. He’s a pioneer of the game that we love today. We wouldn’t be watching the Kevin Durants, Derrick Roses or Damian Lillards if it wasn’t for this man. Lloyd is currently the only surviving member of his 1950 NBA Draft class, and in 2003 Lloyd was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The film is set to release in New York during NBA All-Star weekend 2015. To donate and learn more about Earl Lloyd visit the project’s website here.

The post ‘The First To Do It’ Trailer (VIDEO) appeared first on SLAM.

Call it the eradication of Donald Sterling, the arrival of Steve Ballmer or the urgency to win in a deepening West, but last night the fans came out in droves to watch the Clippers take on the Thunder in the first game of their 2014-15 campaign, and from the get-go, it was clear that they came not only to root on their favorite team. They came to be entertained. They came expecting a show.

And a show is what they got. In this new Ballmer Era of bulging eyes and flailing fist pumps and awesomely awkward yelling, Clippers management put forth an all-encompassing product finally worthy of the team itself.

They organized a huge FanZone experience outside of the Staples Center, which filled Chick Hearn Ct. with giveaway booths and portable hoops and blaring music and, most importantly, people; people stopping to have some pre-game fun and people clamoring to get inside early. Inside, seats were full by the time Fergie killed the national anthem (I know, I was shocked too) and the new LED lighting system dimmed.

I think we were all expecting Ballmer to make a big show of the first game, especially after his theatrics with season ticket holders and the dramatic mini-movie that ran nationally on TV earlier this week. But what happened next took everyone by surprise. They announced the Thunder starting lineup, they shut down the lights, and then the court literally sprung to life.

A nearly one-minute intro danced across the hardwood in an illuminating three-dimensional light show, on the floor itself, that included highlights, greetings from players and a crumbling effect that looked like the Staples Center floor had melted away in a sea of red and blue. It was astonishing. It was very Hollywood. It was not very Clipper-like.

They ran a similar, much shorter 3D projection on the court in Cleveland earlier that night, and I have to imagine the NBA made sure it was no coincidence that the Cavs and the Clippers were the first two teams to debut it, for very different reasons. But whatever the motive, the effect set a clear tone to the Staples Center crowd, and it’s one that Clipper fans like myself have been waiting to see for a long time.

Where the 3D light show drove the Cavs fans into a frenzy, it mostly left Clippers fans stunned. This is a level of production, planning, fore-thought and attention to detail that simply is unfathomable for the franchise. Where for a team like the Cavs, the fans and management have suffered together through terrible play on the court, it has always been the Clippers fans and players who suffered together through terrible management.

Even when the Clippers were good, when Elton Brand and Sam Cassell sparked a post-season run or when Lob City took the team to new heights, promotion and marketing always held an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, almost novelty kind of vibe. Like this success was fun but fleeting, and would soon be gone and replaced. Through it all, the despised owner basked in his courtside seat next to a flock of girlfriends while no one told him he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Now, though, there was a sudden reversal. State-of-the-art technology and graphics splashed on to the very playing surface, followed on the overhead, eight-sided jumbotron by a beautiful highlight package promoting the team’s stars and head coach that had just debuted on every television across the country. And through it all, the new owner sat and watched intently and when the lights came on he stood and cheered with his trademark enthusiasm.

Even from my seat way up in the top level and on the other end of the court, the huge figure and Ballmer’s shiny bald dome were clearly visible. In person, even from a distance, he is magnetic and strange—like a bald, sweaty centaur. I got texts from friends telling me about his bizarre interview on TNT and his over-enthusiasm during the game, but I didn’t need them. I could see it for myself, the new owner of the Clippers trying to connect with his new team and its fan base by joining in the chants and losing his mind when JJ Redick hit two free throws to put them up by three late in the game. Ballmer is quite often over the top, sometimes embarrassingly so, but his actions sent a message to the fans: You and I are here to support them. You have to understand this is a novel concept in Clipperland.

Things are not perfect for the Clippers, though. Anyone who watched them squeak by the Thunder, without both Durant and Westbrook, definitely hasn’t rushed to bet on Lob City just yet. It will take time to adjust to the loss of Darren Collison, and the arrival of Spencer Hawes, and rebounding remains a huge issue. At one point in the third quarter, I imagined what a team like the Mavericks would do if the Clippers played them like they did last night, and literally shuddered.

