Steve Ballmer admits he was ‘nervous’ at Monday’s fan festival

Steve Ballmer/Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News

One would never know that new Clippers owner Steve Ballmer gets nervous, what with the powerful yet zany way he goes about addressing large groups of people.

When Ballmer made his way through the fans seated inside Staples Center at Monday’s fan festival, Ballmer was his typical wild and crazy self, high-fiving fans with gusto. He got to the dais and started screaming, with fans loving every second of it. But he was jittery, or so he says.

“I was pretty nervous, I’ll admit,” Ballmer said. “I was pretty nervous before I went out. I asked (coach) Doc (Rivers), ‘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 sports fans and tech guys might be different, but they still get fired up about the things they’re fired up about.”

Ballmer, 58 is the former CEO of Microsoft.