There is an air of finality which pervades over this Spring’s NBA Playoffs. Looming behind record television ratings lie the uncertainty of the new collective bargaining agreement, which has the potential to alter the league’s economic and regional power balance. On the court, the time for the heirs of Jordan seems to be coming to a close—as Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett—the men who once played against his aging Airness, prepares to leave the stage. Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, and Dirk Nowitzki are poised to seize the throne, and right on their heels are the league’s youngest stars; Durant and Rose, eager to jump the line. For most Angelenos, the annual Spring basketball fever that grips the city have come to a premature and inglorious end with the Lakers embarrassing meltdown. And for some Clippers fans, the end of Phil Jackson’s era one week after Blake Griffin’s unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year has instilled hope that the ground is finally shifting between LA’s two NBA franchises.

But the relationship between the Lakers and Clippers and their coexistence in Los Angeles have been always been more complex than a simple intra-city rivalry. Even in a large metropolitan center like LA, there might not be enough contrarians and underdogs to constitute a fan base for the woebegone Clippers franchise. Though it would pain many Clippers fans to admit, the refracted glory of all those Lakers championships might have done more to fill the stands at the Sports Arena and Staples Center than their team’s performance through the years. In a way, it might be said that the Lakers success has made the viability of a second or third team in the city possible. As the career of Kobe Bryant winds to a close, however, just as Blake Griffin’s star is ascending, the Clippers find themselves in an unfamiliar position of having the city’s most electrifying athlete, and quite possibly, the league’s next marquee player. What happens in the next few years; how the franchise handles the growth and development of Blake Griffin, and how they assemble a team worthy of his immense talents, will determine if the Clippers can change their franchise’s trajectory once and for all. Heading into this summer of transition, it is perhaps worthwhile to look back upon the men who have defined both teams, and how it came to be that more people in Los Angeles now identify themselves as basketball fans more than any other sport.

It has not always been this way. Basketball, played indoors, conceived in the harsh New England winter and reared in Mid-Western gymnasiums, seems a poor fit for a Southern California culture blessed with abundance sunshine. When the Lakers first moved to Los Angeles, they would draw a few hundreds fans to a high school gym. Upon returning home from a road trip, players would get on a truck with a bullhorn, drive down Wilshire Boulevard and take turns bellowing at people on the streets, imploring them to attend that evening’s contest. The late Chick Hearns would recall, “They were drawing nothing. They would play one night at a high school gym. They played the Shrine Auditorium on a stage! If you fell off the side, you dropped six feet.” The Lakers early years in Los Angeles were defined by their courageous but ultimately futile attempts to wrest the NBA crown from the imperial Red Auerbach and his Celtics. John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty riveted the city’s attention, but professional basketball’s popularity lagged behind baseball, football, and even boxing in the public’s consciousness. But by the time Magic announced his shocking and tearful retirement in 1991, the Lakers have captured the city’s affection. Starting with Jack Kent Cooke, the Lakers made a concerted effort to court Hollywood stars and cultivated an atmosphere of glitz and glamour in a city that adores both. Over time, over many championships for the Lakers and over many lost seasons for the Clippers, the crowd at Lakers and Clippers games will come to reflect the city as it imagines itself to be, and the city as it actually was.

From the very beginning, the stewardship of the current Lakers franchise under the Buss family and the Clippers under Donald Sterling have been closely intertwined. After all, it was to Donald Sterling whom Jerry Buss depended on for last minute financing when he acquired the Lakers in 1979. And it was Jerry Buss who convinced Sterling to buy the Clippers and move the team from San Diego two years later. Both men made their fortunes during the last great commercial real estate crash of the 1970s and rode the subsequent rebound in Westside properties to great wealth. In the summer of 1979, Jerry Buss introduced his prized rookie, Earvin Magic Johnson, to the city’s luminaries at Sterling’s annual White Party. Years later, Magic would remember that evening as his introduction to the glamour and wealth of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, Sterling’s Gatsbyesque mystique on that late summer night never extended to his future basketball team. Jerry Buss’ Lakers, with an ebullient Magic at the controls, would establish themselves as the gold standard of the modern NBA, winning 10 NBA championships in three decades, while Donald Sterling’s Clippers would compile one of the most wretched records in professional sports during the same span.

For over twenty years, the General Managers of both teams were Lakers legends; Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, brothers-in-arms who had succumbed, time and time again, to Red Auerbach’s Celtics. In his prime, Elgin was a phenomenal athlete, pulling off breathtaking acrobatic moves that would presage the arrival of Julius Erving and Michael Jordan. Four years older than Jerry West, Elgin was the dominant personality in the Lakers locker room when West arrived as a nervous rookie. Though the relationship between the two men remained cordial, there was always a tinge of rivalry between the proud Baylor and the insecure West. At the dawn of the Civil Rights era, a phenomenal star of Elgin’s caliber couldn’t help but look askance at the loner with a thick Appalachian accent who suddenly became the face of the Lakers franchise and would later become the league’s logo. Many years later, even their great rival Oscar Robertson bristled, “All of you media guys are racist. You can’t ask me a question without asking about Jerry West.”

Eight times, Elgin Baylor would lead the Lakers to the NBA Finals, and eight times, he wound up on the losing end. In Game 5 of the 1962 NBA Finals, Elgin scored 61 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in leading his team to victory over the hated Celtics. But in the end, it was for naught, though his 61 points have endured as an NBA Finals record, the Celtics would go on to capture their fourth straight crown. Elgin’s balky knees finally forced him to retire in 1972, nine games into the season. Whether by luck or by inspiration, the Lakers, led by West, won the next game in honor of their former captain. Then they went on a tear, winning a remarkable 33 games in a row, finally culminating in the first NBA championship for the city. Elgin Baylor, the savior of the franchise during its darkest days, would retire without a title, and he would retire one game before his team went on the longest winning streak in NBA history.