But for the first time, all the pieces seem to be in place, especially the most important ones: Talent, experience, coaching and an owner who isn’t afraid to admit it isn’t all about him. It’s all about the players, and he’ll give us a show to prove it.

Ryan ZumMallen writes about sports and cars from his home in Long Beach, CA. You can find him on Twitter @Zoomy575M.

The post The Ballmer Era Begins appeared first on SLAM.

Griffin and the entire Clipper organization quite obviously prefer their new boss, the ever-excitable Steve Ballmer.

The post Blake Griffin Describes Donald Sterling’s White Party on ‘Conan’ (VIDEO) appeared first on SLAM.

EASTERN CONFERENCE

1. Cavaliers, 58-24
We know all about LeBron, and we’re pretty sure we know about Kyrie, Kevin Love and Coach Blatt, too. Even the bench is stocked with relatively known quantities from past Championship teams. Dion Waiters is a mega question mark at the 2, and how the whole franchise handles the attention/pressure surrounding LeBron’s return will be interesting to watch, but you can be sure this team catch a lot of Ws.

2. Bulls, 52-30
I loved the Pau pickup—he and Joakim could be the sweetest-passing big man duo ever. And I love Coach Thibs as much as ever. Jimmy Butler’s just gotta get back on track and obviously Derrick needs to stay healthy. All that happens, and Bulls fans will have the team they’ve been hoping for the last three seasons. It’s too bad they won’t have Aggrey Sam around to report on it for them.

3. Raptors, 48-34
DeMar DeRozan just keeps getting better and better and Kyle Lowry is easily the best point guard you’ve barely seen play. Throw in a solid coach, a tremendous GM and an excellent—if occasionally unrealistic—fan base, and this is a franchise heading in a very positive direction.

4. Wizards, 47-35
I’m as enamored with John Wall as I was when I righty predicted “80 games and sick across-the-board numbers” before last season, and Bradley Beal is legit, too, so all the props the DC backcourt is getting are warranted. Nice, big 4-5 combo, too. But depth is an issue unless you buy into Paul Pierce’s viability (I don’t), and I think their coach and GM stink. The whole package certainly adds up to a very solid Playoff team, but I don’t see the super-high ceiling for the Wiz that some do.

5. Hornets, 46-36
It would be awesome to see this super-fun roster go deep into the Playoffs, as such a run would vindicate the great Michael Jordan as an owner, mean Michael Kidd-Gilchrist had learned to shoot, put the spotlight on great coaches like Steves Clifford and Silas, and, best of all from the perspective of this New York City-based publication, let the performance by the Big Apple-bred backcourt of Kemba Walker and Lance Stephenson serve as a middle finger to all those who have tried to write off basketball in this city.

6. Heat, 45-37
Coach Spo is going to do his thing on the sidelines, and Chris Bosh may well put up some turn-back-the-clock numbers, but how the hell do you replace the best player in the world? The Dwyane Wade of five years ago might have been able to, but he’s not that valuable anymore, especially because of his unwillingness to work on his three-point shot.

7. Hawks, 43-39
Sadly for Lang Whitaker, still the OG of SLAM pre-season previews, “#ATLshawty” has come to mean “boring franchise” in NBA speak. Or worse, “racist front office.” Al Horford, Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap and Jeff Teague are all nice players, but until the Hawks make a deep Playoff run or acquire a must-watch talent, they are destined to be known for off-court shenanigans, if anything.

8. Knicks, 41-41
Pretty much throwing a dart blindfolded with this prediction. In some circles, 41-41 is probably seen as generous, but it’s the true definition of uncertainty on the part of a prognosticator. I do think Phil has a little magic left in him, and I’m firmly in Melo’s camp as one of the five best players in the League. With some of the shitty teams in this conference, that, combined with a legit PG in Jose Calderon and the three-headed monster of JR Shumpaway, should be enough to eek into the postseason.

 9. Pacers, 38-44
Anyone remember who I picked to win it all last year? It coulda’ happened, I promise, were it not for some meltdowns of the mental variety. The talent was there to win it all last season. This year, with Lance gone and Paul George hurt, it’s not. And I don’t see the Pacers’ mental toughness being any more pronounced in their absence, either.

10. Nets, 38-44
Hope the Nets’ unrealistic front office and all their hardcore “fans” enjoyed that one-year run at the title. *Snickers*.This group is one year older and even sure-to-be-solid coaching from Lionel Hollins can’t make them a factor again. On the other hand, and this is written in complete seriousness, the franchise’s value has ballooned, and Mikhail Prokhorov is going to make out like the business genius he is when he jumps off this sinking ship.

