|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 18, 2014Steve BallmerDoc RiversTHE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. You've been given a lot of credit for being the guiding light keeping this ship afloat. Where did you get your resolve? And, Steve, you've shown so much enthusiasm and interest here, unlike we've ever seen here before. How frustrating did it get for you going through this process that you knew eventually you would prevail? COACH RIVERS: The credit is not due, honestly.  I'm not trying to be this humble guy. There's so many other people. There's so much more than me, honestly. I was the voice of a lot of people, but I was really just the voice of watching other people's actions, you know. So for me that part was very easy in the fact that I had great leadership around me, just dealing with the employees and our players, obviously. So someone I guess has to get some of the credit. I think it should go to the organization more than me, I can tell you that, and to our players. They were amazing. Very easy to coach in an extreme time. I thought there was a lot of opportunities for us. I use the word, it's probably an inappropriate word, of 'letting go of the rope.' I thought we could have chose that very easily. I didn't have to give one of those speeches with our group. I didn't have to say, Guys, I know you're going to use this as an excuse. But what I'm happy about now is that's removed and we can just go to doing our jobs. I didn't even like after we lost that some people used that as an excuse, I really didn't. And we lost. They beat us. I told our guys that, and I thought our guys handled that very well. Resolve is resolve. If you're trying to win something, you better have resolve, and you know that. That's just the way I dealt with it. STEVE BALLMER: I'd just say I'm in a sense late to the party. The amount of time it took me in the grand scheme of how long it takes to get 'business deals' done, it may be frustrating, but it always takes time to do something complicated. This had its own set of issues. But I'm glad we're here. We're driving. We're moving forward. It's just fantastic. Q. Steve, a question in regards to the word 'passion'. Too bad you didn't show any today but eventually you will (laughter). What is it about the game of basketball that you're passionate about? And, Doc, follow up how that will affect your ballclub. STEVE BALLMER: I think basketball is the most exciting sport on the planet. I love basketball. My passion actually in a sense is for things I get involved with, and things therefore I can really love. I can go watch a basketball game completely dispassionately, but I can't watch one of my sons do anything completely dispassionately. I won't be able to watch the Clippers play dispassionately because now I care, I'm involved. I kind of love it. I think it's just, you know, really an exciting time. Doc knows far more about this than I do, but I know winning takes passion in anything you choose to do. I know that's true in sports, as well. And our job is to support the guys who actually have to go and get it done. COACH RIVERS: For me it's easy. You know, I say it all the time. I'd rather kindle a fire than start one. Well, I don't think we have to do either. That fire started next to me, there's no doubt. But it's good. There are people who are excited about being the owner of a team, there are people who are excited about the business opportunity of the team. My sense is he's excited about making something a winner, making the team a winner. From a coaching standpoint, that's pretty nice. Q. Doc, have you ever seen anything like you saw out there today? COACH RIVERS: No, I was shocked. I really was. It was awesome. When I walked out, you know, it's funny, when Payne Brown (phonetic) brought this up, this idea, I'm thinking rationally, Man, on a Monday afternoon? Are you crazy? In the middle of the summer that there's no basketball going on? I remember someone said, Well, maybe a thousand people. Honestly, I actually said a hundred, but not a thousand. You got to be kidding me. I think it was Game5, Golden State, the passion that I saw from a group of people... I'm serious, the Clippers fan to me has been a group, it's like when you're walking by and there's a guy, Shh, I'm a Clippers fan. It's like now they can actually say it and be proud of it. And I'm very happy for them. Now I take that responsibility very serious. You saw that today. It was incredible. Q.  