Former Los Angeles Times Clippers beat writer, Jonathan Abrams, has a story in his new outfit, the New York Times, on Elgin Baylor:
Baylor faces an uphill legal battle. Although his authority waned in recent seasons, he was a team executive for 22 years — a span that other general managers could only dream of matching…
The allegations in the lawsuit surfaced only after Baylor left his job. He said he was fired; the organization said he resigned.
After another dismal season in 2007-8, the Clippers’ president, Andy Roeser, presented Baylor with a take-it-or-leave offer to stay for a year as a consultant for $10,000 a month, said Carl E. Douglas, Baylor’s lawyer.
Baylor, who declined to comment for this article, left it.
“They wanted him to basically act like Joe Louis at the Caesars Palace after his career and to basically be a meeter-and-greeter, to take advantage of his popularity in Los Angeles basketball spheres,” Douglas said. “In many ways, he needed the job. He loved basketball. He loved living in L.A. And at 74 years old, his options were not wide and great.”
The lawsuit alleges that Sterling described Baylor as “a token” and wanted the team to be composed of “poor black kids from the South” with a white head coach. In 1988, according to the lawsuit, Sterling told the No. 1 draft pick, Danny Manning, “I’m offering a lot of money for a poor black kid.”
…Sterling’s legal entanglements have involved his team before. Two former Clippers coaches, Bill Fitch and Bob Weiss, ended up in salary disputes after their dismissals.
…In his suit, however, he suggests that the failures were a reflection of the unwillingness of players to sign with Sterling’s team. Despite the team’s dismal record, Baylor did not realize his power had been usurped until he discovered while digging through files early last year that Coach Mike Dunleavy had been granted general manager duties as part of a contract extension.
“The job that I loved was slowly being taken away from me, and there was never an explanation,” Baylor said when he announced the lawsuit in January.
Baylor voluntarily remained on the job at a frozen salary of $350,000 a year, while Dunleavy received a four-year contract extension for $22 million after a rare Clippers postseason appearance in 2006. Baylor told reporters that he held onto his position because few African-Americans occupied executive roles in the N.B.A.
The lawsuit does not explicitly seek compensation, and Douglas said only that he and Baylor were seeking “justice.”
…As an executive from his seats near the baseline, he often derided the play of his team and criticized Dunleavy to nearby reporters, always ending with a quick, “That’s off the record.”
There’s not much new to report here, though it’s a timely reminder that, Alvin Gentry a notable exception, there’s an unsettling record of hostile departures by coaches and executives. At a moment when, by all indications, the Clippers are courting candidates to work beside or in tandem with Mike Dunleavy, that history can’t help the recruiting process. It’s reductive to dismiss the Clippers’ efforts to bring on talent with “Who would want to come here?” But Baylor, while he may not have a case, is a respected old lion in this league, and crossing him will have a residual cost for the Clippers. As Jerry West told T.J. Simers, “Elgin Baylor is a good friend of mine and I certainly wouldn’t be one to succeed him.” West may not have been a realistic — or even the right — choice for the job, but it’s a reminder that burning bridges has consequences beyond the present. Smart people join losing organizations all the time, but they do so with the reassurance that, even if they fail, their eventual departure will be clean and dignified.
12 Responses
Elgin says there was never an explanation for his job being taken away from him. Is he serious?
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Maybe. He has that easy going good nature everyone likes. He can challenge his team-mates to peform better each nite by playing hard himself. He should start 2nd quarter and play till the finish. Lat’s see what happens.
When it comes to dealing with Donald Sterling, folks in entire NBA universe get personal & nasty including LA Times. Only way to take a cheep shot at Sterling is: DESTROY THE CLIPPERS.
It’s not just BAYLOR, there are plenty of injured souls walking around the earth that are trigger happy seeing Clippers in the basement.
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am
so baylor was a horrible gm. i’ve never seen him coach before, but i’d gamble with him at coach over dunleavy. hell, i’ll ad mit it… i wish we had gentry back. at least he’d let baron and company run loose.
