Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson is reportedly interested in buying the Clippers if Donald Sterling is forced to sell the team. (Getty Images)
For those who question if it’s possible to own two teams in the same market, look no further than Detroit.
Los Angeles is not Detroit, of course, and it might be time to start asking questions in Southern California. Magic Johnson has reportedly expressed interest in buying the NBA’s Clippers from disgraced owner Donald Sterling. What would it look like if the Dodgers and Clippers were owned by the same group?
Fans already boo Clippers star Chris Paul whenever he’s shown on the video board at Dodger Stadium. Pau Gasol and other Lakers are cheered like the hometown team. Clearly, Dodger Stadium is a Laker stadium. This might get weird.
Or will it? If Johnson is the face of Dodger ownership, he’s also the face of the WNBA’s Sparks and Magic Johnson Theaters. His name is not synonymous with the Dodgers; it’s synonymous with “multiple business interests.” In theory, it should be easy to put the Clippers in the context of Another Magic Johnson Business Interest. Same goes for the other Guggenheim investors; it’s yet to be seen how many of them want in on the Clippers.
In practice, how weird this gets might depend on why Dodger fans boo Clipper players. Is it a knee-jerk reaction to the Clipper brand from Laker fans? Is it because of Sterling? Is it just a Chris Paul thing?
Sterling might be replaceable; we’ll find out soon enough. Paul’s time as a Clipper is inherently temporary. But if it’s a knee-jerk reaction from Laker fans, this might not go over well.
Johnson was a minority owner of the Lakers until 2010, when he sold his shares to Patrick Soon-Shiong, but that didn’t really change his status as a face of (and a mouthpiece for) the Lakers franchise. A world in which Magic Johnson owns the Clippers could be an uncomfortable one for Laker fans. This could be perceived as heel turn worse than Phil Jackson joining the Knicks’ front office.
Johnson said last October in Atlanta that Los Angeles can be both a Lakers town and a Dodgers town. Selling Dodger fans on the idea that this can be a Clipper town too might be beyond even Johnson’s long reach.
Some bullet points for an International Astronomy Day:
• Here’s a FoxSports.com listicle listing their “10 favorite pitches.” Guess which two Dodgers pitches made the list.
• What would a list of the 10 Favorite Dodgers pitches look like? Off the top of my head, in some order: Kershaw’s curveball, Jansen’s cutter, Ryu’s changeup, Kershaw’s changeup, Withrow’s fastball, Howell’s knuckle-curve, Wilson’s knuckleball. Not sure where I’d go from there.
• Get caught up on The Week in Dodgers minor leaguers.
• Adrian Gonzalez and Juan Uribe continue to hit the ball hard.
• Who is MLB’s equivalent of Sterling? Don’t look at our owner, says the Houston Astros.
• I’ve mentioned this here and there, but Don Mattingly is throwing right handed.
• FiveThirtyEight sports attempts to answer: What is the best way to build a major league team?
• The issue of hiring interpreters for Spanish-speaking players became an important one for the Yankees when Michael Pineda didn’t have one to face questions about his pine-tar incident. It was surprising to read this piece in the New York Daily News, in which veteran outfielder Carlos Beltran calls attention to the issue, because it’s never been an issue for the Dodgers’ Spanish-speaking players when I’ve been around.
• A former Dodgers pitcher from Newport Beach played an integral role in the making of Masahiro Tanaka‘s best pitch.
• Baseball nerds rejoice: There’s a new, searchable online library of SABR (and SABR-related) articles and documents. It’s called the Saber Archive.
• Happy birthday to Jim Poole (48).
• Little Dragon might be the perfect band for the digital era. Something about their music leads to amazing remixes. I heard two over the weekend. Here’s a hard take on “Scale it Back”:
And here’s a softer take on “Twice”:
