“What if [Donald Sterling] is still there. I mean, he’s not going down without a fight. What if he’s still there when next season starts?” Rome asked Mason during the taping of the show which airs Wednesday night.
“If it’s not handled by… the start of next season, I don’t see how we’re playing basketball,” Mason said. “I was just in the locker room with LeBron… At the end of the day, you know we have leaders. We have player reps, we’ve got executive committee members… Leaders of the teams, they’re all saying the same thing, ‘If this man is still in place, we ain’t playing’.”
Rome followed up: “So your guy LeBron, you think he would not play if Sterling were still in there when the [next] season started?”
“I was just in the locker room three or four days ago. LeBron and I talked about it,” Mason said. “He ain’t playing if Sterling is still an owner.”
Rome asked about Sterling’s wife Shelly Sterling. “What if he’s not there, but his wife is,” Rome asked.
“No Sterling deserves to be an owner of that franchise any longer,” Mason said. “And I’ve gone down the line from LeBron to the other guys in the league that I’ve talked to and they all feel the same way. There’s no place for that family in the NBA.”
Of course an off-hand comment to a friend inside of a locker room is much different than if he were to address the media. Still, if this statement is true, this statement by James is something the NBA and its commissioner Adam Silver must take seriously.
JIM ROME ON SHOWTIME airs Wednesdays with encore airings all month long on SHOWTIME and SHOWTIME EXTREME® and is available on SHOWTIME ON DEMAND and SHOWTIME ANYTIME.
Photo Credit: Getty
Josh Helmuth is the editor of CraveOnline Sports.
