Banned for life

Well, that's the thing - nobody is stopping him from creating his own league (Vince McMahon did). You cannot, however, just declare yourself a team in someone else's league.

tomBitonti said:

I couldn't remember the correct phrasing for the Anti-Trust exception, but that furthers my point.

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I really don't see how- it's like a Sword of Damocles over their heads of all the US pro leagues. If they piss off the Feds enough, that exemption gets yanked, and they can no longer operate in their current form. They can't act as a group in order to standardize...well...anything. No collective TV rights deal, no league-wide rules on pay, minimum player ages, retirement benefits. No salary cap issues to prevent one team from buying up all the talent.

It's just that today, with the huge entrenchment, that the league is a private club is jarring. The situation seems off balance.

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Not seeing what you're getting at.

Not sure if this is a good analogy, but if I sought out ownership of a local bank, or golf course, my views seem unlikely to directly interfere with my ownership. In practice, I might have a problem finding employees, or finding customers, but that is an indirect issue. I do suppose the PGA or WPGA could deny my golf course whatever membership or association is meaningful for their organization. But, I would not expect that FDIC or Federal Reserve Board could prevent me from owning a bank.

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Correct, the PGA/WPGA don't have to let you join their tour. AND they can boot you off of it. Augusta's discriminatory race and gender policies almost got that club kicked off. Unlike the Krewes of NOLA, though, they decided it was better for them to let guys like Tiger Woods join their club as opposed to losing the income stream that was the Augusta National PGA event...

But make no mistake, owning a bank is also subject to regulations. Not just anyone will be permitted ownership.

Cor Azer said:

Well, that's the thing - nobody is stopping him from creating his own league (Vince McMahon did). You cannot, however, just declare yourself a team in someone else's league.

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Exactly.

Mark Cuban wants to join the conversation then apologizes.

MC is always a hoot.

So far, in his tenure in the league, he's racked up 3 suspensions and almost $2M in fines himself. Note: he usually matches his NBA fines with charitable donations.

This is a classic. I get what he was saying, and he's right. We all DO have our prejudices. He just said it...poorly.

Let's all pause for a moment of creepiness.

Bedrockgames said:

I think there are all sorts of examples of people taking offense where it isn't warranted, open discussion being hampered by things like trigger warnings or crusaders who go after anyone who doesn't adopt the approved manner of speaking about these sorts of things...but this wasn't a case of a guy being misunderstood, being crude or just making an attempt at humor, a bit insensitive, he was being pretty blatantly racist. Now i agree that the recording itself may be an issue if it was illegally obtained, becasue the right to privacy is important. But i do not think someone who somes out and says classically racist things can expect no fallout. And it isnt like we are doing anything to the man, the NBA is doing it. It is just the product of belonging to an organization. When you sign up for that kind of entity, you agree to be held liable for certain things, and that can inlcude maintaining the public image of the organization.

I do think there are plenty of instances in comedy, academia, the arts, and even gaming where crusading for political correctness has gone too far and has inhibited discussion. I do not believe this is such a case.

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First, we are the ones doing it. Do you think the NBA would be acting on this if there was no public demand for action?

Second, he said racist things, he did not behave in a racist manner in his NBA business life. That's what's at issue here. If he said he didn't want her to bring Magic to the games and then refused Magic entry that would be a far different thing. I can say I'd like to eat a steak for dinner every night but if I never actually do it I'll be dead from starvation.

Bedrockgames said:

He still has every right to say those things. Look i am with you on the point that people are way too eager to be offended and almost where it like a badge of pride anytime someone makes a minor mistep or doesn't speak in the most current form of politically correct lingo. But the guy said some prett reprehensible things that no amount of context is going to improve. And we do not need to start comparing him to holocaust victims. He is being penalized by a private organization that he belongs to, not imprisoned and killed by a government that dislikes his heritage.

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I never compared him to holocaust victims. I loosely compared two environments.

The point is that if the consequences are so dire that they effectively remove the option to say what you want to say you are then effectively prohibited from saying it. A choice between saying something and losing your job is no choice at all.

Dannager said:

Except you don't know that there is, and you don't know that he was. There is no evidence either way, so far. Instead of taking the neutral position ("We don't know what happened, so I'll reserve judgment on whether harm was dealt to him until we know more.") you are taking the affirmative position ("We don't know what happened, but I'm going to assume that he was dealt harm regardless."). It's worth asking why you've decided to do that.

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That's a good question with a simple answer: I did so because others assumed that he knew. I also supported my assertion as best I could without ever once claiming it was what actually happened. I don't feel that I should be expected to add that clarification to every single post I make on the subject.

His words jeopardized more than a dozen corporate sponsorships of the league, causing real harm to the association's finances. It doesn't matter that they were "just words". This is a perfect example of the sort of damage words alone can cause.

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Nope, the release of his words did that. If I say some nasty things about your mother that you never hear, what harm did they cause?

Why are you so emphatic that words don't count when everything we're seeing demonstrates that they very clearly do?

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Cuz they don't. Actions count, not words. The only reason his words are even up for discussion is because of someone else's action - the release of the tapes.

Plus I'm a big boy and I understand that words don't really do anything. I remember that 'sticks and stones' thing from when I was a kid and decided long ago to take it to heart because words can only do to me what I let them.

I mean, there's countless examples of words vs actions where it's obvious the words did nothing.

Words have consequences. If you believe differently, you are wrong.

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I do believe that I'm arguing the consequences were too severe. And I also believe that I've (repeatedly) said the NBA is within its right.

And, to the rest of us, it isn't a terribly important distinction. Acting on it would have been worse, but at that point it's just a matter of degrees.

