Sterling Reaction: Adam Silver Got It Right

Today the NBA, led by Commissioner Adam Silver, did the right thing. They started the process of getting rid of Donald Sterling, but understand this is going to be a process and it's going to be complicated.

It's not complicated because of the actions, or more accurately the words in the tape shared by TMZ.

Donald Sterling is a racist. Donald Sterling is an adulterer.

Both of these things are known by anyone who's paying attention including his wife who not only apparently has given up (if she ever started) fighting them, but she has participated in the racism portion. You're reading this on the internet, if you want to know more look up the lawsuit settled in 2009. You'll find her name too.

This situation is complicated by the laws and the fact that Donald Sterling is a litigious cheapskate who loves to use them.

He's famously not paid coaches after firing them, making them sue him for money he plain as day owes them. If they do, he drags them through the courts and they cost themselves money. So most of them settle and Sterling gets to keep some of his cash.

This is just one small example of how Sterling has been the worst owner in sports over the last 30 years. His team has the worst winning percentage in sports over his reign and it wasn't until he was gifted the best point guard in the league two years ago by David Stern that his team became relevant.

In that time, Sterling started to change who he was as an owner in that he actually showed a willingness to invest in his team, but make no mistake he has not changed as a man.

He's still a racist. This is on the record. Forget the words from this recording. We have actions to prove that and those actions are FAR more important than what happens to him and his basketball team. This point was made by Bomani Jones on The Dan Lebetard Show far more eloquently and effectively than I could ever dream of making it and in urge you to listen to it as soon as you're done reading this if you haven't already. (Starting at 4:33)

However what happened to him was still a valid and important question.

There's a large group of people, largely the general public, who had never heard of Donald Sterling before Saturday or even Monday when they saw these comments on their daytime TV shows that are outraged by this and want Sterling's head on a platter. There's another group that's going "wait a minute, we're mad now? This is who this guy is!" and then go "this is kinda what we've got and there's nothing we can do." and in a weird way they're both right.

I can't expect someone who doesn't follow sports to be aware of who Sterling is and what he is which is a racist scumbag and not be mad upon finding out. It's like those of us who don't really follow politics finding out about some awful thing a politician said and putting it up on Facebook. More attention is good. It outs them. Which is why despite "knowing the score" so to speak, I'm all for all these people piling on. Sometimes we need a concrete reason to take action and now the NBA has a reason to do something with Donald Sterling, which many owners have wanted to do for years and that's try to get rid of him.

Today Adam Silver started just that. He was widely applauded.

For those that didn't think a lifetime ban and max fine for an 81 year old billionaire, what the hell did you want? For Silver to kill him?

The NBA did the right thing today. Sure Sterling should've been gone years ago. Sure this isn't even close to the worst thing Sterling's done.

But Donald Sterling is all gone from the NBA and anybody who tries to minimize that very good thing by bringing up other factors is doing Adam Silver, who wasn't in charge for Sterling's other incidents, a disservice.

Well done Adam. In your first test as commissioner, you've passed with flying colors.

Marcus Smart - Misplaced Outraged and Actual Accountability

Putting your hands on someone typically escalates a problem, not solves it.

However Marcus Smart didn't punch anybody and he certainly didn't shoot anybody and it's about time we started acting accordingly.

Marcus Smart is 19 years old. He is black. Texas Tech super fan Jeff Orr is roughly 50. He is white. According to Smart, Orr used the racial slur everybody who speaks English knows is unacceptable. It's one I've written about extensively. It's one that should never be uttered by anyone under any circumstances directed at another person because there is no way to use it outside of hatefully.

In the moment immediately following this, Smart gave Orr one good shove. He then walked away. This moment was at the very end of a very close basketball game meaning Smart was hopped up, much like Richard Sherman, on incalculable amounts of testosterone and adrenaline.

Orr has denied using the term, but Smart was telling his coaches he did immediately after. It's a lot easier to deny using it out of the moment than to make up that he used it in the spot Smart was in to his coaches. Unless someone else said it and Smart misheard before turning around and confronting Orr, it's a pretty safe bet that he did. And as long as the story from Smart is straight, that aforementioned context is beyond important.

Marcus Smart's 19 years old and was full of adrenaline/testosterone. If dude said THE word, he's lucky he's not gettin his jaw reconstructed
— Craig Hoffman (@craighoffman) February 9, 2014

Jeff Orr is lucky he doesn't have a broken jaw. Marcus Smart is going to be lucky to not be suspended for multiple games. Both are at fault to varying degrees, but one is at fault understandabl ewhile the other is so far removed from reality he might as well be in a movie.

That man is Orr. He's a 50 year old man, who according to a profile by Texas Tech, traveled over 30,000 miles supporting Texas Tech basketball in 2008. That isn't school spirit. It's obsession to the point of insanity. There's no way to do that unless "being at every Tech basketball game" is your number one priority. Not family. Not a job, neverthelessea career. Texas Tech basketball.

This is not his first incident either. Not by a longshot. Immediately following the incident with Smart, former Big 12 players from a number of schools came forward on Twitter saying Orr's said awful things to them in the past. Video of past incidents also surfaced within minutes. He's a grown man who acts like an 8 year old at his big brother's game and doesn't know any better. He went after a kid.

