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Will Clippers Owner Fight Sale of Team?; Russian Buyers Hot for U.S. Real Estate; Charities Reconsider Sterling Donations

Aired April 30, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A private conversation becomes a public scandal and ends with a lifetime ban for NBA owner Donald Sterling and the NBA wants the league's 29 other owners to put pressure on Sterling and force him to sell the team. Here to talk about that, Michael Cage former player for the Los Angeles Clippers, Peter Keating, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and Rick Barry NBA Hall-of-Famer. Welcome to all of you.

PETER KEATING, SENIOR WRITER, ESPN THE MAGAZINE: Good morning.

MICHAEL CAGE, FORMER PLAYER, LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS: Thank you.

COSTELLO: I can't see my third guest. I'm sure he'll pop up somewhere. He's getting seated. Peter is coming.

Michael, I want to start with you. Donald Sterling may not go down without a fight. This thing could actually drag out for years.

CAGE: Well --

COSTELLO: Go ahead.

CAGE: Yes you know, I hear what you're saying. They are all attorneys first of all. And they have to deal with this. But the NBA has a problem. We have discovered a bigot and a racist among our family and we have been one of the most racially, I guess you know, sensitive organizations in the world. We've been on the leading edge and at this day in age we discovered this privately.

What an owner said privately it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it was private, publicly or if he was intoxicated at the time. He said what he said. And it created a firestorm. And now there has to be restitution.

I thought what Adam Silver did yesterday in his short tenure, man the honeymoon is over for him. He has to make this right. The first step he did in banning David Stern for life sent a powerful message to ex- Clippers like myself, ex-NBA players like myself who were insulted. I mean we all were insulted by that tape. And we are wondering what was going to be done.

Was Armageddon going to happen to David Stern if possible because he's been elusive in every way possible through the law out here. The situation with Elgin Baylor and a lot of other people that will surface over the next couple of months as to how mean and really ugly David Stern has been to Clipper employees as well as now we see damaging to the game of basketball.

COSTELLO: You know, the only thing -- this isn't the first time Mr. Sterling has been accused of racist behavior. In fact Peter, you wrote a 2009 profile of Sterling and the various discrimination suits he faced over the last decade. Yet the NBA was silent. So suddenly it's not, it seems a little bit hypocritical to me.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Peter, go ahead.

KEATING: Well he -- there are different reasons. I mean there's a -- there's a new commissioner in town, he's clearly not operating under the same principles that. There are a few legitimate reasons. There's a new commissioner in town. He's not operating under the same principles that David Stern did. The social media intensifies the public demand for official response to be quick and strong.

I think that in an unusual way there's this alliance of people who are outraged by the most recent comments. I mean you have LeBron James and Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. So you not only have the demand but you have the backing to do something.

But yes let's face the facts. I mean Donald Sterling's previous victims were mostly poor, black and Hispanic tenants in his housing units. And I'm not sure that either they or the women who sued Donald Sterling for sexual harassment, now again a lot of those cases ended up in confidential and legal settlements but you know those were the people he was in court with, I'm not sure the offenses to them registered the way that these very public insults of popular figures like Magic Johnson did on this tape.

COSTELLO: Well Rick they quite obviously did not and denying minorities the chance to rent an apartment is so much worse in a certain way than whatever Mr. Sterling said to his girlfriend in that house.

KEATING: Well look Donald Sterling paid one of the largest monetary settlements ever reached in a housing discrimination case in California and then he paid the largest housing discrimination settlement ever to the Justice Department. And those -- those are matters of public record for years and we got to some of the depositions in the case and the details are horrifying. I mean one person who was his property manager swore that he said that the odor in one of the buildings was because black people stink. Another person testified that he said that Mexican men just sit around the house and smoke and drink all day.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Donald Sterling kind of thought he could say and do whatever he wanted and he kind of had the feeling that he could be heedless and he got away with it. I think he's basically got away with it until he offended the wrong people.

COSTELLO: So, Rick, why did this take so long do you think? Why was he able to buy a team in the first place? RICK BARRY, NBA HALL OF FAMER: Well, first of all, why is everybody trying to make this into such a big thing and nitpick at stuff? Adam Silver, a defining moment for him. I think he handled this just perfectly. He answered all of the questions. He answered the question that you just brought up.

