Donald Sterling’s sit down with Anderson Cooper airs on CNN tomorrow night, but Charles Barkley won’t be among those watching. “We got to work tomorrow night so we don’t have to watch that junk,” the Hall of Famer told his Inside The NBA cohorts as they came back from commercial, as noted by Nina Mandell of USA Today. Here’s tonight’s look around the league..
- LeBron James and other NBA players are concerned about Shelly Sterling taking control of the Clippers, but a statement released this evening by NBA spokesman Mike Bass could put those worries to bed. “Under the NBA Constitution, if a controlling owner’s interest is terminated by a 3/4 vote, all other team owners’ interests are automatically terminated as well. It doesn’t matter whether the owners are related as is the case here. These are the rules to which all NBA owners agreed to as a condition of owning their team,” the statement read (Howard Beck of Bleacher Report on Twitter).
- Shelly Sterling’s attorney released a statement of his own to reporters, including Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com (on Twitter).
- Sources tell Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert will support whatever decision the team’s next GM makes regarding Mike Brown. So, it appears the coach’s fate is in the hands of David Griffin, who’s expected to have the interim tag removed from his GM title soon. People around the league are split on whether Griffin would retain Brown, according to Amico.
- Kostas Papanikolaou, whose NBA rights are owned by the Rockets, says he’s in no rush to make the leap over. “Nothing changed in my thoughts about the NBA. If I get a good chance, I will go. However, I am new in this team [FC Barcelona Regal], they have treated me with respect and I only think about Barcelona. A team that helps me evolve my game and be better. So, I don’t know what will happen, if I will end up in the NBA this summer or the next one,” the Euroleague standout told Nikos Varlas of Eurohoops.net.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.