Primarily based on the ESPN podcast The Sterling Affairs, Clipped is a biographical sports activities miniseries hitting Hulu on June 25, 2024. The 6-part drama tracks the private, skilled, and public shame of Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill), the rich actual property tycoon and meddlesome proprietor of the Los Angeles Clippers. Along with participating in a number of extramarital affairs, Sterling obtained a lifetime ban from the NBA following an explosive TMZ audio recording in 2014.

Whereas Sterling offers together with his humiliating downfall, Clipped additionally chronicles NBA coach Doc Rivers (performed by Laurence Fishburne) as he leads the Clippers into the playoffs and stays targeted amid the PR circus surrounding the Sterling controversy. With the mud settled a decade later, a glance again at Donald Sterling’s real-life ruination is on deck to assist viewers make sense of one of many greatest sporting controversies on report.

Who Is Donald Sterling?

Born in Chicago in 1934, Donald Sterling is a former lawyer turned enterprise entrepreneur who has lived in Los Angeles since he was two. In 1955, Sterling married his solely spouse, Rochelle “Shelly” Stein (Jackie Weaver). Following a profitable divorce and private damage lawyer profession, Sterling transitioned to the true property sector and bought extra wealth. In 1981, Sterling bought the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation group, the Los Angeles Clippers, for $12.5 million.

Extra hands-on than {most professional} sports activities homeowners, Sterling made massive guarantees to the fan base to outshine the league’s premiere franchise, The Los Angeles Lakers. But, the alternative occurred, with Sterling proving to be one of many worst homeowners of one of many league’s most inferior groups, a distinction coated in the brand new Hulu restricted collection.

In 1982, Sterling obtained the most important penalty of its sort — $10,000 — for suggesting that his group would fortunately lose video games on objective if it meant they’d draft upcoming star Ralph Sampson. Though this isn’t detailed in Clipped, Sterling’s historical past of bending the regulation, breaking the foundations, and paying the worth for it is very important contextualize his disgraceful undoing over 30 years later.

Who Is Doc Rivers?

Doc Rivers is a well-respected former NBA participant and present NBA coach of the Milwaukee Bucks. Rivers performed for the Los Angeles Clippers from 1991-1992. In 2013, Rivers was employed by Sterling to educate the Clippers, constructing on the private {and professional} rapport that they had for over 20 years. But, as proven in Clipped, as quickly as Rivers took the job, he was undercut, interfered with, and blindsided by Sterling’s gross lack of professionalism.

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Sterling would harass gamers at follow, favor sure stars, and power his group to do issues that they had no real interest in, reminiscent of attend an involuntary all-white Labor Day social gathering, regardless of the overwhelming majority of the gamers being Black. Clipped jumps between Rivers’ coping with Sterling’s immoral conduct as he tries to educate the group to success, and Sterling’s catastrophic demise as a racist, womanizing NBA proprietor. With out Rivers’ standing up for what is true, supporting his gamers, and giving the NBA an ultimatum, Sterling’s downfall wouldn’t have been as swift or definitive.

The Incriminating TMZ Tape

Clipped picks up in the course of the 2013-2014 NBA season, during which Rivers led his group towards the Golden State Warriors within the first spherical of the playoffs. Round Sterling’s eightieth birthday, TMZ launched an audio recording in the course of the playoffs that started Sterling’s shame. As seen within the sports activities biopic, the audio was recorded by V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman), a girl with whom Sterling was having an extramarital affair on the time (one in all many in his life).

Because of Sterling’s elevated Alzheimer’s signs, Stiviano claimed she started recording his conversations to assist him together with his reminiscence loss. After seeing Stiviano posing on Instagram with NBA legend Magic Johnson, Sterling tells Stiviano within the recording:

“It bothers me quite a bit that you just need to broadcast that you just’re associating with black folks. You’ll be able to sleep with [black people]. You’ll be able to convey them in, you are able to do no matter you need, however the little I ask you is … to not convey them to my video games.”

The deeply offensive comment despatched shockwaves all through the NBA, which is predominantly comprised of Black gamers. Rivers thought of boycotting the playoff collection because of the controversy, however the group continued to play and misplaced to the Warriors within the 2014 playoffs.

Following the group’s first-round exit, Rivers advised NBA commissioner Adam Silver that he wouldn’t return because the Clippers coach if Sterling remained the proprietor. Quickly after, Silver imposed a lifetime NBA ban on Sterling and mandated that he promote the group to a brand new proprietor.

The Fallout From the TMZ Recording

In August 2014, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer bought the group for $2 billion and the Clippers have loved way more success on the court docket than underneath Sterling’s poisonous possession. From 1981 to 2014, the Clippers solely had six profitable seasons underneath Sterling’s possession. Compared, Ballmer’s Clippers had seven consecutive profitable seasons starting in 2014-2015. Following the sale, Sterling unsuccessfully contested the choice in court docket. In 2016, Sterling settled the go well with with the NBA. Regardless of receiving a lifetime ban from the league, Sterling nonetheless works as an actual property agent in 2024.

Following the TMZ tape that led to Sterling’s deserving ouster, the 2024 miniseries Clipped chronicles Stiviano’s PR maneuvering, the sale of the Clippers to Ballmer, and Sterling’s stalling authorized battle to retain possession. The miniseries condenses the drama to a yr or two in Sterling’s 80s moderately than telling his full life story.

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Aside from the racially insensitive TMZ controversy, Sterling’s affair with Stiviano and a number of other different ladies relationship again to 1996 led to Shelly Sterling submitting for divorce in August 2015. Nonetheless, in 2016, Shelly modified her thoughts and the 2 remained married in 2024.

In the meantime, Doc Rivers stayed with the Clippers till he was relieved of his duties in 2020. Though he gained an NBA title because the coach of the Boston Celtics in 2008, Rivers’ most important play got here off the court docket. By sticking up for his gamers, voicing intolerance for Sterling’s poisonous racism, and making the NBA select between the values of its constituents over Sterling’s ugly, hate-filled views, Rivers helped to remove Sterling as a group proprietor and make the NBA a a lot better, extra inclusive league.

Clipped is offered to stream on Hulu on June 25, 2024.