Game 40: Elgin Baylor - Sweet Potato Pie
In 2014, secretly recorded tapes of Donald Sterling confirmed what most people working in the NBA had known for decades: The L.A. Clippers’ decrepit and notoriously stingy owner since 1981 was an unabashed racist. Like Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Sterling made his fortune in the L.A. housing market. But unlike Buss, Sterling was a slumlord who was sued twice, once by the Housing Rights Center for telling employees that "black people smell and attract vermin" and "Hispanics just smoke and hang around the building" and another time by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent to black people in Beverly Hills. So when Sterling’s visor-wearing girlfriend V. Stiviano released audio of Sterling’s angry tirade about her Instagram photos with black people (including, uh, Magic Johnson), NBA personnel from superstar players to valet parkers were disgusted, but not exactly shocked. In the aftermath of Sterling being banned for life from the NBA, one of his former employees said that “justice has been served.”
That quote was from Elgin Baylor, the Hall of Fame Laker and former general manager of the Clippers for 22 years. He was referencing his failed lawsuit against Sterling that claimed the owner fired him for his age and race. While labeling Sterling a racist is like calling water wet, Baylor’s abrupt dismissal after two decades with the team was not as cut and dry as he hoped the jury and the general public would see.
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Before his long tenure as a Clippers executive, Elgin Baylor was best known as a Laker. Voted as one of the NBA’s Top 50 Players during the NBA’s 50th anniversary celebration, Baylor was one of the flashiest players of his generation, someone who played above the rim and led the way for future stars like MJ and LeBron. But unfortunately for the kid from Washington, D.C., he played before games were regularly videotaped or photographed. Baylor has his own statue outside of Staples Center, but the Lakers legend is best known for an out-of-his-control indignity: In 1971, his 14th season, persistent knee troubles forced him to retire nine games into the season. The very next game, the Lakers broke off a record 33-game winning streak on their way to their first NBA championship since moving to Los Angeles.
Baylor was still given a ring by the team, but one can only imagine the embarrassment he felt watching them capture the title after he came up short in the NBA Finals eight times. Baylor never rejoined the Lakers organization, opting instead to coach the New Orleans Jazz for four seasons. Meanwhile, Donald Sterling had taken Jerry Buss’ advice and bought the San Diego Clippers in 1981. A couple years after their 1984 move to Los Angeles, Sterling called up the former Laker great with an offer. He wanted him to be the Clippers’ new general manager. Baylor had no executive experience, but the Clippers had won just 32% of their games under Sterling’s ownership. Expectations for Baylor were low. And besides, winning wasn’t Sterling’s goal. Owning a team was a reputation builder, something to give him cache in a city filled with millionaires flashing their wealth. And with the NBA steadily gaining prominence in America, Sterling knew that future revenue-sharing TV deals would fill his pockets regardless of whether the Clippers won games.
Under Baylor’s leadership, the Clippers became synonymous with losing. In the 22 year span Baylor spent as general manager, the Clippers made the playoffs just four times and only posted a winning record twice. Six times, they won less than 20 games. Part of this was Sterling’s fault; his reputation for frugality was well-deserved. And the plantation mentality he held towards his players -- he would later be caught saying “I support them [Clippers players] and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them?” on the V. Stiviano tapes -- went from whispered gossip to acknowledged fact. And even the perk of playing and living in Los Angeles wasn’t enough for Baylor to sign big-name free agents. But as general manager, Baylor was in charge of some of the worst drafting in all of professional sports. Look at this list. The amount of busts and unrecognizable names is mind-boggling, especially when you remember that the Clippers were picking in the top 10 nearly every single year.
Any other general manager would’ve been fired years, DECADES, earlier. But Sterling didn’t care about winning and Baylor clearly didn’t care that he was seen as a highly-paid joke around the league. Even more disturbing, Baylor mentions in his 2009 lawsuit that he witnessed Sterling’s racism up close for decades. He says that Sterling would regularly invite friends into the players’ locker room to ogle at their “beautiful black bodies.” Players like Blake Griffin, drafted after Baylor’s firing, would later confirm Sterling’s locker room behavior. Still, Baylor continued to do poorly at his job and cash checks from a man whom everybody knew was racist long before the leaked phone call.
