Thats Racist ! (Rich old man in LA buys and sells black folks)

Steve Ballmer to buy Clippers for $2 billion: report.http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0E92GK20140529

Thats just a bid for the team. The owners still have to vote on tuesday to oust him.

Steve Ballmer was born to own a basketball team.

Deathwing_sl said:

So how exactly is Sterling 'incapacitated'?

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No idea, but on ESPN tonight they had the ticker at the bottom of the screen going for an hour or so saying that he was found "mentally incapacitated" by experts earlier this week. Which allows his wife to take control of the Sterling Family Trust and sell the team without him having any say in it.This is on espn.com now:

Shelly Sterling announced late Thursday night that she has signed an agreement to sell the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.

A source close to the situation told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne that Sterling and Ballmer signed the final papers of the sale shortly before midnight Thursday at the offices of her Los Angeles-based attorneys. Sterling announced she was acting under her authority as the sole trustee of the Sterling family trust, which owns the Clippers.

"I am delighted that we are selling the team to Steve, who will be a terrific owner," Sterling said in a statement. "We have worked for 33 years to build the Clippers into a premiere NBA franchise. I am confident that Steve will take the team to new levels of success."

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Also, there's no way the shitty fucking LA Clippers are worth 2 billion dollars, no one gave 2 shits about them until the Donald Sterling Files were released. Once it was announced that Donald would have to sell the team it turned into a celebrity dick measuring contest for who would be the new owner. Ballmer clearly won by throwing his $2b python on the table, grats to him. No one will give a shit about the Clippers next year (besides a few mentions at the start of next season).

Dude obviously has some form of dementia, if you've watched his interview.

I find it totally bizarre that no one is taking this ugly cunt to task for taking advantage of an old man. An old guy said racist things, but never mind the narcissistic, gold-digging loser who recorded and probably made a pretty penny doing so.

supertouch_sl said:

I find it totally bizarre that no one is taking this ugly cunt to task for taking advantage of an old man. An old guy said racist things, but never mind the narcissistic, gold-digging loser who recorded and probably made a pretty penny doing so.

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Some people certainly have, if you look no further than even this thread. Some of the talking heads have also done the same. I think the details of how the tape got out and the circumstances surrounding her making the recording are still sufficiently fuzzy that it's hard to make any real concrete criticisms against her, beyond her being an obvious gold digger for having a relationship with a man old enough to be her grandfather, who happens to be loaded. If he ever sues her or of there are ever any criminal charges filed against her, then maybe we'll learn more to comment on.

For all we really and truly know, this could have been some elaborate plot between her and Shelly Sterling to simultaneously force the sale of the team and create a bidding war between an assortment of affluent Left Coasters falling over each other to be the one to step up and get credit for "rescuing" the team from the clutches of a deranged bigot, with Shelly's lawsuit against V serving as a cover. Two billion dollars for a red-headed stepchild NBA franchise is insane when held up alongside a team like the Dallas Cowboys, which before this were estimated to have a value of $2.3 billion.

joz123_sl said:

Thats just a bid for the team. The owners still have to vote on tuesday to oust him.

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They can accept the offer and then the owners don't have to do anything, which is what Adam Silver is hoping happens because all the legal shit starts as soon as the owners vote to remove him from the league.

A simpler theory would be that these teams are just worth way more than everyone thought.

If it was a bidding war then who knows where it started. These guys have so much money they could have paid $5 Billion if they were that desperate to own a team.

if I was that rich I'd love to own any sports franchise!

khalid_sl said:

A simpler theory would be that these teams are just worth way more than everyone thought.

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Well we have the recent sale of NBA teams* like the Milwaukee Bucks (sold for $550 million) to use as a measuring stick. I guess where that falls short is in the confluence of the 1%er's, who are the only ones playing the pro sports franchise dick waving game, having done so well financially for the past 30 years and the age old axiom of "something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it".

*Edit* - For additional context, the6 previous NBA franchisesthat have changed hands sold for a combined $2.3 billion. Ballmer could have theoretically owned 20% of the entire league for the almost the same amount of money that he's paying for 1 team.

The other thing that could contribute to the cost is TV rights/ownership. I know when the Cubs sold to the Ricketts family for like $900 million, they also got something like 25% of Comcast Sports Net and Wrigley Field. I know the Clippers don't own the arena so that's out of the question, but TV revenue/ownership could contribute to the overall sale price.

That sort of thing get's factored in when independent organizations like Forbes estimate the value of a sports team. When Adam Silver announced that the team would be sold, the numbers that were being kicked around were in the $750 million to $1 billion range.

Eyashusa_sl said:

They can accept the offer and then the owners don't have to do anything, which is what Adam Silver is hoping happens because all the legal shit starts as soon as the owners vote to remove him from the league.

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That can't be right. If that really is all they have to do, accept an offer as a group, it seems like that would totally circumvent all the legal shit and then they really would have an anti-trust on their hands. It doesn't seem like they can sell what they don't own, where they could indicate that they would accept that price if it were theirs to sell.

I wonder if half of his two billion is "I'll cover the court costs to take it away from him. But when I do, I OWN THAT SHIT."

He's right. If they approve the sale of the team to Ballmer and Shelly Sterling does in fact have the legal authority to sell the team as she claims. League approval required to sell any team is pretty standard across all the major professional sports. Now the league could get all petty and make approval of sale contingent upon Sterling paying the $2.5million fine before the sale is finalized, but I'm guessing they'd be happy enough to have him gone to forget about that.

I'm sure he overpayed a bit, but a championship caliber team in the second largest market will probably never be on sale again so it's a definitely a unique situation.

Ah, ok. So it's his wife that's claiming the authority to sell the team.

That's what was sticking me up. I thought it was like all the other owners would just have a meeting and go "we're gonna sell his shit, fuck it. He gets a cut. Don't bitch." Which even for 1%ers trading their favorite marbles seems beyond the pale.

Iannis_sl said:

I thought it was like all the other owners would just have a meeting and go "we're gonna sell his shit, fuck it. He gets a cut. Don't bitch." Which even for 1%ers trading their favorite marbles seems beyond the pale.

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That's exactly how it was going to go down if he decided to fight it all out (other than him getting just a cut, he'd have gotten the full amount minus his fine). There would have been a lawsuit of course, or at least the attempt at one. How it went from there would have been conjecture. It's possible that for all of the public posturing he's been doing lately vowing to fight, he had his lawyers in his ear telling him he didn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, thanks to the NBA constitution he had signed onto.