BALLMER IS RICH, LEBRON IS WORLDLY, RIVERS IS VERSED — WHERE ARE THEY?
One is opening a nutty $2-billion arena, another wants JJ Redick to run the Lakers, and a third hasn’t done diddly as a coach for years — and what's next as Oklahoma City and Minnesota contend?
Nothing is odder than watching Steve Ballmer, one of the world’s wealthiest gents, try to fix the Clippers as they move into a $2-billion Intuit Dome. “You have the seventh- or eighth-richest man and he’s a real fan,” said his coach, Tyronn Lue, amazed he’ll walk into an arena with 51 unbroken rows of fans forming a “Wall,” along with 44,000 square feet of scoreboard LED lights — a hallucinogenic 37,000 more than basic NBA optics — and a gurgling 1,200 toilets so no one misses the action.
Or, wait, hold on.
Maybe it’s the greatest player ever, at least in the $100-million planned household of LeBron James, firing yet another coach and lining up another — perhaps untutored JJ Redick, with whom he hosts a podcast. Though it’s possible he could pursue Lue, who has endured enough health issues to swallow the Lakers, but only because Ballmer is throwing more extension money at him. If James remains and doesn’t sign with the Knicks, where he’d shake New York and contend for a title, we’ll ask how he claims to be a GOAT by staying with a non-contender who might not reach a play-in berth.
This is the freakish basketball scene in Los Angeles, where one franchise never has reached the NBA Finals and the other has made it once in 14 seasons. They play on in Minnesota and Oklahoma City, but it’s comical to see the Lakers and Clippers fizzle into nothing. Ballmer is installing 199 shot clocks in his building so people never leave their seats. And the LED? Leave all devices at home. “We can invite you to participate with what’s going on on the screen without having to get out your phone, find it, bleh, bleh, bleh …,” he said. “Boom! Right there. Heads up.”
And all of this is happening, along with Jeanie Buss overseeing the LeBron-a-thon coaching debacle, in a subset that started with Doc Rivers in town. When he took over the Clippers, he was something of a coaching legend, leading the Boston Celtics to a championship in 2008. The Lakers had won five rings with Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson and, sort of, Shaquille O’Neal. Would the teams battle for glory in springtime swirls?
Not at all. The Lakers won once, in the Florida bubble, which didn’t stop James from firing Frank Vogel after firing Luke Walton and before firing Darvin Ham. The Clippers? They’ve climbed into the same murky silt after Ballmer bought the team from Ed O’Neill, who was obliterated by Laurence Fishburne in 2014. Umm, they are the stars of an FX series called “Clipped,” starting June 4, where O’Neill plays Donald Sterling and makes racial remarks to his girlfriend — personal assistant V. Stiviano — that led to his lifetime ban from the league. Nothing has been the same since Rivers, played by Fishburne, helped run off Sterling with spywork in a doc described as “the scandalous story of LA’s other basketball team.” The Clippers continue to fall short despite a dubious, injury-cracked nucleus of Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and James Harden. For some reason, Ballmer wants to keep everyone together for the arena debut, but George may head to Philadelphia and Harden to a lowball land.
Rivers? Did anyone else notice how the Bucks, 76ers and Clippers crashed this week in a few hours? All have slipped into quicksand while Rivers has coached them. He is best known as the postseason monster who blew 3-1 leads in three series and 3-2 leads four times. Ten times, he has lost Game 7, the most of any coach in league history, and he’ll say he has been there 16 times. It won’t happen again. The arrow points downward when he arrives, failing with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin in L.A., failing with Joel Embiid and Harden in Philadelphia and fading quickly with an injured mish-mash in Milwaukee. The Bucks started 30-13 with a new coach, Adrian Griffin, but the front office wanted better defense and found a successor: Rivers. He finished 17-19, further muddling our view of him, and when Giannis Antetokounmpo strained a calf muscle on April 9, let’s assume Fishburne wondered why he accepted a lowball role.
“Injuries are just part of it,” Rivers said. “I say this all the time, winning is incredibly hard. It takes 12, 15 players turning themselves into one and buying in, your staff being together as one and then health. And then you still may not win. It’s just hard. And you’re not going to win unless you’re healthy or you’re really deep.”
In fairness, Jon Horst is the general manager who traded Jrue Holiday for Damian Lillard. He didn’t allow enough time for Lillard to learn Antetokounmpo, who might be asking for a trade next summer, and Holiday is the property of the Celtics, who have lapped everyone in the Eastern Conference as Finals favorites. But in February, Rivers was gung-ho about acquiring guard Patrick Beverley to help perimeter defense. That turned into a farce in the fourth quarter of Game 6.
Why would Beverley throw a ball firmly at fans in Indianapolis, hitting a woman, in two episodes with 2 1/2 minutes remaining? He’d better hire an attorney for his violent interactions, of which he initially said on X: “Not Fair at all. Exchanged between a fan and our ball club all night. We warned and asked for help all night. Not fair.” In his post-game media conference, Beverley questioned ESPN reporter Malinda Adams.
“Do you subscribe to my pod?” he said, referring to his podcast.
When Adams said professionally, “I do not,” he replied, “Well, you can’t interview me then.” He pushed away her microphone and said, “Can you just move that mic or get out of the circle please, ma’am, if you’re not subscribed to my pod? I appreciate it. Thank you.” Anyone who listens to Beverley’s podcast might want to develop a new life. Adams received nothing but praise in the profession, writing the next morning, “I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support. I am humbled. Patrick Beverley just called me and apologized. I appreciate it and accept it. The Bucks also reached out to apologize. I’ve been in news for over 40 years and kindness and grace always win.”
Said Charles Barkley on TNT’s post-game show, “Listen, I’ve done stupid stuff and I got criticized. That’s just wrong. He’s going to get suspended for that and it’s going to be a good one because he didn’t do it once, he did it twice. That’s just stupid.” He was referring to the tossed ball. The league should ban Beverley without pay for half a season, but don’t expect such punishment from commissioner Adam Silver.
The only question for Rivers was not whether he subscribes to the pod. “That's not the Milwaukee way or the Bucks way. We're better than that,” he said. “Pat feels awful about that. He also understands — this is an emotional game and things happen — and unfortunately, you're judged immediately and he let the emotions get the better of him. We talked about that and then the ball-throwing incident. And he made the comment about what was being said back his way, and I just said, ‘I get it, but we're coaches and athletes, we're the entertainers or whatever we are.’ Sometimes they can be in the wrong, but you just can't do those certain things.”
Entertainers, huh? That’s a smooth way of unbuckling dishonor. These are massive sports people making millions and billions of dollars, and when they lose, they might be more interesting than the winners.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.