Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Plane Report Released Tomorrow; NBA Bans Sterling; Crews Use Boats, Trucks to Rescue Flood Victims; NBA Commissioner Seeks Forced Sale of Clippers

Aired April 30, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And, Rob, I understand that Malaysia will finally release its preliminary report tomorrow. But we probably won't find much out from that report. But it's a good start at really being transparent perhaps.

ROB MCCALLUM, CNN ANALYST: Yes, absolutely. I think information is the sal (ph) that starts to heal the wounds for those have lost people on MH370. And so the more information they get and the explanations that go with that information to put it into context, the better, the earlier they can start to heal.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And I have to ask you a question about GeoResonance. It's this company that claimed they find a plane. I know, Rob McCallum, you told me it was bogus yesterday. I believe you. That is your business. It is bogus. But I'm just bringing it up one more time for Miles to weigh in on this and say - and tell our view not to pay attention to this company.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I've reached out - you know, I have a little bit of expertise in the world of space. I've covered it for many years. And I've reached out to some of the best and brightest minds in the world of satellite imagery. No one knows of any technology that can do what this company claims it did, period. So let's keep that in mind. It's completely unproven if it exists at all and its secret black box technology. This company, which is little known, needs to prove that it can do what it has done. It should hone in on a recognized site where there is wreckage already in the ocean, where we know where it is, and aim at it and show us what they can see as a result. And also, why don't they take the time to look at the search area in the southern ocean and at least disprove that the wreckage is there. That would be a couple of good first steps here.

COSTELLO: All good points. Rob McCallum, Miles O'Brien, thanks so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

MCCALLUM: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, banned for life from the game, but can the NBA also force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers? Should they have that power? We'll talk about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: Now the healing process begins. That's how the Los Angeles Clippers responded to news that team owner Donald Sterling was banned for life from the NBA after admitting he made racist remarks that were caught on tape. The league's commissioner says he will also urge the 29 other owners to vote to force Sterling to sell the team. A team he's owned more than 30 years. NBA Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas had this to say about the commissioner's actions and the meaning both on and off the court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ISAIAH THOMAS, FORMER NBA PLAYER: This is a game where we transport our culture, we transport our values, and this is a game that we introduce kids to at a very young age. So this goes way beyond points, rebounds and assists. This really talks about societal values, your basketball values, your team values, the way you work with one another, the way you get along with one another on and off the playing field. So Commissioner Silver did a great job yesterday in just exemplifying what leadership can and should be in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: With me now to talk about all of this, Jerry Stackhouse, NBA TV analyst and host for Sirius XM NBA Radio and a former NBA all-star, Brian Claypool, a Clippers season ticket holder and criminal defense attorney, Dominique Wilkins, vice president of basketball operations for the Atlanta Hawks and members of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Jemele Hill, ESPN columnist and sideline reporter.

Welcome to all of you.

DOMINIQUE WILKINS, NBA HALL OF FAMER: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: Hi. I'm glad you're all here.

Jerry, I want to start with you. Kudos to Commissioner Silver. I mean nobody seems to have any problem at all with the action he took.

JERRY STACKHOUSE, NBA TV ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean everybody's ecstatic and excited about the decision and thought that he came down with a heavy hammer. I mean everyone feels that there's no place in our league for those type of, you know, sentiments from anybody, from an owner, a player. And I think that he came down as hard as he could. But I think the hard part is still ahead of us. I mean actually, you know, removing this guy from ownership is going to be a little bit tougher than what has happened in these first three days.

COSTELLO: Oh, absolutely, and we're going to talk about that and get right into it in just a second.

I wanted to ask Jemele, though, do you think that Silver's actions healed all wounds?

JEMELE HILL, COLUMNIST, ESPN: No, I wouldn't say that they healed all wounds because I think that would be sort of trivializing the problem. I do think that we still have to examine why it took this to get Donald Sterling removed in the first place. He's a career racist. I mean his track record is well established as some of the things he's done, particularly some of those -- the racial and housing discrimination suits that he's settled in addition to the sexual harassment suits. So I guess in one way it's good because the stench is finally removed, but I think the NBA board of governors, Commissioner Adam Silver as he goes forward, he needs to hold the owners to the highest level of characters, just as he does the players.

COSTELLO: So, Dominique, I'll pose this question to you. Three- quarters of the owners have to vote to push this guy out of ownership of an NBA team. Do you think that's possible?

WILKINS: I think it's very possible, and I think it's the right thing to do because, again, like she said, he has a track record of racism. And so I think the owners should come together because ultimately it's on them what they ultimately do with this situation. So I think all the owners will vote to have him removed. And I think it's the right thing to do.

