If Adam Silver hadn’t dropped the hammer on Donald Sterling Tuesday afternoon by banning him for life, the NBA was going to be in for another rude awakening on Tuesday evening.
The Golden State Warriors were in L.A. for game 5 vs. the Clippers last night and they planned on boycotting the game. Not by holding signs and picketing, but by not playing the game at all according to the Mercury News.
That would’ve gotten really interesting really fast. The NBA would much rather get rid of Sterling then face that nightmare, which is why Silver needed to make that announcement prior to game 5. Sterling was likely aware of what could potentially happen so he really had no choice in the matter.
The plan was set, the product of a 30-minute players meeting.
The Warriors were going to go through pre-game warm-ups and take part in the national anthem and starting line-up introductions. They were going to take the floor for the jump ball, dapping up the Clippers players as is customary before games.
Then once the ball was in the air, they were just going to walk off. All 15 of them.
“It would have been our only chance to make a statement in front of the biggest audience that we weren’t going to accept anything but the maximum punishment,” Curry said. “We would deal with the consequences later but we were not going to play.”