Stian Reply:
March 27th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Did you not watch the Knicks game the other night? What do you think Mike Taylor was doing? – That’s right – RUN. Did you see Dunleavy yell at him to slow it down? I sure didn’t. Now why do you think Baron was NOT running just like Mike? – Simple: Because he canNOT run – anymore. He is physically not capable of sustained running. Straight up. OPEN your eyes and realize: Baron is not not running because of Dunleavy – he is not running because of himself. Period.
Cappy Reply:
March 27th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
True.
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
This is comedy at its best:
“The job that I loved was slowly being taken away from me, and there was never an explanation,” Baylor said.
NEWSFLASH, loser: You SUCKED at your job (which you would’ve been fired from by any other owner 15 years earlier!) like no one else in NBA history. You should have to pay back 90% of your salary for every losing season the Clippers had on your watch! Don’t you get it? You were pathetic!
And now the poor old man is crying that he can’t continue to live in L.A. on a 10k a month salary. And that’s on top of his NBA pension.
I swear I will go heckle Elgin every day of his trial – that man deserves nothing but ridicule for his racist claims. He had no qualms taking 350k from a supposed racist for years and now that the gravy train has stopped his skin color is all of a sudden THE problem.
Choke on your money, Elgin. You are nothing but a parasite!
Old Times- New Times Reply:
March 27th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Given the kind of player he was, it must be painful for him to watch the salaries of an average NBA player today. It’s kind of painful for any aged great players in the league. Then they didn’t make much money. There’s no CABLE/INTERNET mania & hardly any cash poured in from big biz.
But he should be GRATEFUL to DONALD STERLING for providing him the job for this long. Ang he never delivered & kept Clippers in a darkest place in the league
Stian Reply:
March 27th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Elgin is an ingrate. How many players of his generation are making the kind of money he was making way past retirement age? I bet they can be counted on less than 2 hands. Elgin couldn’t even get a job from the team he played for. Buss wouldn’t hire him. Sterling hired him and kept him on even though he screwed up virtually EVERY draft. People bitch about DTS never wanting to spend any money and keeping players past their rookie deals. Well, look at all the losers Elgin drafted – I wouldn’t want to pay those guys either. Elgin would’ve been fired 20 years ago in any other line of work. Instead his incompetence was richly rewarded for decades. And now he’s finally getting a reality check.
Slax Reply:
March 28th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I don’t know what Elgin was paid but Wilt Chamberlain signed for a reported $65,000 in 1959 which adjusted for inflation is about $660,000 in modern money I believe. According to People’s History of the USA the average cost of a new house in 1959 was $12,400 and the average salary was $5000 a movie ticket was a $1 and a loaf of bread .20 cents. In my neighborhood in California an average house is about 649,000.
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Not much new in the article by Abrams. I am a bit surprised that Abrams got a job at the NY Times, as he never seemed like a strong writer/reporter when he was here. It’s strange that so many of our mediocre LA Times writers have moved to the NY Times these past few years. With so many newspaper in trouble, you would think that the NY Times would have the pick of the litter…or maybe so many talented writers have left journalism that former LA Times writers/critics like Nicolai Ouroussoff, Manohla Dargis, and Abrams are the best of the lot.
At least our new cub reporter Lisa Dillman actually wrote an article on the Clippers today, though she is a bit behind the curve. It’s a bit sad that newspapers in Boston and Cleveland would scoop the LA Times regarding our local sports teams. But what are you gonna do…the local newspapers are on their last legs. And the Clippers are so atrocious this year that the fan base is eroding faster than the economy.
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
The thing that kills me is that Sterling had an opportunity to go about it the right way. Give the man a nice severance package, have a ceremony to honor him, and let him walk away from the game with his head held high. It’s sad and completely unnecessary to see a 74 year old NBA legend who spent 22 years with the franchise disgraced like this.
Stian Reply:
March 27th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Baylor is the one who disgraced this franchise for 20+ years with his unparalleled fuckups in the draft. How many franchise players did this guy pass on in favor of busts?
Don’t you get it – the Clippers did offer Elgin a ‘severance package’: get paid 120.000 dollars a year for doing essentially NOTHING (where do I sign up for that much charity?)! Elgin refused and instead went to one of the OJ Dream Team vultures and cried racism where are wasn’t any.
Elgin decided to be a dick about all this, not the Clippers. He deserves ZERO sympathy at this point.
Posted on March 27th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
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