Donald Sterling: Who is to blame for allowing a racist NBA owner to exist?

If I were to assert that Ronald Reagan was a great president, some people would claim this to be demonstrably true, others would state that this is patently false, and many individuals would label any given answer as mere opinion.  What is and is not “the truth” is often subjective—a murky, ambiguous value judgment based on an individual’s present view of the world and past life experiences.  But this subjectivity of truth is not always the case.

Some declarations—barring ignorance, stubbornness, or blatant trolling—are universally taken as true.  “The sky is blue;” “the Sun is larger than Jupiter;” and “Donald Sterling is a racist” are each examples of such objective truths.

Regardless of the veracity and authenticity of the conversation between Los Angeles Clippers Owner Donald Sterling and V. Stiviano, Sterling is still a morally reprehensible human being.  Tom Ziller of SB Nation perhaps summed up Donald Sterling best when he wrote:

"Donald Sterling is a total scumbag. He has a history of particularly grotesque and federally prosecuted racism and a list of sexual harassment accusers. He’s a grandstanding idiot without a modicum of self-awareness. He’s the type of dumbass who would hold a Black History Month celebration in March, and the type of racist moron who would “celebrate Black History” by giving 1,000 game tickets to poor kids, because the brainless hockey puck equates Black people with poor people, because he is a complete cretin."

To be frank, if you’ve closely followed or been a part of the National Basketball Association over the past five years, you would have to know that Sterling is a repugnant, racial bigot slumlord.  That being the case, many are beginning to ask why didn’t the owners of other NBA franchises do something about Sterling  prior to TMZ releasing the Sterling-Stiviano conversation—a bizarre back and forth centered around Instagram photos and a seemingly idealized segregated Staples Center during Clippers Games?

I don’t for a second believe that the other owners are racist, or were preserving the Sterling regime for anti-competitive reasons, or were nefariously protecting against the creation of a new loss-of-team precedent.  I just think they were all lazy, lacking initiative, and behaving like typical human beings.

Portland Trailblazers point guard Damian Lillard appeared to posit that owners aside from Donald Sterling could very well also be racists.  “The thing is (Sterling) is probably not the only one that feels that way…” said Lillard.  While it is admittedly unclear from that quote whether Lillard was referring specifically to other owners being racist or more broadly other members of society sharing racist ideologies, the fact remains that many have argued NBA franchise owners might have been protecting Sterling.

With the sincerest of respect to the assuredly real and legitimate life experiences that prompted Lillard to make that statement, I don’t think that owner racist sympathy is the issue here.  I refuse to believe that Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver, a man who vocally came out against Arizona’s SB 1070 law—the bill that could have allowed police officers to use race as an exclusive justification for stopping someone driving in a car or walking down the street—is a racist.  Any Arizona resident could vouch for Sarver’s stance on SB 1070 being very progressive and heavily in the minority when compared to the ultra-conservative Maricopa County political climate that houses the Phoenix Suns.  And I cannot believe that a black owner like Michael Jordan of the Charlotte Bobcats or even a liberal peer to Bill Gates in Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen were complicit in shielding Sterling from culpability.

Decorated Boston Globe correspondent Bob Ryan had a different, albeit equally pessimistic take on owners failing to previously condemn Sterling.  Ryan wrote:

"People are asking why the members of The Club — i.e. the other 29 NBA owners — have tolerated him in their midst. I can only speculate, but the answer seems rather obvious. Why would they wish to oust him when his very presence, for the better part of three decades, represented a competitive advantage — for them?It is impossible to overstate the astonishing ineptitude of the Clippers franchise since Sterling bought the team prior to the 1981-82 season.Consider that in 33 years of Sterling stewardship the Clippers have■  lost 50 or more games 22 times.■  lost 60 or more games eight times.■  lost 70 games once.This does not include the shortened 1998-99 season, when they were 9-41, clearly en route to another 60-loss campaign, or — who knows? — maybe even 70.They also have won, to this moment, 19 playoff games. That’s games, not series. The Lakers during that same span have played in 15 Finals, winning 10, with 251 playoff victories.Why would any opponent want such a patsy out of the league?"

