Sponsors suspend ties with LA Clippers over owner's alleged racist remarks

 

Two sponsors have suspended ties with the Los Angeles Clippers, amid mounting pressure on the team and basketball authorities to banish owner Donald Sterling from the sport over alleged racist comments.
State Farm and CarMax announced on Monday they were distancing themselves from the franchise because of “offensive” and “unacceptable” remarks which were apparently made by the Clippers owner in a recorded conversation.

The National Basketball Association was expected on Tuesday to announce sanctions against Sterling, including a possible fine and a ban from playoff games for the rest of this season.
An outcry led by President Barack Obama, athletes and other public figures has piled pressure on the NBA to oust Sterling from the sport. That would be a fraught and unprecedented step, since the 80-year-old tycoon cannot be fired or compelled to sell the team.
Over the weekend the news sites TMZ and Deadspin posted segments of a conversation Sterling allegedly had with his girlfriend, V Stiviano, on 9 April, in which he scolded her for posing for photographs with black people, including basketball legend Magic Johnson, and told her to not bring black people to Clippers games.
"It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people,” the man on the recording, allegedly Sterling, says.
Stiviano's lawyer told reporters the recording was genuine. Sterling has not confirmed its authenticity. The Clippers team president, Andy Roeser, said in a statement he did not know if the voice belonged to Sterling but added that the comments did not “reflect [Sterling's] views, beliefs or feelings” and that Sterling apologised “to anyone who might have been hurt by them".
With politicians, commentators, celebrities and basketball fans all denouncing the real-estate tycoon, CarMax said it was ending a nine-year sponsorship deal with his team, calling the comments “completely unacceptable”.
In a statement to the Guardian, the company said: “These views directly conflict with CarMax’s culture of respect for all individuals.”

Magic Johnson has said he will not attend a Clippers game so long as Sterling is owner. Photograph: Josh Thompson/ZUMA Press/Corbis

State Farm said it was suspending ties with the team but left open a possible restoration.
“The remarks attributed to the Clippers' owner are offensive,” the company said. “While those involved sort out the facts, we will be taking a pause in our relationship with the organisation. We are monitoring the situation and we’ll continually assess our options.”
A Los Angeles city councilman, Bernard Parks, asked the Los Angeles Times and other local media to drop ads for Sterling's companies. Democratic politicians who received donations from Sterling, such as the former California governor Gray Davis, also came under the spotlight.
The National Basketball Players Association has asked the NBA to ban Sterling from attending playoff games and to impose the league's maximum penalties if the comments are verified to be his. Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player-turned Sacramento mayor who is advising the players' union, told reporters it was a defining moment for the league and its commissioner, Adam Silver.
“The must be sanctions that make it clear that the NBA family will have zero tolerance for such conduct today, tomorrow or ever,” Johnson said.

LeBron James released a statement saying the NBA has 'no room' for Sterling. Photograph: Allen Eyestone/ Allen Eyestone/ZUMA Press/Corbis

Commentators echoed a statement from LeBron James, the Miami Heat star, who said: “There’s no room for Donald Sterling in our league. There’s no room for him.”
Citing pressure from sponsors and players, Bloomberg Businessweek said the owner's position was untenable: “Sterling will have to go. It’s just a question of how soon and with how much mess.”
The Clippers, for years a struggling team, have been enjoying a strong season.
Before Sunday's game against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland, the mostly black team huddled and chanted: “It's just us, only us, we're all we've got.” A widely shared tweet depicted a star player in a poster mimicking the film 12 Years a Slave: “Chris Paul starring in 12 Years a Clipper: a film by Donald Sterling.”
Some relatives have reportedly urged the team to stop playing; others suggest they should ignore the entire row. On Sunday the Clippers played wearing black wristbands and black socks in protest, but appeared distracted and lost 118-97.
The players asked the NBA to rule on Sterling before hosting the Warriors at LA's Staples Center on Tuesday for the crucial fifth game of a first-round playoff series currently tied 2-2.
Fans will cheer, not boo, predicted the LA Times: “They will be cheering for the players, cheering for their professionalism and class, cheering for a team that deserves a fair chance to win, cheering against an owner who must, must lose.”

Leon Jenkins, president of the LA chapter of the NAACP, announced that Sterling would not receive a lifetime achievement award. Photograph: Nick Ut/AP

Stiviano, 31, has kept a low profile since the controversy erupted. Of mixed Mexican and African American descent, she reportedly changed her name in 2010 from Maria Vanessa Perez to V Stiviano. Her Instagram account shows pictures of her posing with jewellery and celebrities and advertising hats and shirts emblazoned with her name.
She is believed to have met Sterling at the 2010 Super Bowl in Miami.
Rochelle Sterling, the Clippers owner's wife, recently filed a lawsuit against Stiviano that depicted her as a seductress who embezzled $1.8m in the form of $240,000 in cash, a duplex, a Ferrari, two Bentleys and a Range Rover – all apparent gifts from the tycoon.
Stiviano's court filing rejected the idea that her “feminine wiles … overpowered the iron will of Donald T Sterling who is well known as one of the most shrewd businessmen in the world”.
The Clippers owner reportedly said his girlfriend planned to seek revenge for the lawsuit. Stiviano's lawyer denied she leaked the audio recording to TMZ, which broke the story.
The recording has renewed scrutiny of Sterling's previous brushes with notoriety.
In 2009 he agreed to a $2.765m settlement in a case alleging discrimination against blacks, Latinos and other racial minorities at apartment buildings he owned in Los Angeles county. The same year the Clippers former general manager, Elgin Baylor, alleged racism in a lawsuit but lost.
In 2003 Sterling settled another federal lawsuit, filed by the Housing Rights Center and 19 tenants, which accused him of saying “black tenants smell and attract vermin.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which honoured Sterling in 2009 despite those controversies, said in light of the new row it would not give him a lifetime achievement award which had been scheduled to be bestowed next month.