Earlier today, NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league for life after he admitted to telling his mistress that he didn’t want blacks attending games. Hours before Silver handed down what is arguably one of the harshest sanctions ever imposed in North American professional sports history, former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar penned an op-ed for Time magazine which opined that any sanctions imposed on Sterling are several years overdue.
Jabbar, who served as an assistant coach with the Clippers late in the 1999-2000 season, opined that it says a lot about our society that Sterling’s racism has been “public record” for some time, and nothing was done about it.? He believes that while we should be outraged at his sentiments, we should also be outraged that it took a “ridiculous” taped conversation with mistress V. Stiviano to finally give Sterling the treatment that all racists deserve–to be “paraded around the modern town square.” To Jabbar’s mind, Sterling should have been drummed out of the league at least as early as 2009, when he was forced to cough up $2.73 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that he discriminated against blacks, Latinos and families with children in his numerous apartment complexes across Southern California.
Jabbar was also upset at the manner in which the recording was made. Regardless of how outrageous Sterling’s comments were, Jabbar was concerned that a private conversation could be leaked in this manner, and even hinted that whoever recorded it should be brought up on criminal charges. But if there was any doubt that this diluted his overall feelings on this sordid affair, hours after the sanctions were announced he issued a statement calling the ban “so on the mark it was unbelievable.” He was also one of several current and former players on hand at a press conference conducted by Sacramento mayor and former NBA great Kevin Johnson, who served as the spokesman for the NBA Players Association during the scandal.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