Were you surprised to see Steve do what he did? COACH RIVERS: No, not at all. Are you crazy? No. I get caught up in that, I really do, and that's good. I mean, that was all good. I've seen Steve from YouTube. I've seen the energy. It's funny, when we first talked, I told him I love energy. I think it's infectious, I think it's good, I think it's positive. So I thought that was great for our fans. It was really a cool moment and, again, an unexpected moment. I did expect we'd get some people. I didn't see that coming. That was awesome. Q. Doc, can you comment on your pronouncement that you were going to quit if Sterling was in place? COACH RIVERS: Well, it really was just a conversation with Dick and I. I honestly didn't think that was going to happen, you know, logically speaking. Adam had already taken the team away. You know, I thought that took on its own life. It went from that to if the season starts, such and such is the owner, which I never said that part. It was true, though. Sometimes you do have to take a stand, and there's nothing wrong with that. I didn't think I was going to have to, honestly. But I think a lot of us would have been willing to, for sure. Q. How does this event help mend the recent negativity surrounding Donald Sterling? COACH RIVERS: I don't know. Everyone has what I call a mending point. I don't know what point it is for every individual. I'm not an expert at this. I've had to deal with things personally on my own level. I think at some point you always have to move on. As a team last year during this whole thing, I brought up the 'no victim' policy. We will not be victims. So everyone has to have that at some point, in my opinion. I can't tell you when to forgive, when to move on. You know, I have. I can tell you that. As a coach now, I mean, we got to stop Kevin Durant. That's my thought. Cleveland is building this new crazy basketball team. They stole one of my coaches. I'm thinking about that right now, how we can stop that. That's my focus. Q. Obviously this is an owner that has some very deep pockets, but we've seen teams in the past that haven't necessarily spent their way to championships. I assume you have talked about it some. Talk about the discussion, the philosophy of how do you spend right versus how do you throw money at new contracts. STEVE BALLMER: Let me make a comment or two and then turn things to Doc. First of all, the way things work, we had no discussion about what to do until after the transaction closed. We've been busy, but we haven't had our first one‑on‑one post the deal. We get a chance to get into it. I think my job is making sure we can support putting the best basketball team we know how to put on the court on the court. Doc is in charge of figuring that out. I'll challenge, I'll work with him. But ultimately my job is to support. The truth is, it's very complicated to know, salary cap, those of us who have not been in sports forever and ever don't know the formula. But we're going to be excellent at that under Doc's leadership. COACH RIVERS: And really, I mean, honestly, I love all his money, I do (smiling). Having said that, you just can't use it. This is a league that has a cap. So you have to be smart. That's why analytics are so important in our league. That's why the scouts and the vision is so important in our league. You've got to pick the right people. It's more than just talent. You know that, you've been around this game. It takes character, guys who are over themselves, and luck. Sometimes you got to get lucky. The more you put into all that, hopefully the luckier you get. Q. Mr. Ballmer, you've talked about your expectations, the standards for the team today. What about the NBA? What do you think their expectations are of you? How do you plan to go about meeting them? STEVE BALLMER: Well, it turns out when you want to become an owner, they give you I'm going to guess there's probably about 500 pages of bylaws and constitutions and operating procedures. I'm about 378 pages in. Of course, I'm making these numbers up. There's a lot of pages, and I'm partway through it. It sort of describes what the expectations are. The most important thing is what are my expectations for the Clippers. My expectations are that we go to higher heights than we achieved last year, and pretty quickly I figure out what an owner can do to support the folks that really have to go get the work done, because I'm not going to do any of it myself. That's kind of where we are in the process. We'll, of course, want to be a great team. I think the NBA will benefit from having the Clippers be an absolutely first‑rate team. Q. Steve, you lost out in trying to move the Kings to Seattle. When that happened, did you think you would get another shot at owning a team? Can you walk us back to how disappointed you were when that all fell apart. STEVE BALLMER: It turns out teams sell periodically. You don't necessarily have one a year that sells. If you look at various sports, they sell at different rates. But I had enough experience now looking at these things to know that not every team sells every year. Sometimes teams sell infrequently, that I would need to be on my toes and take sort of the best available opportunity. I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity. Never thought it would happen. Nobody did, I think. But, you know, I look at it as luck, good fortune, and I'm excited to be here. Q. Doc, can you tell me, what are you most excited about in terms of the vision of the new ownership? Long‑term heard about some technology. COACH RIVERS: Well, there's a lot of things technology‑wise. We're laughing. We've been talking about this a lot. Let me put this up. STEVE BALLMER: Thanks (laughter). COACH RIVERS: Listen, if he can't do it technology‑wise, we have an opportunity database‑wise, as far as all our video. We have an opportunity here. We're going to take advantage of it. We should. