LOS ANGELES - When Kim Hughes, then an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers, was found to have prostate cancer on the eve of training camp in 2004, he learned what it was like to work in Donald Sterling's world.
Hughes wanted to postpone surgery. The disease ran in the family, usually slowly. But after Coach Mike Dunleavy encouraged Hughes to get another opinion, the second doctor urged Hughes to have surgery quickly. When Hughes contacted the Clippers about his health insurance coverage, he was told the surgery was not covered. If they made an exception for him, they would have to do so for everyone.
The cost would be $70,000.
Hughes went ahead and had the surgery anyway. Unknown to him, four players - Chris Kaman, Corey Maggette, Elton Brand and Marko Jaric - chipped in to cover Hughes's cost for the operation.
As the N.B.A. investigates racist remarks that have been attributed to Sterling, the longtime owner of the Clippers, the story of Hughes's surgery - which was not revealed for more than five years - helps illustrate the reign of a man who has often been described as the worst owner in professional sports.
This time, attention to Sterling's behavior has transcended the sports world with the release Friday night of an audio recording on which someone, reportedly Sterling, urges a woman identified as his mistress at the time not to appear in public with black people, leading to public pressure on the league to force him to sell the franchise, which he has owned since 1981.
Sterling's behavior is not exactly a secret. It is a matter of public record.
In 2009, Sterling paid a $2.725 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department accusing him of systematically driving African-Americans, Latinos and families with children out of apartment buildings he owned.
Alexandra Castro, a former mistress of Sterling's, testified in a lawsuit filed against her by Sterling that he had asked her advice in 2001 on whether to hire Alvin Gentry as coach - he did so - and on which players to award contract extensions to. 'It was purely sex for money,' Sterling testified. 'I probably didn't tell my wife.'
Sterling has been sued by the former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor, who accused him of envisioning 'a Southern plantation-type structure' for the Clippers, and by Dunleavy, who accused Sterling of refusing to pay him the balance of his contract after he was fired.
The lawsuit against Castro is similar to one filed in March by Sterling's wife, Rochelle, against a woman identified as V. Stiviano, a more recent mistress of Sterling's. The suit is seeking to recover cash, property, cars and other items that the Clippers say were worth $1.8 million.
Joe Safety, a longtime Clippers public relations official who resigned last year, was vigilant around Sterling because of the owner's unpredictability. It was not uncommon for Safety to aggressively cut off reporters who tried to approach Sterling, who was a regular presence at courtside or in the dining area adjacent to the media work room at Staples Center.
Sterling's image was protected with similar tenacity. When charitable organizations have honored Sterling with an award, Sterling's foundation has on multiple occasions taken out a full-page ad in The Los Angeles Times congratulating Sterling. In 2006, an article in The Times said that Sterling would pledge $50 million for construction of a homeless center. It has not yet been built.
Sterling, the son of a produce vendor, moved to Los Angeles from Chicago at a young age, growing up in multiethnic East Los Angeles, where he participated on the Roosevelt High School gymnastics team and worked boxing groceries. He worked his way through law school selling furniture and changed his last name from Tokowitz to Sterling because, as a co-worker once told Los Angeles Magazine, it sounded like success.
Sterling worked as a lawyer and began buying properties in the 1960s, when immigration took off in California and land prices followed. At the same time, a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California made his fortune the same way. His name was Jerry Buss.
The paths of the two young, newly wealthy property owners would cross in 1979 when Buss was short of cash for his $67.5 million purchase of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Kings, the Forum - the arena the teams played in - and a 10-acre ranch. Needing $3 million to close the deal, Buss sold some of his apartment buildings to Sterling. Two years later, with Buss's encouragement, Sterling bought the San Diego Clippers for $12.7 million.
Sterling did not take long to establish himself as a target for mockery. Clippers billboards bearing his smiling face dotted the San Diego area. He hired a former model as assistant general manager and celebrated a season-opening win by dashing across the court - shirt unbuttoned, wine glass held high - to hug Coach Paul Silas. By 1984, emboldened by the Raiders' relocating to Los Angeles without the N.F.L's approval, Sterling made a similar move with his N.B.A. team.
When N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern fined him $25 million, Sterling sued the league for $100 million. Stern cut the fine to $6 million, taking it out of Sterling's cut from expansion fees.
The Clippers played in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, which proved to be an apt home for 15 seasons. The Clippers' identity in Los Angeles did not take long to forge: A series of bad draft picks, bad trades and injuries led to basketball that was sometimes comically bad.
Center Benoit Benjamin, who overate, overslept and underwhelmed, became symbolic of the Clippers. When Sterling refused to pay top dollar for his players, they often bided their time until free agency; Ron Harper likened his time with the team to a jail sentence. Danny Ferry, the No. 2 overall pick in 1989, did not wait that long. He refused to play for the team from the start.
Sterling rebuffed overtures from people who wanted to buy the Clippers and move them and declined an invitation to relocate to Anaheim because he did not want to drive another 25 miles to watch his team play. It cost so little for the Clippers to play at the Sports Arena that Sterling was not compelled to move. When he did agree to take his team 20 blocks north to Staples Center when it opened in 1999, it was as the building's third tenant, behind the Lakers and the Kings.
It was that status, as a cartoonish organization operating in the shadow of the Lakers, that left so few taking the Clippers seriously. But in recent years, their image - and Sterling's - has begun to change. In the last three seasons, the Clippers have been a winning team - something that had happened just twice since Sterling purchased the team 33 years ago - and a marketable one, too.
Last summer, the Clippers hired Doc Rivers, one of the most respected coaches in the league. At the end of his introductory news conference, he was asked one final question. Having played for the Clippers in the early 1990s, was he uncomfortable working for a team still owned by Sterling?
'It's different now,' Rivers said with a smile.
Post By http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/sports/basketball/clippers-owner-donald-sterling-has-public-record-of-bad-behavior.html
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