In an unprecedented move, the NBA has banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life after racist comments that he made were leaked to the press. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver also fined Sterling $2.5 million and said that the league would pressure Sterling to sell his team. But did Silver do the right thing? “I think he did do the right thing, yes, except I think that there is more to do,” insisted Nation sports editor Dave Zirin on Al Jazeera America’s Consider This. “One of the demands of the Players’ Association…is, how is it that Donald Sterling was coddled for so long?” Sterling had previously demonstrated himself to be a racist: amongst other things, in 2009, Sterling paid $2.76 million in the largest housing-discrimination settlement in the history of the Justice Department and the Fair Housing Act. “Given all of that smoke,” Zirin continued, “why wasn’t something done pre-emptively before…what now looks like an inevitable fire?”
—Dustin Christensen
