WASHINGTON, D.C. April 29 (DPI) — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned team owner Donald Sterling from the league today following the revelation of shockingly racist remarks Sterling made privately to his mixed-race girlfriend. Comments boards went alight, featuring the insightful to the idiotic.

Most though applauded the new commissioner while others warned of the “slippery slope” of punishing private comments.

The NY Times site received 800 comments by 5pm Tuesday, only hours after the commissioner’s announcement.

www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/sports/basketball/nba-donald-sterling-los-angeles-clippers.html

Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, told his girlfriend in a private conversation she recorded that she shouldn’t be with black people when she attends NBA games. The absurdity of his remarks – he’s the longest-tenured owner of a team in a basketball league in which 75% of the players are black – struck much of the public as outrageous, and out of step given the nation’s racial progress in recent years.

Highest recommended comment on NYTimes.com focused on a key point – that a sports league was punishing an owner for conduct detrimental to business, and not for exercising any free-speech rights.

This is not about free speech. Sterling is still free to say whatever he wants, whenever he wishes. Whether you agree with the ban or not, speech (like other actions) has consequences. If I stood up from my desk at work and denounced management or made bigoted comments about my coworkers, I’d surely be fired too. Those who think this is a free speech issue are in serious need of a civics lesson.

Fifth highest Recommended:

This isn’t a violation of free speech. They’re not telling him he cant say these things, they’re telling him he cant say these things AND be a part of their league. Considering he has already said these things, they are well within their jurisdiction to ban him. He effects their corporate sponsorships, their game attendance, and their ability to provide roll models to children and families through public sport – it’s only right that that they censure him.

The slippery slope matter certainly resonated with readers, who reacted to a NY Times quote of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who told reporters:

“What Donald said was wrong. It was abhorrent. There’s no place for racism in the N.B.A., any business I’m associated with, and I don’t want to be associated with people who have that position. But at the same time that’s a decision I make. I think you’ve got to be very, very careful when you start making blanket statements about what people say and think, as opposed to what they do. It’s a very, very slippery slope.”

Some readers too focused on the fact that his comments – repugnant as they were – were made in a private conversation, and one that was apparently illegally recorded. Other highest recommended:

Sterling was offered no chance to defend or explain himself. His remarks, awful as they were, were private utterances.

This is justice? Is this what we’ve come to, that whenever someone acts stupidly, he can be fined and banned without even the pretext of a hearing or an opportunity to apologize or atone?

Can you say “railroad?”

Another:

While Donald Sterling’s supposed comments were racist and highly offensive, it’s important to keep in mind that he’s being punished for something he said in a private phone call that was presumably recorded illegally. These were not comments that he issued in a press release or said at a podium. Regardless of what I think of his comments, I think everyone should be able to express their thoughts in private without being persecuted. We all say bad things in private that we wouldn’t want the public to hear.