by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

LOS ANGELES–There are two things going on here there’s a parallel between the NBA and Major League Baseball when the MLB Commissioner found out that baseball players were using steroids and that certain players were hitting 60-70 home runs a year and that former Clipper General Manager Elgin Baylor took Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to court and claimed about discrimination by the Clippers and Sterling these were the start of huge investigations to held by each respective league.

People shouldn’t be surprised about this and Sterling who bought the Clippers in 1981 moved them from San Diego to Los Angeles in 1984. When he bought the team and he’s a great businessman he was what they call an ambulance chaser Sterling was a young Jewish attorney and now he’s 80 years old. Sterling made a lot of money and he bought that team for $12 million.

There is also another recording that is expected to be submitted that lasts about an hour long of more racial type ranting by Sterling as he was talking to V.Stiviano Sterling’s girlfriend according to Stiviano attorney Mac E Nehoray. Multi-billionaire Donald Trump said that Sterling was set up by the girlfriend releasing the recordings with another expected recording to be released again.

As a franchise the Clippers are worth over a half a billion dollars and Sterling himself is worth close to $2 billion in real estate. Legally speaking the Commisioner of the NBA Adam Silver can’t force Sterling to sell the team but there is a lot of pressure against Sterling to step down and that might be the case in Silver’s announcement on Tuesday.

In a free enterprise socitey like the United States you can’t legally force Sterling to sell his team because he is seen as a bigot and maybe some of the other owners could be bigots but they don’t go out and say it. Sterling’s girlfriend appears to have set up Sterling and Stiviano has been named in an embezzlement law suit for $1.8 million filed by the Sterling family. Stiviano has said that the cars and other items that she obtained from Sterling in the relationship were gifts and not from embezzling.

This is just the beginning this is going to open up a can of worms here, now Larry Johnson of the New York Knicks said that he’s calling for an all black league. Now that is racism by itself. You mean to say that you have a player from Lithuania who is white and he’s a great player like a Vladi Divak and he can play in the NBA and you can’t let him play. You can’t have an all black league that would be racist.

Your opening racism here too, these ideas are just bad for everybody, what the league is going to do on Tuesday when Silver makes an announcement on Sterling is fine Sterling $1 million. A million dollars to Sterling is like to the average man going to McDonalds and ordering a Big Mac for $6.50. That’s not going to hurt him.

You can not force Sterling to sell the team, he hans’t committed a felony, you can’t put people in jail because their racist, unless they threaten somebody, kill somebody, so the league is going to fine him and he’s 80 years old and he might be very close to being senile if he isn’t already. I hate to be a cynical but the man is one of the richest guys in the country and all they can do is fine him. He’s losing advertising and the fans may stop buying tickets that could hurt him.

One way or the other Donald Sterling will end up having to leave the L.A. Clippers as owner but it will have to be on his own volition.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the former Spanish TV play by play announcer for the L.A. Clippers and does News and Commentary for Sportstalk radio