In his later years, Jerry West would claim that Elgin Baylor was one the best player he had ever seen and had the honor of playing with. At the peak of his prowess, Elgin might have indeed been a superior player, but as general managers in the NBA, there was no question who was the better judge of talent and architect of a team. Prior to the 1983-1984 NBA season, Jerry West cleared the Lakers logjam at point guard by trading Norm Nixon to the San Diego Clippers for the rights to sharpshooter Byron Scott. The lighting quick Nixon joined a Clippers team that boasted the previous season’s Rookie of the Year—Terry Cummings—who led the team in both scoring and rebounding in his first campaign and seemed poised for stardom. In the first of many boneheaded moves that would recur under Sterling, Terry Cummings was then traded to Milwaukee before the team moved from San Diego to Los Angeles.

As Elgin Baylor took over the reins of the Clippers franchise, the team he assembled had intriguing talent but lack any sense of direction. Gunners like Norm Nixon and Quintin Dailey shot the ball without remorse, while the franchise waited in vain for an enigmatic Benoit Benjamin to fulfill his vast but ultimately wasted potential. The Clippers went 12-70 in 1986, they would marginally improve to 17 wins the following year, and notch 21 wins the year after that. During that time, the Lakers were in the midst of winning back to back titles, the first team to accomplish such a feat since the Celtics. Byron Scott, the player that Jerry West had traded for was instrumental in spreading the floor during their championship run. On the 1987-1988 team with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy, Byron Scott led them all in scoring and shot a remarkable 53% from the field as a long distance marksman.

The makeup of that Lakers championship team was a stark contrast to the Clippers. Jerry West had assembled a team whose stars complemented one another perfectly; Magic ran the offense with élan, Kareem’s sky hook remained one of the most unstoppable shots in the game, Big Game James’ spin move was devastating in the low block, while Byron Scott silky smooth jumpers kept the defense honest. Their role players; AC Green, Mychal Thompson, Michael Cooper, and Kurt Rambis all defended and rebounded with steely toughness, as if girding themselves for a showdown with their nemesis in Boston. Years later, West would say, “I’ve seen teams trade players who score tons of points and people say, ‘How in the world can you trade that player?’ He might score tons of points and his team won’t win. I’ve also seen teams trade players who are very good players and you substitute another player in there and the team just fits better together.” It was something that West instinctively knew; that the personality and chemistry of a team can be as crucial as talent when the goal is to win an NBA crown.

The Clippers that same year was led in scoring by Michael Woodson, who believed in hoisting up a lot of shots and hoisting them up quickly. The mercurial Quintin Dailey was also there, capable of catching fire and scorching an opponent for 30 points one night while shooting the Clippers completely out of contention the next. The only saving grace for the franchise that season was the performance of rebounding phenom Michael Cage, who hustled for every loose ball as if the game was never out of reach. Cage needed 28 boards in the final game of the season to snatch the rebounding title away from Charles Oakley. He would grab 30, giving a small measure of solace to Clippers fans as the Lakers celebrated the league’s first back-to-back championship in twenty-two years.

For basketball fans of my generation, our love for the game was forged by those Lakers and Celtics rivalries of the 1980s. We were a bit too young to remember the days before Magic and Bird, when the NBA Championship was shown on tape delay at midnight, when the Association was near bankruptcy, marred by drug scandals and the perception that the league was too black, too urban, and too out of control. In the 70s, the country was still recovering then from the wounds of Vietnam, from the riots that swept through Harlem, Watts, Chicago and Detroit, and from the sense that the country had lost its vitality and its way. At its lowest ebb, the NBA was seen by middle America as emblematic of the era’s worst traits; filled with selfish, egotistical players who wanted to showboat, preen, and party more than they wanted to compete. Magic and Bird came into the league in 1979 and instantly restored the league’s credibility and its competitive spirit. That one was black and one was white, that they outwardly played such an aesthetically different game, and that they would renew the league’s most storied rivalry was too much for casual fans to ignore.

But behind Magic’s ebullience joy and Bird’s taciturn demeanor was their fierce determination to win, such that they would never allow outside distractions to interfere with their final goal. The renowned boxing trainer Cus D’Amato once said that you can only be as good as your opponent, and that you must honor a great rival because he will reveal your flaws and frailties, which you must overcome in order to become a worthy champion; to become the man that you were meant to be. During their playing days, there was no love lost between Magic and Bird, they would keep tabs on each other’s stats from the previous night for extra motivation. And when they met each other on the court, particularly when an NBA championship was on the line, casual fans tuned in with the hope that they might see something rare and incandescent, something on the level of the Thrilla in Manilla, when the level of competition is raised to such lofty heights that it might reveal some dark mystery of the human heart.

As much as Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain established the popularity of professional basketball in Los Angeles, Magic’s Showtime Lakers and their rivalry with Larry Bird’s Celtics was the pivotal moment for the modern NBA. Not only did Magic and Bird revitalized a league that was near bankruptcy, they ushered in a new era of modern sports, paving the way for Michael Jordan to redefine merchandising, advertising, and entertainment on a global scale. Until Blake Griffin, the Clippers never had a player with the ability to dominate the game at such an elite level. His electrifying assaults on the rim have captivated even casual fans dulled by the blur of ESPN Highlights. On any given night, there is a chance that Blake will show you something that you’ve never seen before, something that borders on the impossible. And there is something intangible too, when Blake throws down a monstrous dunk over a defender, he glares at them like the legendary 1920-30s fighter Mickey Walker, the Toy Bulldog, who used to loom over his fallen opponent and marveled at the destruction he has wrought, as if his own abilities to inflict violence terrified even himself. Blake has the requisite charisma and physical dominance to become the league’s next marquee player, just as Kobe tries to ward off the ravages of time and fans grow weary of King James’ professional AAU squad. For the first time, Donald Sterling and his men must now work under the burden of expectations, of assembling a team worthy of their young star, and putting their franchise on equal footing with their co-tenants at Staples Center. In the months ahead, Blake Griffin and Kobe Bryant will influence their teams in significant ways. How their respective front offices deal with a fading star and a rising one, how they cater to the personality and drive of their franchise players will determine the fate of their teams for years to come, propelling them toward either glory or ruin.

