He sits in a conspicuous baseline seat, the place he cheers like no person’s watching.
The big balding man in lengthy sleeves roars with each splashed basket, gestures with each scintillating move, face reddening, arms flailing, celebrating so laborious he as soon as ripped a gap in his costume shirt.
He could possibly be any die-hard Clippers fan, with one exception.
He owns the staff.
Steve Ballmer is the right image of the facility of Hollywood hope, the energy of California dreaming and the resilience of those that come right here trying to find a miracle.
Rating eighth on the Forbes 500 checklist with an estimated internet value north of $120 billion, Ballmer may afford to purchase any sports activities staff in any league.
He selected to purchase the Clippers, spending $2 billion in 2014 for a perennial loser and certainly one of 5 groups to by no means attain the NBA Finals.
“A staff comes up on the market in a metropolis I like that’s close to me?” mentioned Ballmer, 68, a former Microsoft government who lives in Washington state. “You say, ‘OK, however it’s the Clippers,’ and my principle is, you are able to do something for those who put your thoughts to it.”
Because the richest proprietor in North American skilled sports activities, he had the wealth and affect to maneuver the bedraggled franchise to a metropolis far-off from the massive brother Lakers, maybe even into his adopted hometown of Seattle.
‘It was clear to me, we needed to have our own residence, our personal id.’
Clippers proprietor Steve Ballmer
But he doubled down and never solely stored the Clippers on the town however spent one other $2 billion to construct his personal enviornment: the glitzy Intuit Dome, which is scheduled to open in October in Inglewood.
“It was clear to me, we needed to have our own residence, our personal id,” Ballmer mentioned.
Cynics would describe his possession of the Clippers as charity work, however his actual philanthropy has had a fair bigger affect within the area, along with his Ballmer Group investing tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in every part from inner-city companies to the renovation of 500 Clipper Neighborhood Courts in numerous pockets of town.
“Impacting youngsters is the sort of factor that pulls at my coronary heart,” Ballmer mentioned. “A fan will inform me that he drove previous a Clipper courtroom and I’ll assume, that’s actually, actually, actually cool.”
Ballmer is accessible, beneficiant and, most of all, the pinnacle cheerleader for a drowned-out swath of a Lakers-owned metropolis.
“I like our die-hard followers,” he mentioned. “I like the tradition of c’mon, we now have a chip on our shoulder, we’ve obtained one thing to show, we’ve by no means accomplished it earlier than, c’mon!”
It’s a Thursday afternoon early within the 2023-24 NBA season and Steve Ballmer is shouting into the cellphone, due to course he’s, the sound of timeless religion, the voice of a real believer, c’mon!
This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Instances.