So was it the money that caused Baylor to turn a blind eye? Yes and no. Sterling was stingy to his employees, whether they were players or executives. But after the Clippers made it to the 2006 playoffs, Sterling started to loosen his pursestrings just a bit. Most notably, he rewarded coach Mike Dunleavy with a 4 year, $22 million contract after years of firing (and being sued by) his coaches. Around that same time, the Clippers signed players like Cuttino Mobley, Baron Davis, Elton Brand, and Sam Cassell. But according to Baylor’s lawsuit, the Clippers capped his general manager pay at $350,000 in 2003, very low for an NBA general manager, and didn’t even give him a raise after he won Executive of the Year in 2006. Sterling likely knew Baylor had no other option for a six-figure income and low-balled him knowing he’d stay. Baylor later told reporters that he stayed because so few other executives were African-American. But unlike the MLB, NHL, and NFL, that’s simply not true for the other 29 teams or the league offices of the NBA.
Soon after Dunleavy’s extension, Baylor found out that Dunleavy had been secretly granted Baylor’s general manager duties. That’s both extremely shady on Sterling’s part and ridiculously negligent on Baylor’s. What happened next is cloudy. Baylor claimed he was fired and the Clippers said that he voluntarily resigned. In any case, the dismissal became a literaly case in 2009 when Baylor sued the team and the NBA for wrongful termination, claiming race and age discrimination. Not long after, he dropped the race aspect of the case. Two years later, a jury took four hours to unanimously reject his lawsuit.
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When former NBA commissioner David Stern died two weeks, several of the articles I read touched on his failures, like the NBA dress code and Tim Donaghy the Gamblin’ Ref. But none mentioned his unwillingness to convince the 29 other owners to evict Sterling from the NBA. Stern knew that one of the owners in a league where 80%+ of the players are minorities was a proud racist and did nothing about it. It wasn’t until the V. Stiviano tapes surfaced two months into his hand-picked successor Adam Silver’s tenure that Sterling was finally removed. Faced with serious playoff boycott threats led by LeBron James and Steph Curry, Silver dropped the hammer on Sterling. He banned Sterling for life from the NBA and forced him to sell his team. It never should have gotten to this point. Stern’s refusal to do anything about Donald Sterling was the biggest failure of his tenure. Countless NBA careers and reputations -- players, coaches, executives, trainers, etc. -- were hobbled or ruined by association with Sterling. And arguably the worst of those shattered reputations was Baylor’s.
Sterling remains an unapologetic racist to this day but the jurors rightly saw that Baylor’s lawsuit was bullshit. Baylor was one of professional sport’s all time worst executives -- albeit one who was hamstrung by Sterling’s unwillingness to spend -- who was so inept that he didn’t even know Dunleavy was given the power to conduct trades and choose draft picks after his extension. So Baylor went to court and lost, just like he did on the basketball court. In his 2018 biography, Baylor wrote about being forced to stay in separate hotels from his white teammates early in his NBA career. That makes it even more troubling that for decades, it was his job duty to hire young black men to work for Donald Sterling. Baylor wasn’t a minimum wage worker faced with homelessness if he left his job and abusive boss. He was being paid a six figure salary and could’ve sought work with several other teams willing to bring on a legendary NBA player in some capacity.
The sad story of Elgin Baylor and Donald Sterling revolved around money and respect. Sterling hoarded money and desperately craved the respect he got as one of only 30 NBA owners. Baylor played before giant contracts and endorsement deals and found himself willing to degrade his name in order to maintain a certain lifestyle in Los Angeles. He also saw Sterling’s offer as a way to gain the respect he missed out due to his ill-timed playing career and retirement date. But a deal with the devil isn’t just a metaphor from 500 year old folk tales. It’s a handshake that will alter the course of your life, always for the worse.
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Sweet Potato Pie
1 ½ cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
½ cup milk
4 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon
1 9-inch unbaked pie crust
In bowl of food processor with steel blade, process the sweet potatoes. Add butter and continue to process until smooth. Transfer to large bowl and mix in eggs, sugar, nutmeg vanilla, and cinnamon. Stir in milk. The mixture should be smooth. Let stand overnight in the refrigerator to set slightly. Pour into unbaked pie crust and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 ½ hours. Let cool before serving.
“Elgin’s favorite dessert!!”
Comparing this to Magic Johnson’s mom’s sweet potato pie recipe that kicked off Goldstein and Gasol in Game 1, I have to hand it to the Magic Mom. I will admit that I didn’t follow Baylor’s recipe exactly. I don’t have a food processor, so I boiled the sweet potatoes and mashed them before mixing the rest of the ingredients together. This might make it more even, but I didn’t have a brand new electric hand mixer when I made Magic’s version. I used an old fashioned whisk.
In any case, the Baylor mix is much more of a liquid than Magic’s, hence the refrigerator overnight. I didn’t notice much of a change after 24 hours of refrigeration though. But it cooked right, if a little burnt on the bottom. The taste was all there, but it was missing a little something special. Like, say, if you were to compare Magic Johnson to Elgin Baylor.