As human beings, we derive meanings from patterns, we base our lives and our thoughts and our plans on these patterns. The more reliable the pattern is, the more salient it becomes in the constant formation of our lives. It can be something as large and foundational of belief like religion or the sun coming up. Or it can apply to something simple, like the expectations of the performance of a sports team. Again, the more predictable, the better. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Clipper fan or not (we’re not arguing over something as amorphous and childish as a Clipper Curse), everyone would agree that Donald Sterling is a terrible owner.

There have been some exceptions to his cheapness, Baron Davis’ contract is much too large, Kaman’s probably is as well. Elton Brand was even offered a handsome sum of money. Dunleavy was extended. Their new practice facility in West LA is beautiful. Much of this due to the singular success of the 2006 season. But none of it has led to good play and, once again, the Clippers have the 4th lowest payroll in the league. While the rudiments of a good basketball team exist for this year’s Clippers, everyone knows that Sterling is primarily out to make a profit. Good players leave, he shares the building with the big brother Lakers and he advertises to and fills the building mostly with displaced fans looking not to watch the Clippers but their hometown teams.

So it should come as no surprise that the legal proceedings in both the Dunleavy and Baylor lawsuits focus on Sterling’s reticence for spending. From J.A. Adande’s article:

Dunleavy said that Clippers owner Donald Sterling “always told me to give him a great player and he’d pay for him, but there were several players I wanted to sign and we didn’t because Sterling refused to spend the money. The Clippers’ biggest concern was making a profit.”

I knew this. You knew this. It’s the reason that after this summer ended, so many fans felt duped because that huge allotment of cap space wasn’t spent on big time free agents, it wasn’t even completely spent. While I’m glad we didn’t overspend on Joe Johnson or Rudy Gay, that attempt to “lure” LeBron was, at best, half-assed. It was a terrible example of flash over substance. That honorable meeting with LeBron, was their time to actually show their flair, and yet, they only managed a pathetically “we’re not worthy” pitch. The Clippers weren’t worthy. Donald Sterling isn’t worthy, he doesn’t even know respect.

There is a part of me that understands the financial hardline approach, because the NBA is a business and the economy is mired in the worst funk in most of our lifetimes. You hear it all the time. Carmelo wants a trade, “it’s a business.” LeBron wants to move to Miami, “it’s a business.” Friendly Coach X was fired, “it’s a business.” Jon Scheyer/Stephen Dennis/Marqus Blakely were cut, “it’s a business.” Sometimes it’s just an excuse, but there is a lot of truth to it. Businesses rely upon profit. The luxury of chasing championships can amass quite a debt. No profit, no growth. But the lack of respect and the racist overtones? I can’t abide and neither should David Stern. Although, it’s unlikely that will happen.

Even though he’s spent the last decades selling basketball as an international sport, improving it’s image, testing the markets, look at what David Stern is currently embroiled in: he has to worry about the Collective Bargaining Agreement in June and the potential lockout. Why? Because teams are failing, overspending on middling players. But do you blame the players for taking that money? No, you would, too. Everyone wants to be paid as much as possible. More than simply affording a better lifestyle and support for your family, it is a sign of respect, supremely so in the NBA and the United States. But the ridiculous spending, that’s the owners’ fault, the teams’ managements’ fault. It’s so bad that the owners will try and restructure the agreement to curtail their own spending. If only they could spend wisely.

The good news for Stern is that he doesn’t have to worry about that with the Clippers. Sterling won’t overspend and year after year the turnstiles at the Clippers games whir and spin, more than supporting the team’s presence in Los Angeles. The Clips aren’t going under any time soon. Like all of us, David Stern is human, too, and he gets to base his predictions on that perennial fact: the Clippers will be solidly in the black. He may have to worry about the New Orleans Hornets, or the Grizzlies. Despite longstanding fan adoration, he may “have to” wrench a surviving SuperSonics team out of a city where they weren’t making the same money they could in Oklahoma City. Because when it comes down to it, the NBA is a business where money doesn’t equal respect and respect doesn’t equal money, only money equals money. And the Clippers make plenty of it.

Economic concerns aside, Stern also understands the meaning of perceptions, and how positive perceptions of a company foment public trust and a brighter company fiscal future. Why do you think there have been all those NBA Cares ads? Why do you think that Stern changed the dress code, severely restricted fighting and has been drastically penalizing players for whining? It’s because positive perception is the conduit for that bright and shiny future where the owners have stuffed pockets.

“Because of the Clippers unwillingness to fairly compensate African-American players we lost a lot of good talent, including Danny Manning, Charles Smith, Michael Cage, Ron Harper, Dominique Wilkins, [Corey] Maggette and others,” Baylor said.

Baylor, who describes himself as “an African-American male over the age of 40” in the declaration (the NBA Register lists his date of birth as Sept. 16, 1934), said that Sterling and Clippers president Andy Roeser made references to his age for the last 10 years of his employment and questioned his ability to still do his job.

When Baylor was initially fired, I didn’t flinch. Frankly, I thought it was a long time coming. Failed draft picks, lack of player development, losing season after losing season, Baylor was lucky that he was around as long as he was. Dunleavy said:

“The entire time that I worked for the Clippers, I never saw any change in Elgin’s ability to perform his duties, or that his age had any adverse impact on the performance of his duties and responsibilities as general manager.”

But that doesn’t mean he should have stuck around, he was mediocre to start, and mediocre at the end. He must have had his hands full with free agency, I don’t doubt that Sterling is a major drawback to luring any free agent, but the draft didn’t help Elgin much either. There was Lamar and the dream of Shaun Livingston and his healthy knees, but not much else. Tyson Chandler hasn’t played like a second overall pick, Olowokandi definitely was an abominable first pick. But that doesn’t mean that his claims of racism in the workplace aren’t correct.

Baylor, who worked for the Clippers as an executive from 1986 to 2008, said he received only one raise in his final 16 years. He was most upset that after the team reached the second round of the playoffs in 2006 he did not receive a pay raise, while Dunleavy received a contract extension and Roeser was promoted.

