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NBA Announcement Today On Clippers' Owner; Tupelo Mayor: Storm Covered Half The State; Families Hear Pilot's Last Words For First Time

Aired April 29, 2014 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Breaking right now. Outbreak.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is definitely a tornado.

COSTELLO: 75 million in the threat zone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, no, no. No, no, no.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop. Stop.

COSTELLO: Southern states slammed. Towns wiped out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cars have been tossed.

COSTELLO: Sterling sponsors pull out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: we want to see this guy out of the league now.

COSTELLO: Big American companies dropping the Clippers, State Farm, Carmax, Sprint.

For the first time audio recordings from the missing plane played for the families.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm here to represent hundreds of family members from Malaysia 370.

COSTELLO: As the families confront the playmaker.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They don't want your sympathy. What they want is answers to their questions.

COSTELLO: Your live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO (on camera): Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. The heat is being turned up on L.A. Clippers owner, Donald Sterling. Life has really changed for Sterling and his girlfriend, V. Stiviano. They are trying to duck the cameras after audiotapes surfaced of Sterling going on a racist rant. The NBA announcing details of its investigation in just a few hours 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Rachel Nichols joins us now with a preview of that. What do you think the NBA will say?

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Adam Silver, the new commissioner can fine Donald Sterling and trust me, he will. But keep in mind that Donald Sterling is worth about $1.9 billion. So even a few million in fines is not really going to impact him. Silver can suspend him. Maybe even for a few years. Maybe even indefinitely. Just completely removing him from the team's operation permanently.

And there is certainly a push around NBA circles that Donald Sterling never have any direct involvement with the Clippers again, never seen sitting courtside again. But that's likely the most harsh end of the spectrum. It's very unlikely we could see Silver try to go further and actually attempt to force sterling to sell the team as popular as a notion as that might be.

It's possible that he might try to do that, but to do that he would need the support of at least three-quarters of the other owners and frankly, it's hard to see that happening. None of these guys would want Silver to turn around and want to take their franchise away. The Orlando Magic owner has made controversial anti-gay statements in the past. I don't see him supporting taking a franchise away because someone has a hateful or unpopular view.

Even Maverick's owner, Mark Cuban. He is very progressive, but he came out yesterday and he said he's worried about, quote, "the slippery slope of giving Silver too much power here." So we know that Adam Silver is outraged and we know the owners that he works for are largely saying that they support drastic action. It will be interesting, Carol, at 2:00 today to find out how drastic we're really talking about.

COSTELLO: I'm just thinking about what you said about the owners. I mean, what Mr. Sterling said was so over the top. So hateful. I can't imagine them not coming forward and not wanting him to be part of the NBA.

NICHOLS: Well, certainly not only from a moral perspective, you would hope that and expect that. But from a business perspective, the Clippers have been losing sponsors right and left. If the NBA doesn't act strongly enough today, you have to think that the NBA as a whole may start losing sponsors right and left. It's going to be a balancing act.

You also have to remember the legal factor in all of this. The NBA constitution is secret. Enough of it has leaked out over the years that we know that there are some broad clauses that Silver can use. Quote, "The best interest of the game." That sort of thing. If he goes too far, if owners as a group go too far, they hope themselves up to having this tied up in court for years with Donald Sterling who is a lawyer himself who is known to be very litigious suing them.

The state of the Clippers would then be in flux for years. You would probably see most people around the Clippers quit. Their coach, Doc Rivers, said as much yesterday. He said, look, I don't know if I want to be part of this organization anymore. You can see players try to get out of their contracts. It would be an absolute disaster and they would lose a foot hold in one of the biggest marketplaces in the country.

It's a mess on all sides. It's a legal mess. It's certainly a moral mess and it may be a business mess as well if they don't fix it today and of course they've got all eyes upon them. The entire country, the president of the United States has commented on this. Lebron James has said that he has confidence for now in Adam Silver. President Obama said the same thing. Adam Silver better deliver this afternoon.

COSTELLO: We'll be watching and waiting. Rachel Nichols reporting live for us. Thank you so much.

