Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Donald Sterling is not an employee of the NBA he is the owner of a franchise. Mr Sterling could shit all over the NBA's plans to remove him from by just giving the franchise to his wife. Judging from how he has handled previous court cases he will not go down without a fight he is going to be very stubborn and very difficult. It is not an easy situation obviously but to use recordings of a private conversation as the main reason to remove him from ownership is a slippery slope. The NBA new about what kind of person Donald sterling was when he bought the team and if not they knew very soon thereafter what kind of person he was to be outraged now is ridiculous and phony. He's a morally reprehensible character no doubt about it but you should always go about these kinds of issues in a proper way so as not to set a bad precedent.

after Donald sterling is removed from ownership what next where is the line? what can somebody say what can't somebody say are private conversations acceptable as reasons or evidence to remove someone from ownership? People are getting caught up just wanting to read the NBA of Donald sterling and I think it's set up for precedent going forward and other NBA owners agree and will not sign the documents or agree to have Donald sterling removed from that quickly and for something that is not admissible in any court room because they have too much at stake to let something that in essence is legally trivial doom their respective personal empires.
Again though, we're not talking about something that has to be admissible in court. Public perception is, for better or for worse, beyond the scope of what's legal. OJ Simpson was found innocent in a court of law, but did he go back to his movie "career" and endorsement deals with Hertz and other companies? The public perception was that he got away with murder and those companies wouldn't dream of touching him. Right or wrong, it is what it is. If Donald Sterling was tried in court on the count of being racist, he'd walk because the evidence was gathered illegally. That's irrelevant to public opinion: the only thing that matter is what he said, and that it was indeed him saying it, which of course has been confirmed.

There seems to be this notion that free speech means that you can say whatever you want, free of consequence, and that's just not how it works. Free speech gives you the right to say what you want (within the law), but people also have the right to respond to what you said either positively or negatively. NBA is well within it's rights to ban Sterling and fans are well within their rights to protest, boycott, ect.