Not many would call Dunleavy a great coach and Roeser has seen just as much losing as Baylor, yet Baylor doesn’t get a raise? Nothing? Beyond the money, it’s a clear lack of respect. But it gets even worse, check out what else Baylor said about Sterling:

“While ignoring my suggestions and isolating me from decisions customarily reserved for general managers, the Clippers attempted to place the blame for the team’s failures on me,” Baylor said in the declaration. “During this same period, players Sam Cassell, Elton Brand and Corey Maggette complained to me that DONALD STERLING would bring women into the locker room after games, while the players were showering, and make comments such as, ‘Look at those beautiful black bodies.’ I brought this to Sterling’s attention, but he continued to bring women into the locker room.”

Having been in a locker room, I can attest that there is a natural racial tension, an awkward undertone to the interaction between the players and the reporters. On the one side of the locker room, you have the tired, sweaty, half-naked players, the majority of which are African-American. On the other side of the room, the reporters, they are well dressed, cleaned up and predominantly white. In the back of the room there is a door to the showers. But because it’s part of the entertainment of basketball, many are respectful, say thanks afterwards, wish them luck. Some quietly leave, and that’s it’s own sort of respect, I guess, but no one revels in it. Except for Donald, apparently.

The blatant disrespect ballasts the argument that Sterling wouldn’t sign African-American players because he saw the salaries as exorbitant. Under this circumstance, what he failed to realize that it wasn’t about the money so much as the recognition amongst the players peers. There is hardly anything more clear about respect than the money an athlete is paid.

That may sound vile to base respect on the type of money pro basketball players earn, particularly to fans who are unemployed in this market or making minimum wage or even if they’re making six figures working their butts off. But think about it in a more localized context. What job do you do? Would it frustrate you if someone in your company was paid more than you even though you did a better job? Would you want to work for an employer that consistently paid poorly, treated you poorly and put out a bad product? Exactly.

Sterling can’t see this though. Or worse, if he does see it then he refuses to give the players the respect, condescending to boss them around because of who he is and what he has done. And that’s awful, worthy of Stern at least forming a public stance. But then again, for those guys, money is money and it talks. As long as it’s earned, money is going to keep them out of trouble. But after a while, antics like Sterling’s will add up and corrode not just the perception of the Clippers (it’s already done that, try to explain to anyone legitimate Clipper fandom, and that’s with Blake Griffin), but the NBA.

Defending Sterling’s cheapness is banal, unworthy of attention, but his racist side, and bringing it to the forefront is downright problematic. The league seems to have taken the stance that ignoring it is best, that it’s outside of the basketball arena, so it doesn’t concern them. But Sterling doesn’t exist in a basketball vacuum, his transgressions in the real world do smear into the life of basketball, even if they won’t admit it publicly.

Stern, by now, is aware of this and he needs to speak out. But what does he choose to chastise Sterling about? Heckling. I’m with Stern in believing that the heckling has to stop, but it’s a single blood stain cleaned at the site of a mass murder. Last weekend’s Daily Dime recounted the actions from the front office:

Clippers owner Donald Sterling faced no formal discipline from the league office in the wake of recent media reports that he heckled some of his own players — most notably guard Baron Davis — from his courtside seat earlier this season.

As one source close to the situation noted: “It’s a team issue, not a league issue. He didn’t break any rules.”

Sterling, though, was forced to promise NBA commissioner David Stern that he would cease with the verbal abuse, since holding his tongue in public apparently required more common sense than the Clips’ much-maligned patriarch could muster. Yet there is bound to be a big cost here for Sterling, whether or not it comes directly from the league office. He’s faced far more serious off-the-court complaints than this over the years, but the heckling stories attached to him now could prove rather damaging to Sterling down the road if the likes of Blake Griffin or Eric Gordon never forget them.

“We’ve been assured that Mr. Sterling will not be engaging in this type of [behavior] going forward,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank said.

Please, Stern, clean up the real mess. It’s flat out comical to hear them warn Sterling for heckling when he has done so much worse. Maybe Stern remembers Sterling countersuing for $100 million in 1984. Maybe Stern is just picking his battles, refraining from heckling might be something that Sterling is capable of, but a complete overhaul on respect and racism is something else. At this point, Sterling won’t change, it’s not going to happen, we will continue to hear racist (don’t forget the sexist) stories every year and it won’t change a thing. And while I hope that Stern will make a greater step in than stopping the heckling, this isn’t the New Orleans Hornets, there is no loss of money, the money just piles up and because of that, the pattern suggests that nothing will change.

Heckling is an inherent part of any sport. The barbs and pointed shouts can create a toxic environment for opposing teams to play on the road. Players hear some of the screams and coaches have to yell their instructions over repetitive onslaught of derogatory exclamations of crazed fans. The fans feed off of the energy and it can snowball into hostile atmosphere, making high performance even more difficult to attain. It’s why playing in Utah is so difficult, why Boston is more than just the intimidation of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, etc. But heckling against home players doesn’t accomplish much. It doesn’t make them play better. Sure, it’s hard not to scream “No!” when Cookie or Rasual puts the ball on the floor, when DeAndre attempts a post move or when Baron takes a wild three or a turn around jumper, but it’s completely different to constantly deride the home player. Donald Sterling doesn’t know this.

In case you haven’t heard, Donald Sterling has been heckling Baron Davis.

Sterling has expressed his displeasure about Davis’ play by taunting him from his courtside seat at Clippers’ home games, several sources told Yahoo! Sports. Among Sterling’s verbal barbs:

– “Why are you in the game?”

– “Why did you take that shot?”

– “You’re out of shape!”

I’m sure that those thoughts have been shared by a multitude of fans as Baron hasn’t even come close to living up to his contract. But the fans are not the owners. They haven’t signed Baron to a contract that he didn’t have a chance to live up to. I am an optimist and I still thought that the Clippers would get 2.5 good years from Baron. The fault is as much Sterling’s and Dunleavy’s as it has been Baron’s and Sterling should know this, instead of petulantly shouting base derision at the team’s highest paid player. Is it understandable? Of course, but the team won’t grow from Sterling’s constant negativity.