Joining me now NBA TV analyst and Sirius XM NBA radio host, Jerry Stackhouse. He is also a former NBA all-star. Thanks so much for being here. You heard Rachel's report. What goes through your mind when you listen to this stuff?

JERRY STACKHOUSE, NBA TV ANALYST: As much as we want him to have him out of the league and not have him be an owner anymore, I don't know there are grounds to have him removed. We've been a progressive league forever. We've had minorities in high positions. This is definitely not a view of our league or our players as a whole. This is just one individual. I think he's an owner and Adam Silver works for him. At the end of the day, I can't see him helping to construct a blueprint to allow him to be put out of his ownership.

COSTELLO: The thing is that people are so angry about this. The rhetoric is heating up. Spike Lee sat down with Anderson Cooper last night. I'd like you to listen to what he said about the situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SPIKE LEE, FILMMAKER: He's tainted all of the other 29 partners. He's tainting the league and he's tainting America. We hear something like that. That's the mentality of a slave master.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so when you have rhetoric like that going on, that puts even more pressure on Mr. Silver, right?

STACKHOUSE: I think that we have come a long way in a short amount of time.

COSTELLO: Do you agree with Spike Lee? I should have asked you that first.

STACKHOUSE: I do think that he has a slave owner's mentality. I'm not sure he's the only one. If you look across all of the board, he's been allowed to operate in this space for a long time. It's hard to fathom that he's the only one that may have these type of views and I think the way that his message was obtained, you know illegally, I don't know if he has the grounds to really pursue it and push him out of the ownership position.

COSTELLO: You heard Rachel say if two-thirds of the owners come together and they want him out, he'll be out. Shouldn't they come forward? This is over the top.

STACKHOUSE: Absolutely. You can see the negative effect that they're having. You have sponsorships pulling out and at the end of the day it's a business and with owners it's their bottom line and they all participate in revenue sharing. All of these sponsorships that are leaving the Clippers is ultimately affecting the other teams as well. Absolutely, I think if it comes to push and shove, they'll have him out of there for sure if they can.

COSTELLO: If the commissioner comes out and he doesn't issue severe enough penalties for Mr. Sterling, what might the players do? Because this is all affecting them. They have to play now in this environment.

STACKHOUSE: It's our problem as the NBA, as NBA players. It's definitely our problem. At the end of the day, it's really the owner situation right now and Adam's situation to deal with and for us to look to see how he handles it. He can only do one of two things, pat him on the back for making a great decision and suspending him and using those broad powers we don't totally understand, or we can say this is not enough and say that more needs to be done or take some more measures.

COSTELLO: I'm going to lay something else by you that's out there right now. Former player and current New York Knick Executive Larry Johnson sent out a tweet. In essence he said that we should establish an all-black league. That's the answer.

STACKHOUSE: We don't want separation. We want inclusion. We've become a global league. Have to give David Stern and Adam Silver, we created a global product that many people are proud of and it's unfortunate that this one vile incident and this vile person has to taint it at an important time for us during our playoffs. It's been one of the most exciting playoffs in quite a while that we have to deal with this.

Hopefully, we push this along. I hope fans come out and support players. I know they don't want to support Donald Sterling. Come out and support the players and our game. At the end of the day, that's what should matter.

COSTELLO: Jerry Stackhouse, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here.

As we've mentioned many times, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver will make a statement regarding the league's action on Donald Sterling this afternoon. CNN will bring you those remarks live beginning at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, deadly storms rake the south and the worse may be yet to come. We'll look at a ferocious weather threat taking aim at 75 million Americans. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: An extraordinary wave of violent weather is unfurling across the eastern third of the country. Right now, 75 million Americans find themselves in the path of a storm system that is both sprawling and deadly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cars have been tossed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The violent weather first erupted yesterday killing at least 29 people in six states. Let's begin our coverage in hard hit Mississippi where at least eight people have died as a result of the violent weather. That's where CNN meteorologist, Chad Myers is this morning. Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. Think of Mississippi that just got raked yesterday. A 500-mile wide rake and every time you put a time down on that rake and you pulled it eastward into Alabama, that's the damage. Every 50 miles or so there was a significant supercell. A big storm that was rotating. Each of those rotating storms put down a tornado and then moved off to the east. We're going to have another violent day again today.

BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big one.

MYERS (voice-over): You can hear the power of this massive cloud churning just outside of Tupelo, Mississippi. It's just one of a string of tornadoes that barrelled through the southeast with Tupelo hit hard. The threat forcing a local meteorologists to take cover mid broadcast.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basement now. Go!

MYERS: The sheer force of the winds estimated at more than 100 miles an hour hoisted cars several feet off the ground, toppled power lines, and reduced homes to rubble. Residents struggle to pick up the pieces. Severe weather spawned more than a dozen tornados and left more than 30 dead across six states since Monday. In Lewisville, Mississippi --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My God. No, no, no, no, no.

MYERS: -- another twister reportedly as large as a mile wide. Just look at this field littered with tossed cars and in Alabama about 42,000 people are waking up without power. The severe thunderstorms battered the state into the night. A tornado in Kimberly being blamed for ripping the roof and siding from this church.

(END VIDEOTAPE) MYERS: Carol, it's sunny outside right now. That's actually a bad thing because it's heating up. That hot air down at the surface will want to rise like a hot air balloon. Rising air makes clouds. Clouds get bigger. The more sun we get, the more severe the storms will be this afternoon. We're breaking down and moving to Alabama.

If you are between north western Alabama all of the way into Georgia or all of the way down to the gulf coast and as far north as into the Midwest, we'll see more big storms today and big tornadoes are again possible in this heat of the day. Three days now in a row -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Chad Myers reporting live this morning. Thanks so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, they've been pleading with Malaysian officials for weeks, actually for 50 days now. Families of Flight 370 finally are getting some of the information they have been demanding about that missing jet. We'll let you know what it is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It was an emotional day for families in Beijing. For the first time they heard Captain Zaharie Shah's last words before Flight 370 disappeared. Malaysian authorities after 53 days released the radio chatter between the plane and ground control. The families heard the recording over a public address system. Here it is.

That was the last transition. Steve Wang whose mother was on board Flight 370 is the spokesperson for the families. Welcome, Steve.

STEVE WANG, MOTHER WAS ON FLIGHT 370: Hello.

COSTELLO: What was it like to hear that?

WANG: Well, you know, it's not too much in the record I heard. Finally, they gave it to us. It's a good beginning. We want them to keep on giving us more.

COSTELLO: How did the families react to hearing those words over that public address system?

WANG: Well, it is a little bit vague. They never translated into Chinese so some of the relatives do not understand what is in it. We are asking for the recording without anything added. Just give us the full copy for the record and after that we'll verify and compare with the text message they gave us before and to check whether it is correct or not.

COSTELLO: It's taken them 53 days to release this little bit of audiotape. Are you surprised they released anything at all at this point?

WANG: Yes. I have to say that it is a little bit late and it should not take so long but it's not a time for blaming. We're concentrating not only on Malaysian Airlines and Malaysian government, but also next of kin and we'll concentrate to find the plane. It's not the time to blame. We'll just keep on going with more investigation and we want them to supply more information so that we can organize a tactical team and just do what we can to help find the plane.

COSTELLO: In Australia, they now suspended the aerial search for any kind of debris there might be. They are conducting underwater searches. Are you satisfied with that?

WANG: A little bit. More than 50 days have passed, some debris is down into the water, but there may be something still in the water. I think they should keep on searching. Based on calculations, they could find a place where debris could be if they be confirmed about where the plane was.

COSTELLO: Steve Wang, thank you so much for talking with me. I appreciate it. A little bit more about what Steve was talking about. There is a possible new lead in the search for Flight 370. An Australian company says it discovered what could be wreckage about 118 miles south of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bangal thousands of miles north of the current search area.

The president of that Australian company says his company reached that conclusion by using technology designed to find nuclear warheads under the ocean. David Pope told CNN he decided to go public after his team in charge of the multinational search dismissed his claims.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID POPE, GEO RESIDENCE (via telephone): -- the date when we started looking on the 12th, only four days after the plane disappeared.