When he was made aware of information about the bias and about racism that was existing with Donald Sterling related to the NBA, they acted on it immediately within two days. And they have taken the steps necessary to try to remove this man from being an owner of an NBA basketball team. And everybody is trying to make things of it.

Somebody is saying why is Adam, one reporter, why is -- they are making a big deal about giving all this credit to Adam Silver. Well I guess that maybe she shouldn't worry about ever trying to win an award for her journalistic approach to things that she does something special because he's just doing his job or she's just doing her job.

And then I hear all of this stuff talking about the owner, if Donald Sterling is going to call -- call on people to try to see what's going to happen to get them on his side. Trust me, any owner who decides to side with Donald Sterling in this is a fool. In the court of public opinion he will be just as guilty as Sterling.

I don't see any way that any owner could ever not vote to have him removed from ownership. This is exactly what should happen. It was perfectly handled and everybody is trying to nitpick on things.

This -- and the real sad part about the whole thing Rachel this is coming at a time when this is the most exciting first round in the NBA for playoff games that has ever existed from the time I was a kid, from the time I was a player, from the time I broadcast and the time I'm doing things as a fan now.

And it's a shame that it has to detract from that because it's been an incredible playoff series so far. And my hat goes off to the Clipper team for what they did. They made their statement at the game up with Golden State and that was the end of it. And then they went out and they played basketball and they did what they were supposed to do.

COSTELLO: I totally get what you're saying. I just want to inject one thing and I would like to pose this question to Michael. I think that perhaps the concerns of some of these owners will be that we're on a slippery slope now.

Let's say the next time some owner says something a little less heinous, he's now forced to sell the team. Like who decides what's heinous enough for an owner to have to sell the team?

CAGE: Well I think they're going to have to decide you know what's more important, to protect our own or the integrity of the league? I agree with Rick Barry on Adam Silver's handling of this yesterday. But I don't agree that they weren't aware of his behavior out here in Los Angeles. It's humiliating to me as an ex-Clipper, ex-NBA player and Los Angeles resident to know that this sort of thing goes on in 2014. I mean, they have to put things in place that hold them accountable just as swiftly with justice as it does with the players. Obviously that's not in place right now. I mean, Adam Silver, I thought he did a great gesture in banning this man. He came down hard. But I got to believe that he knew of this type of behavior of Donald Sterling. I think who really needs to step up right now, you really want to know the defining moment I think for the NBA, is for David Stern to step up and say what he knows about Donald Sterling. He's known him for 25 years.

You can't say that well this is the only documented situation we have. This reported tape that happened over the weekend. There's a lot of evidence out here in Los Angeles. And you just read the paper. And you talk about social media. You can do that with your finger and find out all you want. So I really don't buy into the fact that this was something that they just had to deal with as of Saturday morning when everyone woke up and discovered these horrible things that Donald Sterling had said about people of color.

So really we have to go back and figure out -- I think with the new tenure of Adam Silver has to correct this because we can't afford to have this happen again. We can't afford to have players who woke up yesterday morning and said we're boycotting. This sounds like the 50s, this sounds like the Jackie Robinson situation. You know this sounds like -- this is setting us back 50 years if we allow this to happen again. And we have an environment where it can happen again.

Now what owners do privately, all 30 of them, that's up to them. But obviously Adam Silver is being paid by them. So he has to now force his muscle in there and say we have to show, you know, that we are trying to get better as a league and that our owners have to be held to the same kind of behavior and I think respect that the players do because if this happens to a player, he's suspended as of Saturday morning.

COSTELLO: That's right. That's just fascinating conversation. Thanks to all of you. Michael Cage, Peter Keating and Rick Barry thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, more government buildings in Ukraine under siege. The president puts the armed forces on high alert. Despite new sanctions in place against Russia no end is in sight. So are these sanctions really working? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: In Ukraine, the armed forces have been put on full combat readiness. The interim president says it's because of the threat from Russia. Russian troops remain gathered near the border with Ukraine and pro-Russian militants occupy buildings in more than a dozen places around Donetsk. This week Russia has been with sanctions over its actions regarding Ukraine by both the United States and the European Union. The U.S. assets of dozens of Russians have been frozen but it doesn't stop them from purchasing American real estate which is a hot market right now.

Ted Rowlands has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a three bedroom three bathroom property.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Some call Miami the new Russian Riviera.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the views of the Miami Beach.