It strikes me that Sterling is doing this as a way to be liked. After all, what has been a bigger unifying force in Clipperdom than the constant bewilderment and frustration with Baron? Sterling must hear about it all the time because he sits in his very public courtside seats and the fan distaste for Baron is palpable. But Sterling can’t join in on the chants to be just like everyone else, it won’t make him liked. It’s like the rich kid in college hearing all of his friends whine about being broke. If he whines too, it’s just annoying.

What will make Sterling liked is if he puts together a winning team (as gross as that sounds considering his frequent ethical gaffes), not if commiserates with the fans, because he can actually do something about the success of the team. He signs the checks, he approves the signings (or at least hires people to do so) and he controls the atmosphere. He has the responsibility.

This is not to say that he needs to be Mr. Positivity. It’s not even saying that he can’t critique the players publicly, as Phil Jackson and the late George Steinbrenner both found ways to be effective in the public sphere. But Sterling’s criticisms have to have more nuance and patience. The vitriol has to be at least one step removed. Criticize VDN all you want, but I think he has handled the Baron situation as well as he possibly could have. Starting from training camp, through the rash of injuries, VDN maintained an even, but honest critique of Baron. Was he overweight, Vinny? “He’s not in the shape he needs to be in, and he knows that.” VDN kept the responsibility on Baron without eroding his fragile psyche. Sterling can take a note from this. If he could be more calmly critical, he might not completely undermine the positive organizational culture shift that has happened under Olshey, Del Negro and Roeser.

Part of creating a culture to succeed is to have open communication and hold people accountable for their mistakes. It’s okay for Sterling to be critical of Baron, but if he really wants his team to win and isn’t just looking to temporarily align himself with the upset fans, he needs to change himself. He needs to find clarity in his confusion, realize that he is that rich kid that can’t complain about being broke, he is the owner of the Clippers and very responsible for more than just the play and the signings, he’s responsible for the perception of the team. Unfortunately for Clippers fans, that’s a problem that doesn’t seem like it’ll be fixed any time soon.

What was the worst part of Donald Sterling’s comments yesterday?

It’s the offseason. This is the one time of year Clippers’ fans can be overly optimistic without those pesky losses clubbing them over the head again and again, crushing their spirits. Fresh uniforms, fresh faces, and a fresh start. That should have been the feeling derived from yesterday, but it wasn’t. Fans know the dark cloud that hovers over the franchise hasn’t gone anywhere, but in the offseason they’re not typically forced to look up at it.

Sorry Randy Foye, but your owner doesn’t know your name and probably couldn’t pick you out of a lineup. Apologies to you as well, Ryan Gomes. If it were up to him, you wouldn’t be a Clipper. The same goes for you, DeAndre Jordan. You’ve been here a month Vinny Del Negro, and the owner is already questioning your taste in personnel.

So what do you do with that blatant display of disrespect, Vinny Del Negro?

Pick up a marker and put everything Sterling said on the whiteboard in the locker room. Underline it and leave it there for the whole team to see, all year long.

You’ve been praised by many for your ability to motivate, and while you probably don’t need a whole lot of material to fire up the troops, you’ve got plenty of ammunition now.

No one believes in you. Your owner doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t even want you to be here.

Strange as it sounds, this media disaster can be used as a rallying point, the words that band the team together. After all, nothing unites a group like a common enemy. It’s a little unorthodox to have that enemy be your owner, but it isn’t unprecedented.

Major League's Lou Brown: A Master Motivator

The owner doesn’t want you, doesn’t like you, and doesn’t think you’re a good basketball player.

You’ve got 82 games to prove him wrong. Make them count.

Regarding comments made by Donald T. Sterling to T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, here’s my post over at TrueHoop:

Try to imagine you’re at a business gathering, maybe a trade show. Your boss holds court in one corner of the room. He’s surrounded by people who are insiders in your industry — some of whom know you personally, while others are only vaguely familiar with your work.

The next morning you find out through a third party who doesn’t even work for your company that your boss told those insiders he has no idea why the company hired you (only he called you “Whatshisname.”).

Or maybe your boss told the circle you have lousy taste in personnel and couldn’t attract the real comers in the field, even though that was your job. Your boss complained about how his investments in capital improvement would attract better talent, only you couldn’t close.

The irony of Sterling’s griping about his organization’s inability to lure top talent is almost too obvious to acknowledge. You might agree with Sterling that the signings of Gomes and Foye represents a failure for the franchise this summer. You might hold Clippers general manager Neil Olshey accountable for that, or head coach Vinny Del Negro for his input in those choices. I think Olshey exercised discipline and deployed a sound long-term strategy given the circumstances — Sterling being one of the primary circumstances. Intelligent people can disagree about how the Clippers fared this summer in the marketplace. But whichever side of the argument you fall on, there isn’t a reasonable excuse in the world for what Sterling did to Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro.

The Clippers’ curse isn’t a supernatural phenomenon. It has a name, a face and an unfortunate history of personal failure.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people who work for the Clippers. They work across the organization in sales, marketing, communications, digital media and basketball operations. These are professional people who are proud of their work — and they should be because every day they do a solid job for a brand that few people think very much of. Yet they do the work, some of them with a sincere hope that one day they’ll be able to say that they had something to do with the moment the Clippers became an entity that mattered in Los Angeles and in the NBA.

Although I haven’t met Foye, last week I visited with Gomes for the first time one-on-one. I found a thoughtful professional. A very measured executive for one of the league’s most well-respected franchises told me that Gomes is one of the best people involved in professional basketball. Olshey is eager to do his job well. He’s always courteous, has pretty decent taste in basketball players and is a more creative dealmaker than he’s been allowed to be. Del Negro has been with the team for only five weeks, but has brought the kind of charisma and exuberance that vaulted him to the top of Sterling’s list of coaching candidates.