11. Pistons, 37-45
My vote for best coaching/front-office hire of the offseason goes to the Pistons, who brought in the bright, creative and tough Stan Van Gundy to clean things up. Guys like  Brandon Jennings and Josh Smith will have the emotional SVG pulling his hair out at times, but there is some compelling talent here and he’ll get the most out of it at some point.

12. Magic, 32-50
The slow slog back to respectability continues for the Magic, who add young, exciting Elfrid Payton to young, exciting Victor Oladipo in their backcourt this year, but continue to lack the scorer or center to really be in the Playoff mix.

13. Bucks, 30-52
Jason Kidd has always been an impressive back-room schemer, so his sneaky diss of the Nets really wasn’t all that shocking. Especially because moving to the Bucks gives Kidd a pressure-free atmosphere and young, malleable players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker whom he can grow with. I see some fun-to-watch games from this bunch, and a future that will only get brighter from here.

14. Celtics, 29-53
The lack of talent on last year’s Celtics team means we don’t really know what type of NBA coach Brad Stevens will turn out to be. And honestly, we probably won’t learn much this year, either. The Celtics promised their fans a lengthy rebuild when they broke up their Big Three, and that’s exactly what they’re getting.

15. 76ers, 16-66
Meet the franchise that is single-handedly turning off an entire generation’s love of basketball in one of the nation’s greatest hoop cities! Look: the cold-blooded cynic in me understands what the Sixers are trying to do, but with so many question marks and a fan base that could  afford to support less egregious tanking, I wish they’d put forth a better effort. Exhibit A why the NBA needs to overhaul its lottery system pronto.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

(This preview was written before KD was declared out for at least six weeks with a broken foot. While the Thunder’s win-loss record might be a bit different, sticking behind my prediction that they’ll win the West.—Ed.)

1. Thunder, 61-21
It took a whole conference worth of teams for me before I mentioned fantasy basketball, but the truth is I’m a rabid player of it and I can’t ignore that when I get to this team. According to my beloved Yahoo! pre-Draft rankings, the Thunder have the 1st-, 9th- and 14th-best fantasy players in the League. Or, using the metric of the #SLAMTop50, the 2nd-, 6th- and 31st-best players in the League. In a game where winning is driven by talent, how can Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka not win it all one of these years? Just don’t make me discuss their coach for the time being.

2. Spurs, 57-25
Why not, right? The Spurs put on a clinic in last year’s Finals and all the key actors are back for another go-round, arguably even more motivated because they are chasing a repeat, which is about the only thing the Pop/Duncan/Tony/Manu crew hasn’t accomplished yet. That said, one of these years the teams’ collective age is going to catch up with them, and Kawhi Leonard will only be able to do so much to stop the slight slide.

3. Clippers, 56-26
Not sure what to say about this group. Blake Griffin keeps getting better and better, and the records of Doc Rivers and Chris Paul speak for themselves. Maybe the elimination of Donald Sterling from the picture will provide a little emotional boost, too. But when you really stack up rosters and matchups, do you see this team as better than the Thunder and/or Spurs? That makes one of us.

4. Mavericks, 50-32
The Mavs aren’t quite back to full title-contending status, but they have made a lot of savvy moves. Monta Ellis worked out better than I ever imagined and Tyson Chandler Parsons is a great off-season acquistion. As for Rick Carlisle and Dirk  Nowitzki, well, these guys remain among the best in the biz.

5. Rockets, 47-35
Maybe I’ll be wrong about whom finishes ahead of whom in the Mavs-Rockets race, but don’t they have to end up as the 4-5 Playoff matchup? The talent levels are equal in my opinion, the regional beef is obvious, and the war of words between Mark Cuban and Daryl Morey insures that a best-of-seven between these two teams would be tremendous theater. In case you keeping score, by the way, we’re Team Cuban when forced to choose between these two blowhards.

6. Trail Blazers, 44-38
Wes Matthews’ health? Mo Williams’ departure? LaMarcus Aldridge’s unsigned contract extension? The delusional fans? Something makes me nervous about this team. Then again, the 54 wins they had  last year bested my pre-season prediction by 18 games, so maybe I should just skip Portland. Or at least stop reading The Oregonian when I’m out there on business.