ROWLANDS: One-by-one, high end properties are being bought by Russian million and billionaires. And while many of them are drawn to the lavish homes and lifestyles of south beach, they also like to keep a low profile.

SELDA KIRKAN, MIAMI REAL ESTATE INCORPORATED: Most of the Russians they do not want to give information about their business.

ROWLANDS: As the Obama administration goes after powerful Russians with ties to Putin, some including local Ukrainian American critics want the President to go after Russian billionaires in America like the Russian fertilizer magnet who dropped $88 million on the penthouse of this building on Central Park West in New York City or Andrei Vavilov a former Russian finance minister who paid $37 million for the 78th floor penthouse of the Time Warner Center.

VICTORIA SHTEINER, DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE: They feel that once the money hits the U.S., it's a great place for them to keep the money.

ROWLANDS: It's also a great place for them to live part-time. A billionaire, Roman Abramovich a close confident of Vladimir Putin, docked his 550-foot yacht in New York for two months while his girlfriend gave birth to their daughter.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov owns the Brooklyn Nets. While he ran against Putin in the 2012 presidential election, he's also viewed as a Putin associate. Now, he's talking about putting the team under the control of one of his Russian companies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If all of these rich people are sanctioned and they see the facts, there's going to be a chain reaction.

ROWLANDS: At Chocolate Cafe in Chicago's Ukrainian village, Ukrainian-Americans we talked to believe increasing the sanctions to include Russians buying U.S. real estate will help get Putin to back off Ukraine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If his friends start complaining that they're not able to travel and they're not able to transfer huge amounts of money.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're located on downtown Miami.

ROWLANDS: But for now despite what's happening in Ukraine, Russians mega wealthy are free to invest and spend time in America as they please. Ted Rowlands, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right. Let's talk about those sanctions against Russia. Bryan Early is the director of the Project of International Security Commerce and Economic Statecraft at the University of Albany. He joins us now. Welcome.

BRYAN EARLY, UNIVERSITY OF ALBANY: Hi. Thanks for having me.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about what was in Ted Rowlands' package. You know, the sanctions are against Russian billionaires in Russia, not Russian billionaires in the United States. If there were sanctions against Russians in the United States, would that matter?

EARLY: Well, it would certainly escalate the severity of the economic pressure that's being placed on Russians. The ability of the U.S. government to dramatically alter the foreign policy of Vladimir Putin is not going to be affected by smalltime sanctions even if it comes against a number of the wealthy, privileged Russian elite.

I think that one of the key factors that we need to take into account is Vladimir Putin in approaching the Ukrainian crisis has been very strategic. His actions have tended to be very well thought out and well executed.

When the U.S. encounters foreign policy crisis around the world, one of its regular instruments to apply are economic sanctions. So to think that Vladimir Putin hasn't accounted for the fact that a number of economic and political elites will likely be sanctioned as a result of what the Russian governments are doing, what Russian government is doing, I think is a little naive.

So this is something I think that Vladimir Putin has planned for and so I don't think that even expanding the sanctions significantly beyond where they are now as long as they are relatively targeted and limited on elites is really going to change the nature of the cost that Vladimir Putin is facing.

COSTELLO: Because I've read Russia's interest in Ukraine is not about greed or Russia's economy but it's a matter of national interest in survival. You really have to get at that because he doesn't really care because to him this is national pride. This is about Russian security. Not about money or taking Ukraine's resources away or not selling them natural gas or anything like that.

EARLY: Yes. I think that's a very fair statement to make. I think that obviously Vladimir Putin does care about economic welfare of his country but he has a broader portfolio of political interests and I think that he staked a large deal of his reputation on the amount of prestige that the Russian government has within the region and within the world and within the Ukrainian situation and particularly Crimea. He staked out a lot of his personal credibility to successfully being able to achieve what he views are Russia's national interests in its near abroad. COSTELLO: Bryan Early, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

EARLY: All right. Thank you so much.

COSTELLO: Sure. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it turns out there's big money in bigotry. We'll take a look at the dilemma some charities are facing in the wake of Donald Sterling's racist comments. Do you keep his money or do you give it back?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: I find it curious that so many charities that help minorities accepted money from Donald Sterling's charitable foundation. It intrigued me so much that I wrote an op-ed for CNN.com. I think my first few lines says it all.

"Who knew bigotry could bring in big dollars? Hey, Donald Sterling, we know you refused to rent your apartments to blacks and Hispanic but can you spare some change to help us fight for civil rights?"