Whether Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro are basketball geniuses or likable doesn’t really matter. As employees of the Los Angeles Clippers, they all warrant Sterling’s basic respect, which ultimately requires so little of such a blessed, wealthy man. All Sterling has to do when asked about his employees in polite company is offer an endorsement — or, at the very least, not publicly humiliate them. That’s his only ambassadorial duty as team owner on a day when the Clippers introduce the media to some minor stylistic tweaks on their uniforms.

Imagine it’s your world again. We return just as you’ve found out your boss was trashing you to people outside your company. Now ask yourself:

Is this a place you want to work?

Since being fired earlier in the year, Mike Dunleavy has not received any of the money owed to him from his guaranteed contract, which reportedly totals upwards to $12 million dollars.

This isn’t exactly new territory for Donald Sterling. The Clippers fired Bill Fitch after the 1997-1998 season and proceeded to pay Fitch only $200,000 of the $4 million dollars owed to him. Fitch of course had to pursue legal action against the Clippers, which led to Sterling giving this deposition (via a story by Peter May in the Boston Globe in January 2003):

Q. Do you have an understanding whether the 1997 contract was guaranteed?

A. No.

Q. Sir, do you have any idea what a guaranteed contract is?

A. No.

Q. None?

A. No . . . I really don’t understand what the – what “guaranteed contracts” mean. I, I’m really not sure exactly what that means with relations to players.

Asked if he understood that coaches get paid if they get fired, subject to certain provisions, Sterling said, simply, “No.”

In Donald Sterling’s world, things like guaranteed contracts simply don’t exist. With that in mind, it must be terribly inconvenient for Sterling to have to pay these coaches who couldn’t live up to his standards. For Sterling, everything is as simple as this: Do a good job, and you get paid. Do a bad job, and you don’t. Of course that’s not how the NBA or most of society operates, but these things matter not to an owner.

And really, it’s hard to see that ever changing. This isn’t just blatant penny pinching here — this is a 77-year old man’s code of beliefs being tested. Sterling believes he shouldn’t have to pay someone who no longer works for him. So he won’t, at least not until someone forces him to.

The Clippers don’t really have a leg to stand on here, but that hardly seems to matter. This is a statement from the top, and it reads loud and clear: Donald Sterling will not pay for something he has already deemed inadequate. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking bathroom renovation or million dollar coaches. Sterling won’t do it.

In his deposition during Fitch’s contract dispute, Sterling was asked if he had known Bill Fitch to lie. He answered “no.” Sterling was then asked the same question about Andy Roeser and Elgin Baylor. His answered remained the same. Finally, Sterling was asked about Bob Weiss, who coached the Clippers during the 1993-1994 season.

Q. How about Bob Weiss? Have you ever known him to lie?

A. I don’t know who he is.

Just a few years prior, Weiss had taken Sterling and the Clippers to court for, you guessed it, refusing to pay out a guaranteed contract.

It’s easy to interpret this situation as the organization slapping Dunleavy in the face. It is not. That slap was delivered with one of the most vindictive press releases in recent memory. That slap was not telling Dunleavy he was fired before releasing the news during a Clippers broadcast. This? This is just an old man sticking to his code. It doesn’t matter if he’s known you for seven years or barely knows your name — if he fired you, he’s not paying you. No way, no how.

So…who wants to come coach the Clippers?

With the Clippers’ season careening toward another demoralizing end, there is one crucial difference this year. For the first time in seven seasons, the organization will be moving forward without the steadying (or corrosive) influence of Mike Dunleavy at the helm. However, the organization has some financial flexibility as it enters this critical off-season with important decisions on free agents, the draft and the vacant coaching chair. Looming behind these decisions is the philosophy which governs the franchise from owner Donald Sterling and his right hand man, Andy Roeser. The Clippers have stated that the team is committed to winning right away, with a “full commitment to dedicate unlimited resources” to achieve that objective. Trying to divine the intents of Donald Sterling has always been a perilous task. In the twilight of his years, Mr. Sterling has spent more money the last ten years building up his team than he did in the previous twenty. So there is hope that this public pledge to dedicate unlimited resources in the pursuit of winning is genuine, that it is possible for a man to find redemption in the final act.

To his credit, Mr. Sterling has never behaved like the new breed of highly leveraged commercial developers who bought and sold properties at the height of our recently collapsed property boom. Operating very much in the vein of the old families that dominated New York’s real estate for much of the 20th century, Mr. Sterling bought properties in cash and held on to them for the long haul. When it comes to acquiring real estate, it seems, Mr. Sterling has an uncanny intuition that transcends the reams of data which his competitors crunched in order to justify the exorbitant price they paid for a building, whose value have since cratered. It would be unfair to say that Mr. Sterling is unaware or disregards the crucial numbers on both sides of the accounting ledger that determines the long-term viability of any investment. No one can get to the level that he has, can acquire the wealth that he has amassed, without an appreciation for the ruthlessness of numbers.

But there is a crucial difference between Mr. Sterling and a new breed of entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban, who are fascinated by advanced statistical models and the belief in their potential to reveal hidden values. In his real estate dealings, Mr. Sterling resembles the old movie moguls who once ruled their studios by guts, intimidation, and instincts — men like David O. Selznick or Louis B Meyer–rather than modern movie studio executives who green light projects by market research data and statistical pattern of box office returns in any given month. It might be for this reason that when Kevin Arnovitz interviewed Neil Olshey after his ascendancy, Mr. Olshey stressed that the Clippers front office is not beholden to the “great software program.” While Mr. Olshey went on to say that he recognizes that advanced analytics is no longer a luxury but a necessity, and that the Clippers will take into consideration basketball statistics when making crucial decisions on players, it is clear that the Clippers’ overarching philosophy diverges from the likes of Dallas, Houston, Portland and Denver. And more importantly, it suggests that the Clippers claim to “dedicate unlimited resources” might not extend to building an advanced analytics team, whose value to an organization is still in doubt by the organization’s brass.