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Yes, the difference in degree between someone saying they're gonna cave your face in with a bat and them actually doing it.

This is a total non-sequitur.

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And this is a rather weak attempt at a dodge.

You absolutely will allow it, because you absolutely have no power to do anything about it. Words matter, period. That's how the world you live in works. That's how the world you live in has always worked.

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Hmm ... so you're saying my words here aren't going to do anything? That they don't matter? Thanks for finally understanding my point.

YES. If you're a private organization, you have the freedom to exercise your legal power over those you feel you need to distance yourself from when they do something for which their contract provides consequences.

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Never argued the NBA couldn't do it. Have you actually read a word I've written? For someone so adamant about the power of words you seem to treat them pretty casually.

This is neither religious nor political. This is a private organization taking legal action against a private individual.

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And, if you'd have actually read what I said, you'd have realized that I was branching out a bit. This case is a symptom of a much larger problem which does have religious and political elements to it. I'd love to explain but I can't here. Well, I could but then I'd be warned or banned. Not really free to get into it.

Then reserve your outrage for those things.

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I think I'm gonna save it for people who want to argue with me while also not reading what I say.

NO ONE IS CHALLENGING HIS RIGHT TO SAY ANYTHING.

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I've explained multiple times how this fairy tale illusion is exactly that: a fairy tale illusion. If the consequence of saying something is sufficiently grave then you're not really free to say it. We can say you're free but the reality is you're not. See how that works? The words don't do anything in reality.

You need to internalize that. No one has stopped him from saying anything. Which is why he has been able to go on talk and news shows and continue to say incredibly racist things in the intervening weeks. He hasn't been arrested. He hasn't been killed. He hasn't had his tongue cut out.

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No one except the NBA, the sponsors, the players, the public ... but yeah, aside from those people nobody is stopping him from saying anything at all.

You talk about consequences and yet don't see that a consequence of imposing sufficiently severe consequences is an effective ban. Internalize that.

But that doesn't mean that he has the right to avoid all consequences from non-government entities for what he has said. He doesn't get to. We, as private citizens, are free to do whatever we wish (within our legal rights) to demonstrate our disapproval. And that includes the NBA exercising the clause of its contract with him (a contract he willingly signed) to punish him.

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You're right. We as a people are free to impose language bans on others via public witch hunts.

And, again (in what must be at least the 10th time), I've never once said the NBA can't do what it's doing.

No, it isn't. This is you trying to twist a non-issue into a banner for your personal crusade against political correctness. And we all know it.

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I'm glad you think you know what's going on. You're wrong but hey, don't listen to me. It's not like you've been listening at all anyway.

Dannyalcatraz said:

1) Because most advertisers don't want to be associated with a racist. As such, they threatened or actually did withdraw advertising dollars from the Clippers and the league.

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Why not? Cuz the people don't like it, that's why.

2) Because the players don't want to be associated with a racist- especially minority players in the context of racist "owners". As such, they threatened a league wide work stoppage.

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This is part of the witch hunt stuff as well.

His words are just the latest episode in a known pattern- the hateful cherry on the top of his racist sundae, if you will- including antagonizing his own players.

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The only pattern we can be certain of is a pattern of allegations. That's why the NBA is going after him more for this and the allegations that he tried to hide evidence than anything else.

I'm not saying he's not a racist - I believe he is. I'm saying that this stuff people accused him of before wasn't proven and isn't cause for what's happening now.

What injustice?

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The release of the tapes (if he was unaware).

Sorry, but the NBA is a private organization. He doesn't own the Clippers outright- he's a franchise owner who gets to operate the franchise with the permission of the NBA, subject to their rules, by the force of the contract he signed. If he had acted and spoken analogously as the operator of a MacDonald's franchise, he could have similarly been stripped of his rights to own & operate.

Such contract clauses get upheld in court all day, every day. And as a lawyer & businessman, he knew that.

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Never said the NBA couldn't do it. Do I need to put that in bold, underlined italics at the end of every post or something?

The only injustice that might have occurred is if the NBA violated its own procedures or state/federal law in disciplining him, which is what he's alleging in his lawsuit...which lawsuit he may have torpedoed by his own actions if the LA times article is correct.

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Again, that's not the injustice I'm talking about. I'm curious to see how he goes about this court case, though. I don't think he's gonna save himself with it but it should be interesting.

As for words as actions? Again, the law has no problem with that. Familiarize yourself with the restrictions to free speech & association under the Uniform Code of Military Justice sometime. Or what happens to secular employees of religious groups who get fired for things they said on Facebook.

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What is and what should be are different things. We're arguing different things.

In short, "mere words" have been enough to get you in trouble under the Common Law for several hundred years, now, depending on what those words were, how they were said, and when/where.

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Never should have been.

Hussar said:

If he has the right to say whatever he wants, why don't I have the right to vote with my wallet and refuse to give him money?

Why should I not be allowed to react in whatever manner (short of illegal actions of course) I see fit when learning what this guy says?

Why should he be given safe haven to say whatever he wants to say, free of any repercussions?

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You are allowed - I never said you weren't. What I said was your reaction effectively disallows what he's saying. Well, that's not accurate. Your action alone does not, obviously. The collective action, however, imposes an effective ban on speech and that makes me uncomfortable at best.

And I find the 'he can say what he wants to' thing dishonest. Cuz it is.

Dannyalcatraz said:

+1

And why can't the group that let him join their little club kick him out when he violated the rules he contractually agreed not to violate?

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*sigh*

This is getting incredibly tiresome. Is that the goal or something? Shut me up by Strawmanning me to death? I never said the NBA can't do what it's doing. Not once. And I've said that so many times I can't even remember.