The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley NBA.
Here’s the scene, as seen dozens of times: You’re in a swanky Manhattan restaurant at a table for, oh, six, when in walks an elderly man with a fabulous young, bejeweled thing on his arm.
“Check that out,” says a member of your party.
“You know who that is? That’s old man Skuttleton, the air conditioning magnate. He’s worth half a billion, easy. Just split with his wife, after 57 years.”
“That his granddaughter?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s his new girlfriend. He’s 80; she’s 31.”
Now, as a matter of practicality, such a conspicuously extreme couple allows the reasonable to presume, as a matter of applied logic and the human condition, that neither the old man nor his girlfriend practices good sense. It’s perhaps likely he’s half off his rocker and she’s there to gather what falls from his pockets.
At arm’s length, the scene seems sad, even pathetic. And if such a scenario doesn’t strike you as a clue to Donald Sterling’s current sense and senses, well, it does it for me.
Understand that the NBA and its team executives for years knew that Sterling was/is very different, and not in a pleasantly eccentric way. He was widely known, as in coast to coast, as a pain-in-the-arse team owner and creep — a man not worth anyone’s sympathy.
If, for example, five years ago, you walked through the halls of the NBA offices, stopping at each office to say to its occupant, “Donald Sterling for you on line 3!” you would be met with crooked smiles, eyes rolled back, and shakes of the head. Everyone knew Sterling was, shall we say, trouble, the kind who in time lists to starboard.
Thus, it shocked few that Sterling would split with his wife of 57 years, then find romance with a 31-year-old — forgive the indelicacy — “hot babe.”
So why did the NBA think Sterling would be any more sensible at 80 than he was at 76? Was it waiting for him to improve? Why didn’t the NBA work to have Sterling removed as the Clippers’ owner, force him, as per its prescribed right, to sell, abdicate, retire, withdraw or in every way just go away?
Because that might’ve triggered a long, expensive legal battle? Maybe. But the easier road, by far, was to wait for Sterling to die, or at least fade away. And that would come soon enough.
But a funny thing happened while waiting. He did neither. And so Tuesday — to cries of “Hooray for the NBA! Hooray for justice! To the Bastille!” — the NBA publicly executed a bloated, 80-year-old man with a well-earned reputation for repugnancy, having made him accountable for what he said to his 31-year-old girlfriend in private. Hooray!
Sterling was dead on survival.
It wasn’t as if the NBA was going to candidly and courageously admit its role in this, something like, “We’ve long known that Mr. Sterling was capable of such reprehensible behavior — in public and private. To that end, this is on us. We’ll take the hit, but only because we deserve it.”
Fat chance.
The practical has no shot against public relations, especially when highly selective, one-way outrage and pressure can be so easily and simplistically applied.
So on Tuesday, the NBA set its social and racial sensitivity bar at its highest rung. It lynched a mean old fool who committed the crime of being overheard speaking like one.
Already, some have suggested the NBA has set a standard for itself that will be tough to meet.
Nonsense. That bar was returned, back down low, the moment Tuesday’s “zero tolerance” session ended.
After all, having proudly and eagerly announced that the vulgar rapper — is that redundant? — Drake would be the celebrity host of the 2016 NBA All-Star Game, it’s not as if Commissioner Adam Silver will withdraw the invite.
Perhaps Drake can perform one of his many hate-filled numbers in which black men are called “N—as,” women are obscenely objectified as good for only one thing, and “f–k” is frequently rapped as a verb, noun, adverb, prefix or suffix.
In other words, what Drake records and performs in public for a living fully meets with the NBA’s approval and even big-event promotion. But what old coot Donald Sterling spoke in private led to a summary execution.
What bar? It’s already gone. But perhaps Drake was grandfathered where Sterling, at 80, wasn’t.
And it’s not as if the arrests of NBA players for genuine crimes — such as, say, beating women — will be dealt with any more harshly now that Sterling has been slaughtered and served to the public as someone whose behavior the NBA won’t tolerate!
Predictably, even before Sterling’s Tuesday execution, many of the most morally and racially outraged took their seats on the reviewing stand for the March of the Hypocrites. I love a parade!
On ESPN, where the worst acts are regularly and generously selected for both sanctuary and stardom, Jalen Rose put 1 and 1 together and demanded Sterling’s head.
This is the same Jalen Rose who, as a former Michigan player, was featured in a 2011 documentary about the early-1990s Michigan-Duke basketball rivalry. Rose trashed Duke’s black players as “Uncle Toms,” apparently because they could speak discernible English and attended some classes while in college. Shame on them!
This Jalen Rose now blames his transgressions — including theft, while an NBA player — as “the Detroit coming out in me.” What does that mean? As a black man from Detroit we should expect no better?
But Rose, on ESPN, was outraged at the racial bigotry overheard from Sterling!
Same day on ESPN sat baseball analyst Ozzie Guillen, who, as a profane MLB manager, called his critics “faggots” and expressed his admiration for Fidel Castro.
But ESPN loves such folks. They say such cray-zee things!
Then there was “Let’s Be Honest” Mike Francesa, who claimed, as if he again had inside info, that Sterling would receive a one-year suspension. Regardless, Francesa jumped on Sterling.
This same Mike Francesa, days after the 9/11 attacks, blamed it all on Israel and Jews, then, as if borrowing from “Mein Kampf,” questioned the loyalty of American Jews. (You bet WFAN “lost” those tapes!)
But Donald Sterling, the 80-year-old who for years was indulged by the NBA and his co-owners as a high-risk miscreant who increasingly behaved as if his tank were running out of sense, left the NBA no choice. Hang him high! Good riddance to old rubbish! Ding-dong, the witch is dead!
Happened fast, too. Public pressure. That, and the NBA had to execute him before he died.