Just as Moore’s Law has exponentially increased raw computing power every two years, which in turn spurred the growth of statistical models and intelligent database across multiple disciplines — from the securitization of complex derivatives in the financial sector, to the reams of consumer shopping data that retailers carefully scrutinizes — the promise of an empirical model that can accurately predict risks and rewards have made their way into professional sports. As Michael Lewis outlined in his landmark book, Moneyball, which chronicled the travails of Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane as he assembled a roster of undervalued players who were overlooked by bigger market teams, the faith in statistics and the ability of arcane numbers to reveal the hidden potential of players have pitted the new breed of statistical oriented general managers against the traditional cadre of scouts and older baseball people. The battle between the traditionalists who came up from the farm system, who have spent years watching players in playgrounds and high schools, and the bright new statisticians with fresh minted PHDs who relied heavily upon arcane data and computer models have caused less of a stir in the NBA, because men like Billy Beane have blazed the trail in other sports. Moreover, new NBA owners like Mark Cuban and general managers like Houston’s Daryl Morey came to the NBA from a computer science/statistical background and quickly fielded perennial winners, which cause their competitors to take notice and follow suit.

If there is a gold standard for a traditionalist general manager in the modern NBA, it would be Jerry West, the taciturn, shy, and brooding architect of the Lakers dynasties, whose profile is immortalized upon the league’s logo. As beloved as he was by his peers, as great as he was in his prime, Jerry West has a long, enviable track record of divining talent in young athletes. Rarely do his picks become busts, and more often than not, he has been able to select the right role players to complement his superstars. Though Elgin Baylor was more than his equal on the basketball court, Baylor’s many years as the Clippers General Manager proved one thing; that being a legendary basketball player does not necessarily give you an insight into whatever it is that elevates young athletes into the Hall of Fame. Recognizing talent and drive in a young player out of college or high school requires some deeper recognition of ambition and burgeoning athleticism. Perhaps there is something in Jerry West’s insecurity — whatever it was that drove him played the game as if he were the twelfth man on the team, punishing his body for every loose ball, even when he was the league’s MVP. Perhaps it is this envy in the raw physical abilities of others and the relentless drive for perfection within himself that he recognized in certain young athletes, and spurred him to take chances on players that other general managers failed to see. It is one of Jerry West’s endearing grace — that his flaws and various neuroses have elevated him as a player and are inexorably bound to his best qualities.

It is interesting to note that one of Jerry West’s draft pick with the Memphis Grizzlies, Shane Battier, would be one of the first players that Daryl Morey targeted when he joined the Houston Rockets organization. More than most players in the NBA, Battier’s effectiveness on the floor defies traditional basketball metrics. Casual fans who read the box score after a game would incredulously wonder on how someone who has contributed so few rebounds, points, and assists can play so many minutes. For a sport that rewards a degree of selfishness and assertiveness, Shane Battier plays an usually selfless game that helps his team win. Battier does a hundred little things that is beyond the scope of traditional statistic–putting his hands over the shooter’s eyes, jamming an opposing big in the lane during a rebound–that Daryl Morey tries to track with plus/minus numbers, that makes his teammates more effective when he is on the floor. Though he was a leader on the Duke squad that won the championship in 2001, Battier’s reputation as a glue guy, as a defensive specialist in the NBA is what makes him so valuable to a roster. Jerry West reluctantly parted with Battier in 2006 when Houston offered him Stromile Swift and their first round draft pick, the raw and incandescent Rudy Gay, whom West coveted.

Rudy Gay might be the last significant acquisition of Jerry West’s long illustrious career, and the fact that he is increasingly mentioned as a potential Clippers free agent signing this summer is somehow fitting, as the franchise had struck with Jerry West’s former running mate, Elgin Baylor, for over twenty years with little success. Whatever it was that Jerry West had as a talent evaluator, it was not something that other Hall of Fame players were able to replicate in the modern era. The draft selections and personnel decisions of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Elgin Baylor are lengthy testimonies to their futility. As Henry Abbott pointed out in his Q&A with Dean Oliver prior to this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the teams that have aggressively utilize advanced statistical tools are growing with each passing year, almost all them have winning records, and many have uncovered All-Star caliber talent late in the draft which other teams have missed. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that teams which are willing to invest in new strategies, such as advanced statistical analysis, are precisely the organizations which are better run and managed.

Sports analytics have become a seductive field for certain owners and general managers because it promises to reveal hidden insights into player’s effectiveness that mere mortals cannot perceive with the naked eye. And for the true believers in the empirical method and mathematical models — the people who are obsessed with artificial neural network, back propagation algorithm and intelligent databases — it promises something greater; it promises to reveal the hidden structure which underlies the visible world, the hope that even the desires and actions of man can be determined by the immutable laws of God. This is an old dream, the dream of man since the age of antiquity to the Renaissance; when Greeks architects imbued their built environment with the celestial harmony of their known universe, so that the earthly kingdom of man and the heavenly Kingdom of God were unified by the harmonic proportions. But in our modern world, where numbers have lost most of their spiritual connotations, where the value of probability models lie in its ability to predict the worth of certain investments or the behavior of certain subatomic particles, there can be a blind devotion to the logic of the mathematical model which can also be detrimental.

Since the collapse of the real estate bubble and the devastating losses suffered by most major banks, we have heard their beleaguered executives testify time and time again, that they did not fully comprehend the risks that their derivative trading divisions were engaged in. The investment banks had attracted some of the brightest mathematicians from the nation’s best schools, and with the aid of sophisticated computer models, they were able to engineer bundles of new securities with varying risks of defaults, essentially minimizing overall risk, they had believed. No one, not one mathematical model, they say, had predicted such a cataclysmic collapse in real estate value, such a devastating fall in household finances, even though the gap between people’s income and the amount they spent on housing had been rising to unsustainable levels for years. Somewhere along the way, it seems, the most sophisticated risk models have lost track of the most basic link between an asset’s market value and its true value, as determined by life.

Across all disciplines, the over-reliance on market data and statistical models can plague poorly run organizations as much as it can benefit their well-managed competitors. In floundering companies, risk-averse executives will cling to market research data and mathematical models to justify their strategies and protect their careers. Movie executives in publicly traded entertainment conglomerates now keep their eye firmly fixed on weekly box office return numbers and quarterly profits. It is safer, for their career, their division, and their shareholders, to rely upon market data to determine which type of movies get made, which demographic to target, and when to release them. There is a semblance of science, even as the art of producing relevant movies is lost and the number of memorable, enduring films diminishes with each passing year.