7. Warriors, 43-39
As the original Markjaxfan, I’m simply too biased to render a proper judgment on this team. I see basically the same roster as a year ago, with the transcendant Stephen Curry oddly being given less responsibility  than last season and a coach who won’t connect as well to the players as Mark did. That said, if the perpetually injured Andrew Bogut plays a full season for the first time since his ’05-06 rookie campaign and is healthy for the Playoffs, I could coach the Warriors and we’d scare the heck out of most teams.

8. Pelicans, 42-40
This seemed high to me when I penciled these picks out, but I love love love Anthony Davis and I wanted to look cool by predicting the Playoffs for the Pels. Then my man Leo Sepkowitz (more from him below) chimes in and says I’m underestimating New Orleans. Bottom line: Whether you’re an opponent or a League Pass subscriber, you should not  sleep on these guys.

9. Grizzlies, 41-41
Marc Gasol is the best (not literally, but he sure is good at both ends of the floor) and Z-Bo and Mike Conley are consumate pros, but the Grizz lack a scorer and eventually, #gritngrind is just gonna grind them down.

10. Suns, 40-42
While by no means trying to diminish Phoenix’ 48-win season a year ago, what, in the end, was it good for? Due to the brutal competition in the Western Conference last season, the Suns’ year ended when all the other non-Playoff teams’ did, and that was that. Their backcourt gets even more explosive with the addition of Isaiah Thomas, but the Suns are very small and they aren’t sneaking up on anybody this time around.

11. Lakers, 39-43
Kobe’s back! Kobe’s back? Kobe’s back. What exactly will a rehabbed, 36-year-old Kobe mean on the court? And while Jeremy Lin will sell lots of jerseys and be good for some scoring outbursts, he and Steve Nash aren’t stopping anyone on defense. I guess the variable that could make this team anywhere from 15 games below .500 to 5 games above .500 is their supremely talented rookie, Julius Randle. There was a time when he was in high school that some had him pegged as the better pro than Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker. That time was less than two years ago.

12. Nuggets, 38-44
Is anyone still reading? Did anyone notice what I did with the records here? I PREDICTED TEAMS 6-12 TO BE WITHIN SIX GAMES OF EACH OTHER. Why? Because I think you could throw their names in a hat and pick their finish. Any of the six could make the Playoffs. Any of the six could miss ’em. With non-Title or last-place teams like these, small injuries or surprising roadtrips will make the difference. In Denver’s case, the roster is decent but don’t expect to see Kenneth Faried duplicate his FIBA World Cup beasting when he goes against NBA comp.

13. Kings, 26-56
Sac-Town is still home to a bunch of guys who like to launch jumpers—and hopefully can make a decent percentage of them. And Boogie just keeps on keeping on. But in this conference, that’s still not enough.

14. Jazz, 25-57
Where have you gone, Karl Malone and John Stockton? The Jazz have slid deep into irrelevance, and as intriguing as Gordon Hayward and even Alec Burks may be as talents, neither one of them are delivering the Jazz back to their glory days. Dante Exum? Just maybe.

15. Timberwolves, 21-61
The Ricky Rubio assists to Andrew Wiggins are going to be awesome, but we just can’t rock with this new era of all-powerful Flip Saunders.

After several years in which the Heat were the prohibitive favorites, the relatively wide-open nature of this year’s regular season should make it extremely fun to watch. Once the pretenders have been eliminated, I see LeBron and the Cavs outlasting their division-rival Bulls in a grueling Eastern Conference finals. Out west, I think the perfectly primed Thunder will hold off the Spurs to advance to Nike’s dream Finals. Cleveland vs Oklahoma City; LeBron vs Kevin. And, unlike 2012, I see Kevin’s team getting the upper hand this time.

Just like I did in this space a year ago, I picked every team’s record off the top of my head, then turned my guesses over to SLAM Editorial Assistant Leo Sepkowitz, who is much better at math than I am. Leo balanced out my wins and losses and chimes in with his own thoughts on how the season will play out below.

Leo Sepkowitz: I agree with the teams you pegged to make a leap in the East, but I think you underrated a few up-and-comers out West. If we’re picking teams with all O and no D, I like the Blazers and Dubs over the Mavs and Rockets. Meanwhile, Anthony Davis is my sleeper for MVP as the star on a Pelicans squad ready to take off. On opening night, New Orleans will feature three stars that they didn’t have down the stretch last season—Ryan Anderson, Jrue Holiday and newcomer Omer Asik. And let’s not forget about Tyreke Evans, who rediscovered himself to the tune of 17, 6.5 and 5.5 after the break last season. Don’t overlook the young and balanced Pelicans!