While I would like to think that Ryan was writing satirically, I honestly don’t believe that to be the case here, as Mr. Ryan appears to genuinely believe that other NBA owners would tolerate Sterling’s aberrant racism for the sake of a competitive edge.  I do not think that I am being naive in dismissing this argument outright.  There is no question that NBA owners want to win, but I just could not fathom proverbially putting pen to paper and asserting that willingly tolerating racism was a historic strategic path toward success in the National Basketball Association.

So if NBA owners aside from Donald Sterling weren’t racists and they weren’t tolerant of racism for competitive reasons, what were they? My guess is they were simply lazy, apathetic, and normal.

The social psychological phenomenon known as the “bystander effect” is one way to rationalize NBA owners historically knowing about Donald Sterling’s disgusting racism but not doing anything about it.   The bystander effect refers to the many documented cases where individuals fail to help a victim when other individuals are present.  A classic textbook example of the bystander effect is the murder of Kitty Genovese—where allegedly 38 witnesses watched a prolonged, lengthy stabbing without a single person intervening.  More commonly, the bystander effect can be witnessed in the context of student bullying in classrooms all across the country.  So, why is it that a bunch of people are seemingly content with witnessing a wrong but not taking action to stop it?

Using game theory, the Volunteer’s Dilemma helps provide a reasonable explanation.  First, assume the heat in an apartment building stops working.  Second, assume that each tenant knows that alerting the building superintendent will lead to the heat being fixed.  Under this hypothetical, each tenant has one of two choices to make: (1) either personally alert the building superintendent, or (2) do nothing and assume another tenant will alert the building superintendent.  As a tenant, you can either invest time in alerting the building superintendent—inherently risking the potential of another tenant also alerting the building superintendent; or you can do nothing and hope that another tenant will alert the building superintendent.  Because the act of alerting the building superintendent takes work, and because people inherently shy away from excess work, many tenants will likely not act and assume someone else will act.  But if no one else alerts the building superintendent, every tenant will be forced to live in the apartment building without heat.

The Volunteer’s Dilemma helps illustrate one root cause of the Bystander Effect—specifically, individuals preferring to free ride as opposed to personally act.  This is what likely happened with the NBA owners with regard to Donald Sterling’s racism.  I don’t for a second believe that the other owners are racist, or were preserving the Sterling regime for anti-competitive reasons, or were nefariously protecting against the creation of a new loss-of-team precedent.  I just think they were all lazy, lacking initiative, and behaving like typical human beings.

As a tenant, why would I bother alerting the building superintendent when one of my afflicted neighbors will most likely do it for me?  Similarly, why would Miami Heat owner Micky Arison personally lead the fight to dethrone Donald Sterling prior to the TMZ audio leak?  He’s been busy leading the Carnival Corporation and winning championships with the Heat.  Why wouldn’t he just privately condemn Donald Sterling and hope someone like San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt does something about it?  Or then-NBA Commissioner David Stern?  Or just wait for Grantland Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons, Sports Illustrated Executive Editor B.J. Schecter, and Deadspin Editor Tommy Craggs to collectively assign Donald Sterling hit pieces 24/7/365?  Or wait for the anti-racism sponsors to pull their Clippers advertising dollars?  Or for the Los Angeles Clippers fans to stop buying tickets and supporting the team altogether?

We should not be blaming the owners for racist Troglodyte Donald Sterling still owning an NBA franchise in 2014.  We were all bystanders.  We were all potential volunteers preferring to free ride as opposed to get our hands dirty.  Just like the environmentalist who refuses to carpool and the pot smoker who doesn’t vote, virtually all of us are partially responsible for Donald Sterling.  And better late than never, it’s time for us to fix that problem.