I try not to spend much time asking ‘what if’ questions. There can’t be anything done about what if questions. I can’t go back and change something if I worry about it enough. All that aside, what if Donald Sterling had paid off V. Stiviano and the tape of his generally racist comment had never leaked? Mr. Sterling was on pace to win a second lifetime achievement award from the NAACP for “donating money to minority charities and giving Clippers tickets to inner-city kids.” Soon after the tape reveal, Sterling was discovered to have prostate cancer. A piece of information that could have been used by his PR team (assuming he’s got a PR team) to dress him up as a “cancer stricken old guy who fights racism.”
Many close to Sterling apparently knew him or thought of him as a racist individual but receiving a second lifetime achievement award from the NAACP may have quieted those critics. Without the leak of the audiotape. Instead of ESPN rolling tape of the Clippers being an awful team for decades and detailing how Sterling committed housing discrimination against minority families, they may have chosen to put together a video of the Clippers’ recent rise to relevance in the NBA, Sterling receiving his second NAACP award, and some gosh awful interview of canned questions designed to make him look personable. And then the cancer reveal for the cherry on top to elicit pity from the audience.
Let me be clear, cancer is an awful thing and I don’t believe Donald Sterling deserves to have it for doing, saying racist things or even being racist. I think he deserves to be at the wrong end of racism so he can understand what he’s done over the years, and perhaps even attempt to begin to at least consider righting his wrongs. Not as a PR move, but because he wants (in this fictional universe I’ve imagined up) to become a better person and for other people to be happy.
Because of Stiviano’s (apparent) extorting methods, the whole world gets to see a picture that only those close to Sterling saw in the past. He’s un-apologetically racist. The success of the team has nothing to do with it. If the Clippers had won seven championships during his time as owner or zero, racism is still racism. Running video of the Clippers being a bad team while explaining that Sterling is a bad person misses the mark. There are racist people who are brilliant at their jobs. Sterling’s extremely wealthy, he didn’t get to where he is by accident.
Don’t trust everything you see on television (please) and don’t vilify villains for being bad at their job, vilify them for being inhumane.
Gridiron Seasonal 