As for the top dogs, the Spurs were just so damn good in the Finals that it’s hard to bet against them (the average score in that series was 106-92!). Neither OKC nor the Clippers made a big improvement this summer, so I’ll keep taking San Antonio to come out of the West until I see it fail to do so. The Cavs, on the other hand…well, call me a believer that LeBron will bounce back for ring No. 3 in June.

The post 2014-15 NBA Preview appeared first on SLAM.

The NBA announced Monday that a record 101 international players from 37 countries and territories are on opening-night rosters for this season, leading Guber to crack that he’s learning several languages as a result (including “hoodish”.)

Guber apologized to Warriors employees, and said he meant to write “Yiddish” instead.

Per Yahoo! Sports:

Warriors director of media relations Raymond Ridder forwarded the league’s release in an email sent through the franchise, saying, “The following is a great example of the growth of our league. There are 101 international players on NBA opening night rosters, which represents 22% of the league. We have five [5] international players on our roster (33%), which includes Andrew Bogut, Leandro Barbosa, Festus Ezeli, Ognjen Kuzmic and Nemanja Nedovic. We’ve come a long way…”

 

Guber responded to the email by writing, “I’m taking rosetta stone to learn Hungarian Serbian Australian swahili and hoodish This year. But it’s nice.”

 

Guber’s initial email was sent throughout the franchise and construed as “offensive” by at least one team employee. Late Monday, Guber sent a follow-up email saying he mistakenly typed “hoodish” and regretted the error. […] “Someone just brought to my attention that an email I responded to earlier contains the word ‘hoodish,’ which I don’t even think Is a Word, and certainly not the one I intended to use,” Guber wrote in the email. “I intended to type Yiddish. Either my mobile fone [sic] autocorrected or it was typed wrong. In any event I regret if anyone was unintendedly [sic] offended.”

Related:
Hawks Owner Bruce Levenson to Sell Team After Admitting to Racist Email
Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Under Fire for Alleged Racist Rant

The post Warriors Co-Owner Peter Guber Apologizes for Using ‘Hoodish’ in Email appeared first on SLAM.

Griffin compares Donald Sterling to a “weird uncle”, and illuminates just how odd it was working for a megalomaniac and known racist.

Per The Players’ Tribune:

Donald Sterling had me by the hand. You know that thing elderly women do where they grab the top of your hand with just their fingers and lead you around? That’s what he was doing. We were in Malibu for his annual White Party, and it was the first time I was meeting him since the Clippers had drafted me in the spring of 2009. He led me through the house to the balcony overlooking his tennis court. The whole party was set up out there. White tents. White umbrellas. White cloth. I showed up in all white. Everyone showed up in all white. Then there was Donald, standing on the balcony overlooking it all, wearing all black. “Isn’t this just fabulous?” he said.

 

When I knew the Clippers were drafting me, the first thing I did was type Donald Sterling’s name into Google. The first hit that came up was “Donald Sterling is a racist.” I read an article on how he didn’t want minorities to live in his apartment buildings. My first thought was, Wow this guy is really, really a racist … how is he an owner of an NBA team? […] My second thought was, Wow, these articles are from 2003 and 2008. I guess everybody already knows about this stuff and just doesn’t care.

 

It’s little bit ironic to me that the media has tried to turn [new Clippers owner Steve Ballmer] into a meme when they turned a blind eye to Sterling for years. Steve is a good dude. He’s like a cool dad who gives you candy. Donald was like a weird uncle. […] Someone asked me the other day if I’m mad that he made out with $2 billion for selling the team. Maybe a little bit. But in the end, I’m just happy he’s gone. I think about him pulling me around the White Party in Malibu, and a saying comes to mind: “Some people are so poor, all they have is their money.”

The post Blake Griffin Compares Donald Sterling to a ‘Weird Uncle’ appeared first on SLAM.

He had lost the previous season to a knee injury, and all he did in his debut was jam home every ball in sight, flash some nice post moves and look fully healthy. He was an obvious star.

Griffin was equally exhilarating for the remainder of that season, and finished with averages of 22.5, 12 and 4 while shooting 51 percent. Unfortunately, the effort went to waste on a team that occasionally started Jamario Moon.