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the excellence talk. Listen, my goal when I came here, obviously there's certain things that I knew I wasn't experienced enough to do on the other side, what I call the business side, but we're the same team. You want everything to be this great, first‑class group. We have the opportunity to do that. We're going to take advantage of that. It's great when both sides are trying to do the same thing. They always are, really. But with Steve's leadership, we have this opportunity to be this great organization. So that's probably what makes me the most excited because I know if you get that part right, the basketball part will become easier in some ways, and that's good. Q. How do you feel about Shelly Sterling possibly being courtside at games? Steve, are you going to sell shares for this? How are you going to put those shares back out on the market? COACH RIVERS: Shelly, I look at her now as, number one, what I've heard, this deal doesn't get done, I think we all understand that. You can say what you want about Shelly, but without her, this deal does not get done. I think we have to understand that. The second part is she wants to be a fan. She's no longer the owner. But she wants to be a fan. I'm fine with that. What's wrong with being a fan? STEVE BALLMER: I did this deal by myself, and I'm happy I did. I think it required a little bit of flexibility and maneuvering. Kind of a little easier to dance and move a little bit when you're by yourself as opposed to with others. I'm sort of at the point now where I'm doing a couple things. There's no need to do any more than that. I can stay where I am, that would be okay. But I'm going to take a deep breath. I really want to get to know the people, the organization, what people need. Then once we kind of have a roadmap, I can think about that again. But it's not something that must be done, if you will. Q. Steve, we know you're obviously very emotional and excitable. When you found out about this, did it make you emotional? A kid who got cut from his basketball team. Blake Griffin said when he watched you coming down and chest pumping with all the fans, that gave him goosebumps. What did it make you feel to hear a player say that? STEVE BALLMER: It's funny, there was not one moment when I said, Yes! There was a mini moment when we signed our binding term sheet. It's the first time I said, It could happen. It was great. After that there was the moment when we knew we were going to close the deal, I guess it was just last week. COACH RIVERS: Yeah. STEVE BALLMER: Just last week. You know, I was fired up. I was happy. But I'm already thinking now forward to, Where do we go? What are we doing? Your question about Blake and his comments. Look, if it gives goosebumps, if it helps, I'm glad. I am fired up. I think about my only job is to make sure that we demand excellence of ourselves, and that I do what I can to help other people do their best work. If it helps players, Doc, staff, then I'm doing what I think I need to do. Q. Steve, this felt like a rebranding today. Did you ever consider changing the name of the Clippers? Have you picked out your seats, where you're going to sit? STEVE BALLMER: Number one, I don't know how many days, four days, maybe I've owned the Clippers, five days. It wasn't mine, if you will, to worry about rebranding. The Clippers are the hottest brand in basketball pretty much right now. I'm sure people will talk and comment and think. I'm an open book. I'll listen to all that. But why would you take the hottest brand in basketball and change it? Dick Parsons, who has been acting CEO of the team, he was talking about being with the president of one of the African nations last week. Guy was all fired up about the Clippers, not some other name, the L.A. Clippers. Sounds like a pretty good name to me. As long as people are fired up, I'm all in on the name. Doesn't mean I'm not open‑minded. There's smart people around. I think things are in a pretty good place. I'm a courtside sitter. We have season ticketholders who own those seats. I don't even actually know how this stuff gets managed yet. That will be a subsequent meeting. But, yes, I like to sit near the action. It's more fun. That