In and of themselves, hard numerical data and statistics tend to benefit executives by giving them another vantage point to evaluate risks and rewards, as long as they’re able to see the forest for the trees, and are able to navigate through the ever-growing cacophony of data to grasp the essential truth. It requires people in the executive ranks who are imaginative; who can evaluate statistical data for what they are, and who are able to walk the fine line between trusting their gut instinct, experience, and conclusions as revealed by statistics if and when they diverge. It requires brilliance from a front office that the Clippers organization have not been known for in the past. And it requires some faith in the empirical method to reveal a hidden truth — that within a set of seemingly unrelated data lies an invisible foundation that links the visible world together and which can shed light on the mysteries of human potential, fate, and immortality (if only in the record books). One cannot pursue such an endeavor with cynicism, or build a competent statistical team without such faith after all.

Seven years ago, Mike Dunleavy made it a condition of his hiring, that the Clippers build a state-of-the-art training facility, so that the organization can prove to potential free agents, its players, and its fans that the franchise is serious about winning. Dunleavy is now gone, but the training facility he advocated for remains, a gleaming reminder that the franchise has made concrete steps toward legitimacy. But the critical hour for the franchise is about to arrive. Can a promising coaching candidate, like Dwane Casey, be enticed to sign on with the Clippers if the organization do not have a solid advanced analytics team in place? Casey has enjoyed the benefits of working with teams who were at the forefront of the advanced analytics movement; with Dean Oliver (one of basketball’s most prominent statisticians) in Seattle and now as an assistant with Dallas. We can only hope that recent history will repeat itself; that the new coach can convince Sterling to invest in advanced analytics, that doing so will benefit the franchise in the long run. The organization has made steps in the right direction, in this regards. The Clippers’ team operations and scouting coordinator, Jason Piombetti, worked under Paul DePodesta with the Dodgers. DePodesta, in turn, was a protégé of Billy Beane.

But even more important than the accumulated data and its seductive revelations, will be the working relationship between Olshey and the new coach as they analyze potential players and tries to assemble a new Clippers team. It was the peculiar genius of Jerry West, after all, that he was able to visualize a championship team and had the audacity to pursue his vision, even though he couldn’t bear to watch the fruits of his labor with his own eyes. It took some guts to trade an All-Star player on the level of Norm Nixon for a draft pick like Byron Scott. It also took something else — a deeper understanding of talent, character, frailty, fear and ambition of players who might not be aware of those conflicting impulses within themselves, but which will come to define their careers. It is beyond the realm of science and statistics, unless science can finally penetrate the veil which separates the visible world from the invisible one, can finally find that elusive unifying theory which have fragmented our modern cosmology. It is said that Garry Kasparov can sit down at a difficult chess game and within a few seconds, sense the right move, even though he can’t be certain how he came to that conclusion. And nine times out of ten, the supercomputers would crunch through all the possible combinations, hundreds of millions of moves until it concludes that Kasparov was correct, that it was, indeed, the right move, the only move to make. Somewhere at the intersection of science, logic, experience, emotion, and intuition, lies the genius of the human mind. It will require some small sprinkling of that to turn this franchise around.

• Our friends at ClipsNation.com are having a big sponsored game night Saturday, April 10th against the Warriors. After reading Steve’s teaser, it’s hard not to get excited. All the information about the event can be found here. I’ll definitely be there – should be a very fun evening.

• Lisa Dillman at the Times introduces you to new new General Manager, Neil Olshey.

• Since Mike Dunleavy stepped down as coach and Marcus Camby was shipped to Portland, the Clippers have had only two games where they’ve posted a defensive efficiency number under 100. Even worse, both were against bottom dweller Sacramento. Remove the head, and the body will still flail around a bit. Remove the head and the body, and what are you left with?

• Adrian Wojnarowski of Y! Sports talks about Donald Sterling: “Donald Sterling has always talked a big game, but he’s never gone after a star GM in his prime. Dunleavy leaves the franchise set up in some good ways, but Sterling doesn’t understand that winning in the NBA doesn’t come from empty words in absurdly worded press-release firings, doesn’t come with throwing red meat to a fan base that wanted the old GM embarrassed and fired on the spot.”

• Bill Plaschke, doing some true California dreamin’: “Now introducing, Clippers forward LeBron James and two of his high school chums as general manager and coach. Crazy, too, but that’s the thing about what happened Tuesday. The Clippers didn’t lose a general manager, they gained a world of possibilities.”

Vincent Bonsignore of the LA Daily News relays a fascinating exchange between Baron Davis and Donald T. Sterling before Wednesday night’s game:

Baron Davis was minding his own business walking around Staples Center on Wednesday when he ran right into Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

It was one of those awkward, boss-employee moments where the boss does most of the talking and the employee just nods his head up and down saying, “Yes, sir. You bet, sir. Absolutely, sir.”

… “It’s coming together,” Davis told Sterling, when asked how the team was doing.

“Baron, I need you to make sure it comes together,” Sterling told him, in no uncertain terms.

“Yes sir. And I believe it will,” Davis reiterated.

“Look, I’m a man who makes things happen, and I need you to make this happen,”

Yes sir,” Davis said, politely. “I’m going to make you smile; I’m going to make the fans smile.”

“You know what would make me smile?” Sterling said. “You scoring 20 points tonight. That would make me smile.”

“Then I’ll make you smile,” Davis promised.

“The thing is, I don’t need you taking 60 shots to do it,” Sterling warned.

“I won’t need that many shots,” Davis said. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”

This went on for a few more minutes, with Sterling telling Davis he has big-shot friends all over town who come to Clippers games just to watch Davis play, and how important it is for him to maximize his talents, realize his skills and pull the Clippers up with him.

Finally the conversation ended, and Davis could breathe easy again.

Bonsignore’s full column is here, and well worth your time.