The law firm that conducted the investigation into Suns owner Robert Sarver saved him a harsher penalty by determining that his use of slurs “was not motivated by racial animus,” writes Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.
Speaking after today’s Board of Governors meeting, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters that he would have imposed more serious sanctions against Sarver if not for that finding. Sarver was suspended for one year and fined $10MM following a nearly year-long investigation of his workplace behavior.
“I think if they had made findings that, in fact, his conduct was motivated by racial animus, absolutely that would have had an impact on the ultimate outcome here,” Silver said. “But that’s not what they found.”
Silver drew a distinction between Sarver’s actions and those of former Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was banned for life and fined $2.5MM when his racist comments were brought to light in 2014. The commissioner could have imposed a longer suspension for Sarver, but the $10MM fine is the maximum allowed under league rules. Silver said there were no discussions with the Board of Governors about forcing Sarver to sell the team.
Sarver also cooperated with the investigation and issued an apology for his actions once the findings were announced. Sterling’s case was more contentious, and he eventually filed a $1 billion federal lawsuit against the NBA.
“This case is very different,” Silver said. “It’s not that one was captured on tape and the other isn’t. … Mr. Sarver ultimately acknowledged his behavior.”
Working in Sarver’s favor, Silver added, were several anonymous details that couldn’t be included in the investigative report that was released Tuesday, along with positive interviews with people that Sarver has worked with in his 18 years of owning the Suns and the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA.
“There were these terrible things,” Silver said. “There are also many, many people with very positive things to say about him through this process. And ultimately, I took all of that into account in making the decision that the one-year suspension plus the fine was appropriate.”
Silver confirmed that Sarver will be welcomed back to the NBA when his suspension ends in September 2023. However, he said the league will be watching Sarver closely once he’s reinstated.
“I don’t have the right to take away his team,” Silver said. “I don’t want to rest on that legal point because of course there could be a process to take away someone’s team in this league. It’s very involved, and I ultimately made the decision that it didn’t rise to that level. But to me, the consequences are severe here on Mr. Sarver.”
Also at the press conference, Silver commented on tampering investigations involving the Knicks and Sixers, saying the actions were a result of the “tick tock chronology around sort of when signings are permissible and the announcements of those signings and the information that came out about it,” tweets Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic.
Silver said the investigations were launched by the league office and weren’t a result of complaints by rival teams (Twitter link). He added that the league hopes to resolve both cases “in the next few weeks.”
Well laid out by Silver. The Sterling comparison is so ridiculous.
Except the law firm also said there was no animus regarding gender, which is obviously absurd.
Stern > Silver.
If the league can get rid of Dolan in New York and this guy it’d be better off
Less than 1% of his net worth. Nothing to see here
Hate to break this to you but 10 million is a lot of money to literally everyone. I’ll let you in on this too, you don’t make the amount of money Sarver has because you don’t know the value of a dollar.
I’m not a fan of the guy but some of these takes truly blow my mind.
Knows the value of a dollar? Or he’s greedy, unscrupulous, and comfortable exploiting and extorting people he views as lesser than him (which turns out to be everyone, officially). I hate these takes that billionaires are these mythical savants of industry, and not morally bankrupt narcissists that would leverage there own children if the deal was sweet enough. But I’m sure they appreciate the support. They need all the help they can get.
You took what I said and had a whole argument against something else. 10 million dollars is a lot of money to every person on the planet. Just because he is a billionaire, doesn’t make those 10 million any less valuable. Quite literally how currency works my man. If you’ve paid attention to my views I freely (and admittedly to often) give on this platform, you’d know how anti owner, anti billionaire I tend to be. How much does a dollar cost?
I don’t have a catalog of your prior comments, so I was just going off of that one, which was defensive of Sarver’s business acumen, and aggressively dismissive of someone who amounted his punishment to a slap on the wrist, which it was. Of course being a billionaire makes $10m less valuable than it would be to someone that isn’t a billionaire. Your argument has no foundation in reality, economics, or common sense.
If he knew the value of a dollar, he wouldn’t have been a complete POS and caused this situation for himself. Then again, when you’re enabled for so long you probably always think you can get away with it.
And 10 million is most definitely not a lot to him. Certainly, it’s more than “nothing to see here”, but to put it in more middle class terms if you’re someone with 200k in savings/retirement accounts, losing 2k is going to be upsetting but it’s not going to come close to breaking you.
Yet, in the context of having been a POS for a very long time, 2k really isn’t that much of a penalty. And certainly isn’t much of a future deterrent. I’m sure there are plenty of jerks out there who wouldn’t mind treating people however they want for that level of cost.