The LA Chapter of the NAACP not only accepted money from Sterling but it was about to grant him a second lifetime achievement award. And it wasn't just charities who came out ahead with the money. Donald Sterling got a bump to his image or as NPR put it in their headline this morning, "Sterling used money as a detergent in image laundering."

Poppy Harlow is here with more. Good morning, Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol. Well, it turns out that multiple minority focused non-profits accepted Donald Sterling's money but how big of a donor is he? One thing we do know, Sterling made his giving known.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Billionaire Donald Sterling opened his wallet for charity and let people know it. UCLA tells CNN this ad in Sunday's "L.A. Times" touting his gift for kidney research was actually placed by Sterling himself, not the university. UCLA is returning Sterling $425,000 donation and rejecting the rest of his $3 million pledge.

KERRY DOLAN: He likes to portray himself as a charitable man. I would say on a spectrum he's about one of the least charitable billionaires out there.

HARLOW: Sterling amassed a fortune of nearly $2 billion according to "Forbes" largely from real estate with apartments across California. The NBA's $2.5 million fine, the maximum allowed, is a drop in the bucket for this billionaire. He bought the L.A. Clippers for a reported $12 million in 1981. Some estimates put the team's value now at between half a billion and a billion dollars.

There's no saying exactly how much Sterling has given to charity but tax records show the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation donated $1.4 million since its founding in 2007. That's less than his NBA fine. Thousands have gone to minority organizations including the United Negro College Fund, Para Los Ninos and the NAACP.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How much money did Donald Sterling give to the NAACP?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was not a significant amount of money.

HARLOW: Sterling even received a humanitarian of the year award from the Black Business Association and a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP in 2009.

ALICE HUFFMAN, CALIFORNIA NAACP: We have to be careful about the money we take and we have to make sure that the color of the money does not taint us and that we can still carry out our mission and we cannot sellout just to get the money.

HARLOW: Sterling's foundation donated $30,000 to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's museum of tolerance but its leader Rabbi Marvin Hier is appalled and says it won't accept money from Sterling ever again.

RABBI MARVIN HIER: We used that $30,000 to combat the kind of racism, hatred and anti-Semitism that symbolizes what Sterling said in that tape.

HARLOW: CNN's calls to Sterling's representatives have not been returned and some organizations that have benefited from Sterling's fortune want nothing to do with him now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has a long history of turning bad money into good. What shouldn't be happening is somebody shouldn't be getting more praise than they really deserve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Carol -- you just heard there at the end of the piece from Charity Watch's president. He also e-mailed us seeing how small his foundation is, it makes you wonder why he has one other than for the perceived or public image. Of course, I called the foundation yesterday to talk to them about it and they told me someone would call me back. They have not at this point.

COSTELLO: I would just say it's easy to say after the fact that you'll return the money. Some of these charities had to know Sterling settled one of the biggest housing discrimination lawsuits in the country and then he gets caught talking to his girlfriend making racist comments and everyone gets really concerned and says oh, I'm going to return the money now. They had to know.

HARLOW: And so we have heard multiple members of the NAACP, the Los Angeles chapter, California chapter, the whole organization coming out and saying look, we need to more carefully vet where this money is coming from. You heard in the piece, Alice Huffman, the president of the California division of the NAACP saying we have to be sure the color of the money doesn't taint us.

Interestingly, you know some of these organizations like the Museum of Tolerance aren't giving this money back. They said this was used for the right purposes but they're not going to take any money going forward including Para Los Ninos. But this brings that clearly, clearly into focus, Carol, going forward.

COSTELLO: This thing about vetting, a Google search would have done it. But you can read more in my editorial on CNN.com/opinion. Poppy Harlow thanks so much.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling banned for life from professional basketball -- the NBA commissioner vowing to force him to sell his team. But will the owners vote that way and will Sterling put up a fight?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Chaos in an Oklahoma prison when the execution of a killer is botched. The man writhes and moans in agony. We'll tell you what happened next.

PEREIRA: Streets turn to rivers in Florida, people trapped in their attics, flood waters rising. The killer storm claimed yet another life -- 36 people dead in this week's weather and it's not over yet.

Hello and good morning to you. I'm Michaela Pereira.

BERMAN: And I'm John Berman. It's 11:00 a.m. in the East.