UPDATE: Mark Steyn takes the opposite view in the National Post. I like Mark, but he’s completely wrong here: the NBA reserves the right to reject would-be owners it doesn’t like, and to eject current owners that run afoul of the league’s best interest. In effect, owners accept that their property ownership is conditional. Again, this is about freedom of association. As for the privacy issue, I address that below.
While we here in the Commonwealth busied ourselves with various Republican conventions and a nomination canvass, the rest of the country – ok, the rest of the country who, like me, follows professional basketball – was roiled by the Donald Sterling controversy. An audio recording of racist nonsense by the owner of the L.A. Clippers led to a near-revolt by the league players (New York Post) before Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life and all-but-demanded that the owners force a sale of the club (ESPN).
In the sports world, this is a big deal, although those of us who are league fans – and know Sterling’s history of plowing the Clippers into the ground for decades – are wondering what took so long (ESPN). In the political world, however, there are some qualms about the recording itself, and its implications for privacy, concerns echoed to an extent by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (NRO – The Corner).
These are not qualms I share – at all.
For starters, the privacy that “ordinary” Americans may expect does not apply to an NBA owner, and they certainly don’t apply to an NBA owner whose wife is suing his mistress (Los Angeles Times). Said mistress’ lawyer even put out a statement saying Sterling knew or greatly suspected his words were being recorded (at least that’s what I remember hearing on Mike and Mike this morning).
More to the point, the actions of the NBA highlights one of the lesser known (but critically important) pieces of the First Amendment: freedom of association. The rules of the NBA give the owners the power to bounce one of their own. It is yet another example of the reality in professional sports: the leagues are de facto cartels (which is why I tend to support the players’ unions in labor disputes, but that’s for another post). If Sterling wants to form a competitor league to the NBA, he can, but he has no entitlement to be an owner…nor should he have one.
One could say it also makes clear what happens when racism really does rear its ugly head in America, but I’m not willing to be so triumphalist about that. As many have noted, Sterling’s views on race were a near-open secret for years (New York Post). Has the “racism” charge been so overused that the real thing can hide in plain sight amidst the flood of false accusations? Possibly. Does that justify Sterling’s already way too long tenure in the league? I don’t think it does.
Yes, people may say things in private that they don’t follow in public, but in Sterling’s case, the actions came long before the words. That it took the words themselves to move the market against him says something about the league, its owners, its players, and even those of us who call ourselves its fans…and it’s not all good.
