...But all those years, not enough people looked at Donald Sterling as the racist landlord the law so bore him out to be.
Neither the league, nor the players, nor the sports media paid much if any attention to Sterling's agreement in 2003 to pay upwards of $5m to settle a lawsuit brought by the Housing Rights Center charging that he tried to drive non-Korean tenants out of apartments he bought in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. Only a few observers noted in 2006 that the Justice Department sued Sterling for allegations of housing discrimination in the same neighborhood. The charges included statements he allegedly made to employees that black and Hispanic families were not desirable tenants.
And while a handful of us in the media excoriated Sterling and the NBA in 2009 when Sterling settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $2.73m following allegations he refused to rent apartments to Hispanics, blacks and families with children, the story didn't resonate – despite it being the largest housing discrimination settlement in Justice Department history.
There was no investigation from the NBA, like the one new commissioner Adam Silver announced under pressure this weekend, promising to move "extraordinarily quickly".
There was no condemnation from black players who predominate the league like the one that erupted Saturday and Sunday from current superstars, including LeBron James and Chris Paul, and from retired icons like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Paul, the Clippers star and head of the National Basketball Players Association, joined his teammates Sunday in stripping their warm-up gear and throwing it unceremoniously into a pile in a demonstration to disown the team's nickname in protest of their owner's loathsomeness.