Smart, again, is 19 and made a heat of the moment decision he likely regrets. It's very easy with a cool head to say "you can't react like that" but Marcus Smart didn't have a cool head. That's the lesson he has to learn moving forward. It's not 'what to do' that is the problem. He knows what to do. It's doing it. It's being able to realize that you're entering or are in a state of mind where you're not thinking rationally and snapping out of it before you do something you regret.

The next time someone says something, Smart should be prepared. He'll start towards the person and before his foot even leaves the ground, he'll turn the other way; perhaps towards a security guard to escort the incredulously out of line fan from the building forever. Again, the lesson isn't teaching Smart what he's supposed to do, which is much of what's being debated and will be until some new controversy steals the headlines. He knows what he's supposed to do. It's teaching him when to do it, suppressing the same emotion that has given him a reputation as one of the hardest working players in the country in favor of the rational response to adversity.

Smart shouldn't have done what he did, but I'm not going to pretend to be outraged over it because I'm not. Quite frankly, I'm surprised at how many people are. We're all scarred from "The Malice at the Palace" but comparing the two situations is by no means justifiable for a number of reasons starting with Marcus Smart isn't Ron Artest. Artest is a borderline crazy person. Smart's character on many scouting reports was "beyond reproach" before a chair-kicking incident a few weeks back that was more frustration with himself than anything else.

If you take these same two people out on the street and play out the same result, most people would agree that Orr is lucky to not have had his clock cleaned, and many would probably say he'd deserve it. Now that we're on a basketball court where the antagonized is already high strung, he's supposed to show more restraint? It's just not realistic.

Violence isn't the answer. The high road is. So is proper accountability which is why I am upset. However it's not with Marcus Smart. It's with Jeff Orr because when I was 19, I sure as hell didn't have life figured out yet and my emotions weren't exactly always in check. I'm going to take a wild stab that yours weren't either. For Marcus Smart, this shove is nothing more than a really valuable learning experience in which, luckily, no harm was really done.

And that's okay.

One Last Thing - Richard Sherman

Every Saturday at 4:50 pm, I share "One Last Thing" on Hoffman and Platt. It's an essay on a topic that caught my eye during the week. This week I chose to close a week of conversation on Richard Sherman. Listen to Hoffman and Platt Saturdays at 2 pm on 103.3 FM ESPN.

This week an older man named Jack called into Friedo and Fitzsimmons on the topic of Richard Sherman. "I didn't like what he did with his crazy hair and his crazy eyes" was the gist of his call. I cringed. The underlying racism eats at me. The crazy hair is Richard Sherman's dreads, a hairstyle worn predominantly by black folks and it has nothing to do with who he is.

However when discussing the call with someone later, I brought up the first thing I thought of when Jack described the crazy eyes. It was Marshall Henderson. The volatile shooting guard from Ole Miss whose eyes are crazy by the description of his own coaches. The response - "Yeah, but Henderson's one of the blackest white guys out there."

Which leads me to a simple question - what the hell does that even mean?

Race means the color of your skin. If we talk about Marshall Henderson or even if we go further down the "black white guy scale" to say, Eminem, we're still not talking about someone who would have had to pee in the "colored" restrooms in the 1940's. Not jarring enough? If this was the 1830's, there's no way Eminem could've been enslaved.

We'll never take the next step of having intelligent discussion on race in this country until we disassociate characteristics from skin color. Someone who speaks well is articulate, not white. Someone who listens to hip hop and maybe even can dance with some soul and rhythm isn't black, they just have some rhythm and soul.

When the Texas job was open, there were people who didn't want Charlie Strong to get it because he is black. Not because of any other reason. No personality trait. Not his skill as a football coach. Because he was black. That kind of racism I don't know what you do with because there's no advanced thinking there to be had. Quit being an ignorant tool. That's about all I got. 

But for the other kind. Characteristic racism if you will, it's time to grow up. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. 

If you say you didn't like what Richard Sherman did because barking in a camera about your own greatness isn't how you think someone should act - you prefer a winner with grace - then fine. Say that. Don't call him a thug. He's not a thug. He's loud. He's brash. And while some people will still see that through racial glasses, you've made your point without using race and hopefully meant it. 

Which leads to the final problem. There's got to be a way for the majority, in this case white people, to say something about a minority, black or otherwise, that is critical without the minority playing the race card. I agree with Sherman that some people were being racist cause I saw the tweets that used the N-word and, like Sherman said, some people used thug in replacement of it. You'd have to be beyond naive to think race was an element for some here.

But there were also people who just didn't like what he did and it had nothing to do with race, which is typical in these kinds of things. The racists are always going to come out, but it's not everyone.  If I think a black athlete does something wrong, I shouldn't have to fear being called a racist if I criticize him on nothing to do with race.

It's a group effort. People need to be smarter about what they say. A lot smarter. Quit insinuating racist things and instead say what what you really mean. Then it's up to the "attacked minority" to quit trying to tie them back together. It's a group effort and I'd love it if we could finally start.