COSTELLO: Dominique, do you agree? Can Dominique hear me? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just like -- I'm so discombobulated. But it's OK, I apologize.

WILKINS: It's OK.

COSTELLO: Brian Claypool, that's who I was asking. Sorry.

BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CLIPPERS SEASON TICKET HOLDER: Hi.

COSTELLO: I was just asking you, do you think that -

CLAYPOOL: Hey, Dominique and I resemble each other, so I can see how you --

COSTELLO: No, you don't at all. You do not at all.

CLAYPOOL: I'm kidding.

Anyway. Hey, Carol, I want to -- can I comment on something Jemele said? I think she hit the nail on the head. I think this is a wake-up call for our country. And I think one area that Adam Silver fell short of is investigating why it took 10 years to eliminate Donald Sterling. And I think what the NBA has to do is institute some kind of independent review of why it took so long to get rid of Donald Sterling and then implement preventative measures to make sure this doesn't happen again. For example, maybe an anonymous hotline, a committee that will investigate all owners, not only in the NBA, but in all professional sports. So I think he fell short. We've got it, we've got to do more, and let's use this as an opportunity to galvanize eliminating racism in our society.

COSTELLO: OK. So let's talk about -- like throwing Donald Sterling completely out of the league. And, Dominique, I'll ask you this question, you're an attorney, right? So let's say that the owners say, you know, he - Mr. Sterling said these heinous things and he deserves to be thrown out. What happens when the next owner says something a little less heinous? Like, who's to decide what's bad enough to eliminate someone from owning an NBA team?

WILKINS: Well, I think, again, the question was posed, you know, this is a wake-up call for the country, that we're not going to tolerate these type of actions. So, unfortunately, in life, it takes a dramatic act for people to make change. And, unfortunately, with change sometimes comes consequences. And so you've got to prepare yourself for that. But at the same time, something like this needed to happen to wake up this country to say, hey, look, enough is enough. You know, let's move past all of this nonsense because bigotry and racism in this country should not still exist on this level. And when you bring it into the workplace, sports -- sports is just a very minute part of this. You're talking about a national problem. And so how do you get rid of or combat bigotry and racism? Be successful, be above it, do or play or be who you are. Don't let someone's ignorance dictates who you become.

COSTELLO: Right. And there should be serious consequences.

WILKINS: Yes.

COSTELLO: But - and, Jerry, I'll pose this question to you. OK, so what Mr. Sterling did, it wasn't illegal. He said something really heinous, but nothing about it was illegal. So, should he lose his business over that?

STACKHOUSE: Well, I mean - I mean that's the slippery slope that everybody's talking about right now. And I think that, you know, from the standpoint of - and he talked about it, even on his tape recorder he talked about that it's bigger than me. I mean it's part of a society - a bigger society. And what society is he talking about? Is he talking about, you know, other people that share his views and share his - I mean who he has a dialogue with in the league? And are we going to sit here and think that he's the only one that maybe has this view? We hope so and hope that we've eliminated him, but the law of averages and probabilities say that's not the case, that there's other people that share this view with him. And the fact that he records all of his tapes, does he have some dialogue with someone else who's saying the same thing.

COSTELLO: But I guess - I guess what I'm really asking, Jemele, if there are First Amendment right in this country and you the right to say what you want, right? So if that's true, why should you lose your business over heinous comments?

HILL: Well, you've got to remember, speech is free but consequences are not. And I liken this to if say you were a franchise owner of a McDonald's. Why, yes, it is your business, but you still represent McDonald's as a brand. I represent ESPN as a brand as soon as I wake up. You represent CNN as a brand as soon you wake up. And you know that if any of us were in this situation where these kinds of words or thoughts were exposed to the greater public, we would then be - we would probably be terminated by our employer. That's the way it works. That's life. That's how it goes is that he was representing the NBA. And he was in a position to influence. That's the part we forget about this. It's not that he just thought these things. We saw from the previous allegations and the racial housing discrimination lawsuits he settled that he was putting his thoughts, views and opinions into action by making people's lives miserable. That's why he's no longer a part of the NBA.

COSTELLO: And I totally get it. So, Brian, let's go back to the beginning. If the NBA knew all these things about Mr. Sterling, why did it allow him to become an owner in the first place? Isn't it a little late?

CLAYPOOL: Well, it's not too late, Carol. Again, this is a wake-up call. And there are some legal standards that support Donald Sterling being removed. He signed on to a constitution with the NBA that said -- it has a long termination paragraph in the constitution, Carol. And it says that if you do something that is morally repugnant or that doesn't uphold the reputation of the NBA, then you can be removed. That's the legal part.