was the number one piece of input I got last night at dinner with Doc, some of the coaches and players. We were all debating where the best place is to sit. Of course, none of them have to sit there, just me. COACH RIVERS: I get to sit courtside, as well. STEVE BALLMER: But your seat is fixed. COACH RIVERS: I don't know if I can deal with that energy right by me. STEVE BALLMER: No, that would be unfair to these guys. They don't want me near them. COACH RIVERS: You know, it's funny on the name change thing, I get hit with it all the time. The way I look at it is, you never look at it that way. It is a hot name, why would you ever change it? I also look at it as a name of survival. The Clippers, we've gone through a lot of stuff, not just recently, but for a long time. If we can get this right, I think it means something. That name is a name of survival, that you can come out of it. I think if we do it right, the name can stand for something. That's the way I look at it. Q. Steve, what specifically from your experience at Microsoft translates into running an NBA team? When it comes to putting together the team, if Doc comes to you, it means going over the salary cap, you would have to pay some luxury tax, what are your feelings about that? STEVE BALLMER: I believe, and I'll say this with the right to get smarter every day, I believe most businesses start with great people, a culture of excellence, a commitment to really working well together, and with a point of view about how to get after it. I think that works in business. I think it works in sports. I think it works in a lot of things. I am not an expert in basketball. I may have gone to a hundred games or so last year. I was trying to do an estimate. Kid games mostly, not pro games. If you actually ask me, What do you know about strategy? The answer would be, A lot less than I should for a guy that goes to a hundred games a year. You'd think I'd get smarter. Nothing in the tech industry applies in that sense. But great people, making a point of view, committing to excellence, being bold, those things I think work for winners. That's what we want to be. We want to be a team that improves, gets better every day and is successful. Q. Steve, what did you think about your reception from the fans? You get introduced, you walked out, chest pumping fans, what is going through your mind during that time? STEVE BALLMER: I was pretty nervous, I'll admit. I was pretty nervous before I went out. I asked Doc, What do you do? I thought maybe he had been to a fan rally before. I know what to do with folks in the tech industry, blah blah. Tech industry, you don't get a lot of guys really excited about the tech. Turns out sportsfans and tech guys might be different, but they still get fired up about the things they're fired up about. Wing it, go with your natural style, hope you don't screw it up. I was fired up, then the fans got fired up, I got more fired up. This talk about, Who is Larry, C.J. Wilcox? Anyway, I certainly got over my nervousness. Now we'll have to see whether I got anything I got to do to clean up messes from anything I said. But it was real fun. COACH RIVERS: C.J. is going to give a report on what he's done in his lifetime. Q. This is definitely a situation where if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready basically. You were ready for the whole deal. Now that you're here, we hear about the missing piece of the puzzle, but do you think this is the missing piece to the puzzle of the Clippers? COACH RIVERS: I hope so, because then the puzzle is completed. You don't know. I think this is definitely a piece we needed. It's a gigantic piece that we needed. Do we have enough? I don't know the answer. I think we'll find that out as the season goes on.  You're kind of looking at your team. I like our team, I can tell you that. I like the fact that we're back together. My goal was to improve the team by making few changes because, you know, this year everything's not new to them. This year when you put stuff in, it was stuff that they know now, so we can pick up from where we left off instead of starting anew. So I'm really excited about our group. STEVE BALLMER: I'd use the tech industry expression, What version number are you on? This was about V3 for me of trying to buy a team. It worked. I don't know, maybe we're on V2, V3, V something of the Clippers. The key isn't reinventing everything. It's taking on the incredible foundation. You think it wasn't like a really great performance last year when people talk about getting through things. I know there's stuff to get through, but the team was great last year. Not as great as we all wanted it to be, but the team was great last year. Doc said something to me in one of our early meetings.  