At season’s end, though, the Clippers glued Griffin and DeAndre Jordan to the ground and let everything else fly away in exchange for Chris Paul, and Lob City was born. And the team delivered, to some extent, tossing endless oops and piling up regular-season wins under Vinny Del Negro.

Only L.A. seemed to plateau right there: fun to watch, but not intimidating. The same went for their power forward.

Griffin came into the League as something like an A-minus player—easily dropped into any top-20 debate without reaching true upper echelon status. He produced roughly the same individual numbers in each of his first three seasons, which was some strange mix of frustrating, confusing and impressive. It appeared we knew who Griffin was and what he was capable of—20 and 10 with wild highlights—after three seasons.

And then…boom! Griffin developed into a strong focal point in Doc Rivers’ offense last season, upping his scoring to 24 points per contest. He dropped 35-plus five times during a six-game February stretch. He hit 71 percent of his free throws—a career best—and he ranked fifth in free throws made, one season after placing 20th. He then averaged 23 and 8 in the postseason, and guided L.A. to a defeat of the Warriors before falling to OKC in a series that nearly went the Clippers’ way.

Los Angeles wasn’t able to advance to the conference finals, but they had the look of a title threat. That’s a big step up after spending two years in the Maybe But Probably Not tier alongside teams like Memphis, Houston and Golden State.

Over the summer, the Clippers scooped up Spencer Hawes to absorb minutes previously given to the likes of Ryan Hollins and Rony Turiaf, and drafted CJ Wilcox, a 23-year-old sharpshooter, in the first round of the Draft. The biggest move, of course, was swapping out owner Donald Sterling for Steve Ballmer. And look at all of the awesome stuff that happened afterward:

1. Rivers signed a massive extension
2. One of their players promised to bring back short-shorts
3. Griffin morphed into a 6-10 Mark Price
4. They signed an Australian dude
5. We got all of this.

Los Angeles is piling up positive mojo. They’ve got a real coach, a real owner and a real backup big man. Jordan came on as perhaps the League’s best rebounder last season, placing second in both offensive and defensive rebound totals. Meanwhile, JJ Redick delivered a strong debut season, and is complemented well on the wing by Matt Barnes. Jamal Crawford will return for another season of terrorizing opposing teams’ second units. Ekpe Udoh, Glen Davis, Jordan Farmar, Chris Douglas-Roberts and Hedo Turkoglu are quality veterans who can chip in on the backend of some rotations. Wilcox and second-year man Reggie Bullock offer some upside for an otherwise predictable supporting cast.

It’s a remarkably deep roster, all centered around Paul and Griffin. The former is entering his 10th season in the League without a conference finals appearance, and there’s no doubt that he’ll be hyper-focused.

That leaves the ex-Sooner and his retooled jumper. In the past, the Clippers have struggled to get buckets down the stretch, mostly because of Jordan’s inability to shoot from beyond six inches (plus the need to keep him in for defense) and Griffin’s mediocre mid-range game. Neither guy drags defenders out of the paint, which keeps CP3 from diving into the lane and getting the offense moving. We all saw what the development of Chris Bosh’s jumper opened up for Miami, and Griffin even sniffing that level of long-range efficiency would be a game-changer for L.A.

The table is set for Griffin & Paul’s team to shift from Kia-Hoppin’ Lob City to the No Bullshit Los Angeles Clippers—every piece from owner on down is in place. Griffin looked a lot like a superstar last season; his next act might Mozgov the entire League.

 
Rankings are based on expected contribution in ’14-15—to players’ team, the NBA and the game.

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He’s also more demanding.

Ballmer asked the Clipper faithful to arrive early at Staples Center, soul-crushing Los Angeles traffic and being fashionably late be damned.

Per the LA Times:

“They said the first quarter can be a little lonely,” Ballmer said.

 

While acknowledging that he wasn’t an expert in Los Angeles traffic, Ballmer asked fans to arrive for tip-off. […] “I will just tell you, 10 minutes earlier in your seat and Blake Griffin and Chris Paul are really going to love you,” Ballmer said.

 

Ballmer said he expected “lots of wins” from a team that compiled a franchise-record 57 last season. […] “We want to play in April, in May, in June,” Ballmer said. “You’ve got to make sure everybody’s pushing and pushing to get better and improve every day, and if we do that with the talent we have in place, with a little bit of good luck, we’re going to be the last guys playing.”