KATE BOLDUAN, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": So you were already looking on the 12th, OK.

POPE: Yes. The search hadn't moved down south at that stage. So we were looking where everyone else was looking and it seemed the most logical area to look as well. The southern area doesn't seem logical to us at all. The pings coming from the satellite is basically a 50/50 chance that it was hitting on the northern corridor or the southern corridor. As it turned out we found out afterwards, but we still say we could be right. We're not saying we have actually found MH370. We have found what we think is a lead that should be investigated.

BOLDUAN: So you pass along this information. As I can see from your press release you passed it along twice. You passed along your report on March 31st and again on April 4th. What response have you gotten from Malaysian and Australian authorities? Because today Australian officials essentially appear to be dismissing the report when they came out in response saying that they're still very satisfied saying the final resting place of the missing aircraft is in the southern part of the search arc.

POPE: They may very well be right. But we still think that what we have found is a wreckage of an aircraft and somebody should actually look into it and -- because the metals that we have discovered and we have double-checked our work and our final report was actually sent to all of the agencies on the 15th of April. It was sent two weeks ago yesterday. And that -- we had double-checked all of our findings. And we had a total of 23 scientists looking at the -- looking at the project. So we are very, very positive that we have found something and it may be down south, but we definitely found something up north.

BOLDUAN: So Mr. Pope, what is the response from the Australians and the Malaysians? Have they said that they're going to look into it?

POPE: The Malaysians -- their response has been excellent today.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, so let's talk about this with CNN safety analyst, David Soucie and CNN analyst and ocean specialist, Rob McCallum. Welcome to you both.

OK, who wants to start? Rob, I'm going to start with you. So this company said they detected titanium, aluminum, copper and steel alloys in the water. All of these things make up what's in a Boeing 777 and that in part is how they detected whatever this is under the ocean. Do you buy that, Rob?

ROB MCCALLUM, CNN ANALYST: No, not at all. You know, there's no scientific validity to these claims whatsoever. That's why you're seeing the authorities sort of distance themselves from it. And you know, to introduce this kind of thing in this emotionally charged environment that relatives are going through is nothing short of despicable.

COSTELLO: Yes, because the families do know about this. David, this company also says they were able to detect these images underneath the water and we'll put those up for you again. By using satellites and aircraft and 20 different technologies including a nuclear reactor. Possible, David?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, I'm not that familiar -- you know, I'm not that familiar with the water portion of it or what they found. I have used similar technologies in my mining business to help me locate best drilling areas and it's proved to work in that realm. As far as whether it can get through water, I'm not familiar with that or not. I do know the technology at least for locating gravel deposits and other types of precious metals, we've used that before.

But as Rob said, I'm not sure that much about this particular company or what they've done in the past or not. But the important thing is to not get ultrafocused on what we have got. Everything deserves at least a look for validity, for confidence in whether it's real or not and for their credibility so I wouldn't discount it as quickly as Rob might be doing, but there's just two different ways to look at it.

COSTELLO: Yes, so Rob, why not check it out? What could it hurt?

MCCALLUM: Because it can't hurt anything except the people that believe in it. It's not helpful to relatives to give them false hope or to give them false leads. It's very important that any information that comes to hand is checked for scientific validity. You have seen scientists being careful all of the way through with how information is released.

This sort of information released willy-nilly is just incredibly damaging to people who don't necessarily have scientific background to verify it themselves. If it's found to be false, the company that released it needs to be held to account.

COSTELLO: David, let's go back and let's talk about this radio chatter that the Malaysian authorities released so families could hear it. There's nothing on it that seems vaguely suspicious, is there?

SOUCIE: Well not from what we're hearing. You know we've listened to cockpit recorder tapes before in accidents I've been involved in and there is actually a lot of information you can get from them that you can't hear in this type of forum.

You can listen to engine speeds, you can listen to a lot of information about what's going on, on the aircraft. You can almost determine speeds or at least approximate speeds based on the decibels of sounds of wind against the cockpit. Things like that.

So there are some more analysis that needs to be done to really say it can give us information or not.