JJ Redick had a decorated college career at Duke, and has become one of the better three-point shooters in the history of the NBA, as he currently ranks 14th in the history of the league in three-pointers made.
So naturally, Donald Sterling was once skeptical of Redick joining his team.
Los Angeles Clippers' head coach Doc Rivers recently told Ernie Johnson the story of the time Sterling nearly prevented the team from completing a sign-and-trade for Redick, as transcribed by Kurt Helin of NBC Sports:
“I think he was going to sign with Minnesota, I literally talk J.J. out of it, ‘Come play with me. Come play with the Clippers with Chris Paul and DJ and Blake [Griffin], you’d be a great fit.’… The free agent signing is done, J.J. agrees, I jump on a plane, I fly back to Orlando, and I get a call from Andy Roeser, and he says, ‘the deal’s off.’ I say, ‘what do you mean the deal’s off?’
“‘Donald doesn’t like white players.'”
“I said, ‘excuse me?’ ‘Donald Sterling said no.’ I said, ‘well, we’ve already agreed.’ I’m in the garage at the Orlando Airport, Ernie, I get a call from Coach K, who is upset because of J.J. I get a call from J.J.’s agent, I think it was Arn Tellem [Ed. note: It was] who screaming at me.
“So I call Donald Sterling, and I think this was three weeks to a month into the job, I’m not sure but right in that area, me and Donald are having a ‘conversation.’ It made [a screaming, cussing argument with Doc’s then coach Pat Riley years before] look meek. So, by the very end of the conversation, I quit. I said, “Well, I quit’ [Immitating a screaming Sterling] ‘You’re not gonna quit.’ ‘I quit.’ ‘You’re not gonna quit.’…
“I said, ‘I’m not gonna let you ruin my reputation. Not gonna happen. It will never happen.’ And Donald goes in, ‘Oh, just trust me, I have this great reputation around the league.’ And I was screaming, ‘No, I have the reputation around the league, you don’t. I will not coach another day if this deal doesn’t go through.’ I hang up, and I remember going home and telling Chris [Paul], ‘I think I don’t have a job.’…
“Three hours later I get a call from Andy Roeser who says, ‘Hey man, deal’s done, Donald’s all in.’ Didn’t say why, didn’t say anything, just he changed his mind.
“I knew that minute we were in trouble.”
In case you forgot, Sterling didn't have the "great" reputation in the league that he claimed to. Far from it.
There's almost too many stories of his crude and often racist behavior to list. There's the time he told then-general manager Elgin Baylor that he “wanted the Clippers team to be composed of ‘poor black boys from the South’ and a white head coach.” Baron Davis compared playing for Sterling, who owned the team from 1981-2014, to being in the movie 'Get Out.' Sterling also apparently used the N-word during a coaching interview at one point. The stories are endless.
Sterling's time as an NBA owner did have an expiration date, however. NBA commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling permanently from the league in April of 2014, after racist recordings of him leaked. He was eventually forced to sell the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Of course, when you consider that Sterling sold the team for $2 billion, it's hard to think he's come close to learning his lesson. At the very least, he's no longer in a position of power in one of the major American sports leagues.
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