Morally, what can be worse in our society than what he did? And I will tell you that unless he is removed by these owners, it's an endorsement of racism in our society. And I think there's no choice here. There would be no Los Angeles Clippers, Carol, if he remains owner. And same (ph) to this. If your boss - if your boss at CNN said, I don't like white females at my anchor, do you think your boss would be working tomorrow? He would be fired. He'd be removed.

COSTELLO: See, but I'm not talking about my boss. I'm talking about the owner of a company. And that's different.

CLAYPOOL: But he signed on. Carol, he signed on. He signed on to a franchising agreement with the NBA that says, if you do something that's not consistent with the values of the NBA, you can be removed as an owner. It's not much unlike an arbitration clause where we go to the doctor, we sign an agreement. If the doctor does something wrong, we can't have a jury trial. Those have been upheld as well.

COSTELLO: All right. And I get all of this, but it just illustrates how hard the road's going to be from here.

Thank you all of you, Jerry Stackhouse, Brian Claypool, Dominique Wilkins, and Jemele Hill who's - oh, you're still with us but your satellite - there it goes. We ran out of time. Thanks to all of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, heavy rains and rapidly rising flood waters along the Gulf Coast is forcing rescue crews to use chainsaws to free flood victims. Indra Petersons is following the storm.

Good morning.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Good morning.

Flooding being one side of the storm. We're still talking about another round of severe weather. The potential is out there. We're going to tell you who and where coming up in a few minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: But I'm not talking about my boss. I'm talking about the owner of a company. And that's different.

BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CLIPPERS SEASON TICKER HOLDER: But he signed on. Carol, he signed on -- he signed on to a franchising agreement with the NBA that says if you do something that's not consistent with the values of the NBA, you can be removed as an owner. It's not much unlike an arbitration clause where we go to the doctor, we sign an agreement. If the doctor does something wrong, we can have a jury trial. Those have been upheld as well.

COSTELLO: All right and I get all of this. But it just illustrates how hard the road is going to be from here. Thanks to all of you -- Jerry Stackhouse, Brian Claypool, Dominique Wilkins and Jamele Hill. Oh you're still with us, but your satellite -- there it goes. We ran out of time. Thanks to all of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, heavy rains and rapidly rising flood waters along the Gulf Coast is forcing rescue crews to use chainsaws to free flood victims. Indra Petersons is following the storm. Good morning.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning. Flooding being one side of the storm; we're still talking about another round of severe weather. The potential is out there. We're going to tell you who and where coming up in a few minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Torrential rains along the Gulf Coast are turning neighborhoods into rivers across Alabama and Florida forcing some people to cut holes into their roofs to escape. Check out this -- these new pictures just in to CNN a man rescued from floodwaters in Mobile, Alabama. You can see him holding onto to a tree when a rescue worker swims to him with a life jacket. They were able to get him to safety thankfully.

Near Pensacola, Florida, more than a foot of rain has already fallen, the water rising to the roof of one SUV. So far the floodwaters there have killed one person. A state of emergency has been declared for 26 Florida counties. Roads and bridges have been washed out. Emergency workers are using boats and the National Guard to save everyone. That's more than 100 people according to affiliate WEAR and rescue teams needed chainsaws to free some of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL PEARSON, SPOKESMAN, PENSACOLA COUNTY, FLORIDA: They have gone up there with chainsaws to try to be able to cut holes in the roofs to try to be able to get the people out of there because the water levels have risen chest high and deeper and apparently in some of these homes. So there's nowhere to go but up. And once you get there in the attic, a lot of people really can't go anywhere else. So they're trying to utilize the chainsaws to able to cut some folks out.

I don't have a specific update on how far along we are in that progress. Just getting to those locations has been a logistical nightmare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Indra Peterson is in New York with the forecast. Is it still raining in Florida?

PETERSONS: I mean you're looking at the radar right now. Not only is it rain, but it's not stopping. It's something we call training, where you actually see one thunderstorm after another. It's like that rain cloud right over your house that will not leave.

And we talk about flooding concerns. A lot of times we say one to two inches an hour. That does produce some really severe flooding. We were seeing rainfall rates as high as five inches an hour. So that's a six hour but let's look at the last 24 hours. Still easy to see you have the wind coming off the ocean here right. It's pulling all of that warm, humid air right from the Gulf. And it just continues to train those thunderstorms. So definitely continuing to see some heavy rain in that region. And also even spreading into the northeast. You're talking about places seeing 11, 12 inches of rain.

