Chris Paul tosses a basketball to owner Donald Sterling. After the events of the past few months, don’t expect the two men to be chummy anymore. Credit: Getty Images
It’s no secret that Clippers owner Donald Sterling is a pretty awful human being.
He is an outspoken racist and is being forced to sell his team due to a controversial conversation recorded by his mistress.
He also settled a housing related lawsuit for millions of dollars, due to his views.
But the blemishes on Sterling’s reputation don’t stop there. According to a report on ESPN.com, the one-time NBA owner went out of his way to embarrass and his star point guard Chris Paul — seeming to make him look terrible in front of his wife.
It is hard to believe Sterling is really as clueless as the accusations make him sound, but here is an excerpt from the article by Ramona Shelburne:
In 2012, [Sterling] hired Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin impersonators for a party to celebrate the Clippers’ playoff berth. The Marilyn impersonator tried and failed to coax Blake Griffin and Chris Paul up on stage with her before seductively serenading then-coach Vinny Del Negro while everyone in the room watched. “It was awkward, to put it nicely,” Griffin says. “Vinny ended up biting the bullet for us there.”
Later, Sterling brought Paul up on stage with him. He asked for a round of applause for the point guard who had elevated the franchise to a new level, then joked, “Why is this guy married? Look at all the beautiful women in L.A.” Paul’s wife was in the audience. He smiled uncomfortably and said, “Because I love my wife.”
Paul is one of the good guys in the NBA, and why Sterling would try and mar his reputation like that is sort of suspicious. As the muck and the mire builds up against Sterling, one can’t see his ending being a happy one with regard to his lawsuit against the NBA.