Sometimes what you want to do is make small changes to get much better. Sometimes you want to make big changes. We're just going to go do our best, I guess. Q. What kind of things did you talk about last night at dinner with the players and with each other? COACH RIVERS: Golf. STEVE BALLMER: Golf. COACH RIVERS: A lot of it. Just to get it out there, I've gone from an 8 to a 16 this summer. If you don't know golf, that is not the right way to go. I don't know why. So I was asking advice from everybody at the table. I clearly found out none of them know about golf, except for Steve and Payne. That's one. We talked about seating arrangements. He seems to think the baseline is a better way to view a game. We thought, Well, you can only see this side. When it's way down there, you don't get to see that. But we talked about a lot of stuff. It was really fun last night. It was a great time. Q. Steve, what does 'hardcore' truly mean to you? You've been here for 10 minutes, but what does it feel like to actually be an owner after all that effort and can you prove that you are not Dick Vitale? STEVE BALLMER: 'Hardcore' is some combination of passion, tenacity, dedication to getting better every day, being willing to build new skills, develop new capabilities, push, push, push yourself. I try to embody it all. I like the expression, It works for me. I don't know if it's going to work for anybody else. Worked okay at Microsoft. It was kind of a term we'd use a little bit. But it's my way of expressing this incredible dedication to being better and to being tenacious about things. People give up on a lot of things, in my opinion, not sports specifically. People give up too quick. People expect success to come overnight. Doc was talking about a lot of teams need to have adversity in order to get to the next level. So that's how I would characterize this notion of 'hardcore'. It's all pretty brand‑new, this being an owner thing. It's a funny word, I think. The whole thing is kind of surreal. Last night I made a point which meant something to me, I don't know if it meant anything to Doc, the staff or players. Every one of them is more experienced in what they're doing than I am at what I was doing. I'm three days on my job. The young guys on the team, they've been doing that longer than I have. There's a lot to learn. Q. Beyond just the basketball fans, the city has so far embraced you enthusiastically. Can you talk about the reaction you're experiencing within the city and how you're going to insinuate yourself in Los Angeles. STEVE BALLMER: I've been incredibly humbled frankly by the positive reaction. It's very nice. It's fantastic. 'Insinuate' is kind of a funny word. I don't want to insinuate. But I feel lucky with open arms. I'm sure there will be issues to do that I or the team that others can be helpful with. The key for me is to listen and to learn. There's a lot of great people on the Clippers staff who kind of understand these things. Doc has talked to me about some of the issues. I embrace community. Players are busy people. It's not an easy thing to do. But we're going to listen and learn. Q. Richard Parsons was appointed by the NBA to be the CEO. Is there a future for him in the organization? Is that something he wants? I know you said you're not moving the team to Seattle. I get hit by many Clippers fans, they need some sort of reassurance. Can you elaborate why they can be comfortable knowing you'll be in Los Angeles? STEVE BALLMER: I've known Dick Parsons for a long time. Dick is a phenomenal guy. I'm grateful he'll give me a transition period where he'll keep after things. Dick likes his grandkids. We've talked about this personally. He did this. Call it a labor of love. I think we all should appreciate what he did. I'm glad it will give me a little extra time because everything kind of happened suddenly. But Dick is a guy who has run Time Warner. He's been the chairman of the board at CitiBank. He's in a phase of life where this is not going to be his full‑time job. I'm just appreciative of what Dick did, his contribution to get us where we are. I don't know what I can say on the second one that's going to convince anybody. I'll tell you the hardest thing I did. We did a little media availability up in Seattle for a golf event that I played in a couple weeks ago with a group like this. I said, Look, I love Seattle. I've lived in Seattle 34 years. It is our home. It's where our family lives. But it's not where the L.A. Clippers are going to play. Doing that in front of this crowd is easy. Doing that at home, you know, I said, Look, we tried, took a good run at it. I don't know how long it might take. I think Seattle is a town that deserves an NBA team. Yet I wanted to move on and get going. That was a phenomenal opportunity. I love L.A. also. It's where they play. They're the L.A. Clippers. I'm not trying to discount the Clippers name, but the 'L.A.' is not changing, not under my watch. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|