Now, of course, that's just the isolated locally. But we're still talking about maybe anywhere from one to five inches of rain depending on where you are to the northeast today. But this is really going to be the concern. Those heavy amounts of rain in short periods of time. The flooding potential really from New York City all the way down into the southeast and it's not only component still severe weather. We've been talking about tornado threat. These heavy thunderstorms. That is still out there today including places like D.C., Pittsburgh, all of the way down through Florida.

So we still have that concern as well especially going through the afternoon. Just keep in mind with all of this going on, huge delays toward Newark. As much as 3.5-hour delays if you are heading out to the airport -- carol.

COSTELLO: All right Indra Petersons thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, he is banned for life. But should Donald Sterling be forced to sell his team for something he said in the privacy of his own home?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is facing a lifetime ban from the NBA in a move by the league to stop the team -- to strip the team from him, rather. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acted swiftly and decisively in response to the racist comments that Sterling made in those taped conversations with his girlfriend, V. Stiviano. But should the stiff punishment including the NBA trying to force a sale of the Clippers be levied over something Sterling said in the privacy of his own home?

Let's talk more about that with Gary Roberts, a professor of Sports Law, Indiana University and Lee Igel, an associate professor at NYU's Tisch Center. Welcome to both of you. (CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

Lee, I want to start with you. It's going to be difficult to force Mr. Sterling to sell his team, isn't it?

LEE IGEL, NYU TISCH CENTER: Well, Carol, it may seem like it's difficult but the truth is that if three-fourths of the NBA owners think Donald Sterling shouldn't own the team, then they can begin to move into a process to strip Sterling of his team, of the Clippers. And it's interesting to me, I have yet to hear anybody that has come out to support what it is that Donald Sterling has said.

COSTELLO: Gary, I'm not sure that Mr. Sterling cares about that.

GARY ROBERTS, PROFESSOR OF SPORTS LAW: First of all, I'm not sure that it is accurate that three-fourths of the owners can begin the process of divesting him of his team. The NBA constitution and its article 13 has a laundry list of things that if an owner does them, three-fourths of the other owners can begin that process. The kind of things that he has done in this case is not on that list.

I have a copy of the constitution right here. I have just read the list. I don't see any kind of language that the other owners could fit this kind of behavior under unless this has been amended in the last couple of years, this is a document that's a couple years old. Even if there is such language, I'm not sure that the owners want to go down the road of litigation.

What they're going to do is Donald Sterling today owns a business that is simply not viable because he has made himself a pariah. The sponsors have abandoned him. Fans will boycott the games. Players aren't going to want to play for him. The other owners are going to make him very unwelcome as an owner even though he's not even going to be allowed to participate. I don't think he wants to own this team for very long given that it's not a viable franchise anymore.

COSTELLO: We'll see. He's very litigious. And Lee I'll just put it to you this way. Let's assume that the NBA doesn't have three- quarters of the owners wanting to oust this guy from owning a team and the reason is because they could say something heinous, something that others think is heinous and judge them and then they would have to force their teams. Isn't that the slippery slope we're talking about?

ROBERTS: Sure.

IGEL: It is a slippery slope here. There really is a slippery slope. But what's happening here is something much bigger than just sports. Sports has ripped open a much larger conversation. The truth is whichever way it comes down and whichever way lawyers work it out, this process of uncoupling if you will Sterling from the Clippers has begun. That said, sports has ripped open a much larger conversation. So you have really in a few layers -- one, something that happened in sports; two, you have issues about what goes on in the business of sports and how those machinations work out; and three, and really underlying that, are all of these issues that exist in society from racism and racism by the way is a big form of bullying. You have privacy in business. You have a host of issues that our society has really yet to get into and resolve. That's what this story is really about.

COSTELLO: And I understand that. I'm just talking about the legal aspects of the difficulty that NBA is going to have ousting this guy from owning a team.

Like Gary, what if Mr. Sterling's wife owns half the team? What then?

ROBERTS: Well, she does have a community property interest in the team I assume unless they have a prenuptial agreement that would exclude that. That's a complication. That's part of the problem here. A billion dollar asset is not easy to dispose of. There are complicated accounting and tax and marital property and contract issues that will all have to be worked out. I think that once the emotion of the moment dies down in Sterling's head, he will work with the league to try and dispose of this asset.

I can't believe he'll want to litigate to hold onto an asset that's going to be not viable and that he's not going to be allowed to participate in going forward. So in a year or two, Donald Sterling is not going to own this team but the process by which we get to that point I think is not going to be litigation.

COSTELLO: All right. We'll see. Gary Roberts, Lee Igel -- thanks to both of you.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.