I am not going to defend what Donald Sterling said on the infamous TMZ tapes, because his statements were indefensible. I hate racism. I hate intolerance. And if one of my friends said the types of things that Donald Sterling said, that person wouldn’t be my friend for long. But I am a journalist by trade, and all journalists are taught to look at BOTH sides of a story. So what about Donald Sterling? Was he railroaded? Was this a set-up aimed at
When you spend your life around the NBA, you get a skewed vision of racial harmony. Black players get along with white players, international players intermingle with American players, and the melting pot fosters racial tolerance and harmony. As many have said over the past few days, there is no room for racism in the NBA. And by and large, there isn’t much racism in the league. The culture is so harmonious, in fact, that it can make folks in the
I have already chimed in with my knee-jerk reaction to Adam Silver’s press conference performance Saturday night. I gave him an ‘F’ — and I stand behind that grade. Let’s face it — David Stern spoiled us. When a crisis hit the Association under Stern’s reign, Mount David erupted when Stern decided it was time to go volcanic. Silver? Let’s put it this way: He couldn’t have done a better job Saturday night of showing everyone exactly how much he is not a carbon
That’s it, Adam? Donald Sterling has agreed to miss one game? And you didn’t say anything negative about him? Damn. I guess David Stern spoiled us. The old commissioner would never have delivered such a vanilla series of statements in reacting to one of the biggest scandals the NBA has seen in years. Let me get this straight: We have an owner (allegedly) making statements that he doesn’t want his girlfriend to bring black people to Clippers games, and he doesn’t want her to
At a certain point, the Indiana Pacers need to give up on Roy Hibbert as their starting center. That point is now. The All-Star center (can you believe we have to call him that?) laid another egg Thursday night in the Atlanta-Indiana series, shooting 2-for-9 with just two rebounds, none on the offensive end, in the Pacers 98-85 defeat as they fell behind 2-1 in the best-of-7 series. If you look at Hibbert’s game log, it is both stunning and atrocious. The 7-foot-2
What is Phil Jackson trying to accomplish by playing a game of chicken with Carmelo Anthony? Maybe, just maybe, he is trying to run him out of New York. The new Knicks president had a lot to say about Carmelo in a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, and the most telling thing he said was that he hoped Anthony would stay true to his word and accept less than max money when the sides sit down to discuss a new contract
Through two days of NBA playoff games, we have seen some horrendous officiating. Blake Griffin basically got benched by the refs in Game 1 of the Warriors-Clippers series. Dwight Howard picked up his 6th foul late in last night’s Blazers-Rockets game on an egregiously bad call. Four players ended up with DQs in that game, which lasted a ghastly 3:21, featured 65 fouls and made quite a few East Coast viewers a little less productive today at their jobs. Is this what
So much for that sweep prediction I made in my playoff preview of the Indiana-Atlanta series. At least I wasn’t alone. Using 20-20 hindsight, I and many others should have seen this coming. [Read more…]