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Ballmer is trying to eradicate all Apple products from Clipper-ville – Ballmer is still the largest individual Microsoft shareholder, with about 4 percent of the company worth $15.7 billion – and thinks the team will emerge stronger after surviving the Donald Sterling fiasco. Per Reuters:

“I think people understand we are a different kind of team,” Ballmer said Wednesday, sitting on the Clippers practice court. “We are born in a funny way, and the guys have all had to live through something not only on the court but off the court together that requires a deeper kind of commitment.”

 

Ballmer promises that whether the fan comes to the arena, or cheers from the couch, or follows on a smartphone or tablet “you are going to have the best experience and that is not just the best in L.A.”

 

“Most of the Clippers on are Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,” Ballmer said. “And Doc kind of knows that’s a project. It’s one of the first things he said to me: ‘We are probably going to get rid of these iPads, aren’t we?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we probably are.’ But I promised we would do it during the off season.”

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Griffin explains why he gets into so many tussles on the court, and wonders if being on TV so much might negatively affect his opponents and critics:

Why do people seem to get into it with you so much on the court? “I like to play physical, and I’m a big guy, and I think sometimes—maybe sometimes I am pushing somebody and I don’t realize how hard I’m pushing them. And then they do it back, and it’s kind of like, “Jeez!” You know what I mean? It looks worse because it’s kind of almost like their reaction to me. And then at the same time, sometimes I’m like, okay, maybe it’s just because I’m big and I play physical.”

 

What was it that Klay Thompson said before the playoff series? That you were a “bull in a china shop”? “Bull in a china shop, yeah. But the thing about that is, it depends on who you are. If you’re the bull, being a bull in a china shop is not a bad thing. If you’re the china, it’s a bad thing. So I want to be the bull. I don’t want to be the china.”

 

Does off-the-court stuff factor into it? Like the fact that you do commercials? “Probably. For some people, I don’t know, probably. I mean, when I see a guy doing a commercial, I don’t care. It’s not like I see Kevin Durant in a commercial, I’m like, “Psshh, this guy!” […] But you guys are in a rarefied category. “Maybe. Yeah, I guess. But even, you know, as a high schooler, as a college kid, my first year, I wasn’t—seeing guys on commercials—being like, “What’s this dude doing?” You know, that’s just not really my personality. But I feel like some people do. It probably does have an effect.”

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Kareem, writing in Time, opines that Levenson’s decision to walk away from the franchise is simply a case of “misguided white guilt”:

The only problem is that Atlanta Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson is no Donald Sterling. Nor is his email racist. In fact, his worst crime is misguided white guilt.

 

I read Levenson’s email. Here’s what I concluded: Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats. In the email, addressed to Hawks president Danny Ferry, Levenson wonders whether (according to his observations) the emphasis on hip-hop and gospel music and the fact that the cheerleaders are black, the bars are filled with 90% blacks, kiss cams focus on black fans and time-out contestants are always black has an effect on keeping away white fans.

 

Businesspeople should have the right to wonder how to appeal to diverse groups in order to increase business. They should even be able to make minor insensitive gaffes if there is no obvious animosity or racist intent. This is a business email that is pretty harmless in terms of insulting anyone — and pretty fascinating in terms of seeing how the business of running a team really works. […] The thing that makes me mad is that Levenson was too quick to rend his clothing and shout mea culpa. In his apology, he wrote, “By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans.” But that’s not the message in the email at all. If the seats had been filled, even if by all blacks, the email wouldn’t have been written. He wasn’t valuing white fans over blacks; he was trying to figure out a way to change what he thought was the white perception in Atlanta so he could sell more tickets. That’s his job.

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This triggered an internal investigation that eventually led to the revelation of a racially-charged 2012 email from majority team owner Bruce Levenson, who announced Sunday that he’s selling his share of the franchise. Per the AJC:

According to CEO Steve Koonin, the Hawks held a meeting in early June to discuss free agency. At that meeting, a player was being discussed and Ferry cited a background report that included an “offensive and racist” remark. […] “Instead of editing it, he said the comment,” Koonin said.

 

Following the meeting, Koonin said members of the Atlanta-based ownership group raised a red flag regarding the comment and said: ‘This is wrong. This should not be said. It’s not appropriate in any world but not a post-(Donald) Sterling world.”

 

In the wake of the incident, it was decided that there would be an internal investigation conducted by council. The law first of Alston and Bird conducted 19 interviews and examined 24,000 documents. During that search, the Levenson email was discovered, according to Koonin. […] According to Koonin, Ferry will be disciplined for the incident. He met with representatives of the law firm Alston and Bird late Sunday afternoon and said the undisclosed discipline exceeded their recommendation. “This is a discipline matter,” Koonin said. “He will be punished. It will remain private.”

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Rivers’ wallet also got a nice bump – the Clips will reportedly pay their head coach more than $50 million over the next five years. Per ESPN:

Rivers’ new deal will pay him in excess of $10 million annually, according to multiple sources.

 

Rivers had two years remaining on the three-year, $21 million deal he signed last year when he came to Los Angeles from the Boston Celtics.

 

After [Steve] Ballmer was introduced as the new owner of the Clippers two weeks ago, Rivers downplayed the reports of his imminent departure if Sterling was still associated with the team by the start of the season. […] “I honestly didn’t think that was going to happen, you know, logically speaking,” Rivers said. “[NBA commissioner] Adam [Silver] had already taken the team away. You know, I thought that took on its own life. It went from that to if the season starts and such and such is the owner, which I never said that part. It was true, though. Sometimes you do have to take a stand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I didn’t think I was going to have to, honestly. But I think a lot of us would have been willing to, for sure.”

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The edgy video, which features renowned rapper Scarface, takes on Sterling and racism as a whole. With all that’s currently going on in the world, Jackson, who goes by the moniker Stak5, picked a good time to air out his voice and creative vision.

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Ballmer promised Clippers fans the world, and hilariously made his players a tad uncomfortable as he screamed and ranted for more than 10 minutes. Per the LA Times:

“She and me and the NBA all agreed she can come to games as part of the purchase consideration and that’s quite reasonable,” said Ballmer, whose $2-billion acquisition of the Clippers from Donald and Shelly Sterling closed last week. “Donald was banned, not Shelly. But I own the team, I’ll make the decisions about where we take the team. They’re the former owner; I’m the new owner.”

 

Told that some people lump Shelly in with her estranged husband because she was a party to his shenanigans for more than three decades — including one alleged incident in which she posed as a housing inspector in an attempt to oust minority tenants — Ballmer said he was only “looking forward.” […] “We’ve gone through a period of lemons; I’m in the lemonade business and I’m excited about the future,” Ballmer said. “The league is fine with their decisions, I took that as my guide and we’re driving forward under new ownership — thankfully under the same basketball leadership but under new ownership.”

 

“I’m a confident guy that we have a great product, I’m a confident guy that we’re going to have a lot of viewership and fanship,” Ballmer continued, and here came that pump-up-the-volume cadence again, “and I’m confident in my ability AS A SALESMAN TO GET PEOPLE FIRED UP!”

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Two of Sterling’s attorneys, Maxwell Blecher and Bobby Samini, said in a joint statement they are “deeply disappointed that he has been deprived from ownership of the Clippers” without the appellate court reviewing “this harsh result.” […] “Nevertheless, we are confident Donald will be completely vindicated in his federal case against the NBA,” the statement said. “More importantly, we believe that the ‘popular’ ruling in the probate matter is a serious blow to the privacy rights for all Americans.”

 

Steve Ballmer’s attorney, Adam Streisand, said in a statement that “we are beyond thrilled and gratified and supremely confident that this is now over and done” and described Ballmer as the “undisputed owner” of the Clippers.

 

In five paragraphs, the state’s 2nd Court of Appeal dismissed Sterling’s petition less than 24 hours after it was filed. […] “The evidence before this court indicates the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to Steven Ballmer has closed,” the decision said. “Thus, there is nothing for this court to stay.”

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Shelly Sterling will still have a large and visible presence with the Clippers after this deal. pic.twitter.com/UKqFVTSPF1

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) August 12, 2014

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Ballmer and Rivers had been eager to forge a long-term partnership, and a California court confirming the authority of Shelly Sterling to sell the franchise on behalf of the Sterling Family Trust has cleared the way to work toward a new deal.

 

Rivers, 52, the president of basketball operations and head coach, has two years left on his original three-year, $21 million contract. Rivers is already one of the highest-paid executives and coaches in professional sports, and his prominence and pay could grow with the promise of Ballmer’s stewardship of the Clippers.