Updated

I've covered sports in 5 decades. Almost everyday  during this period something has occurred has left me fascinated and amazed by what has taken place on the fields of play.

In a unique way, sports is the common tread that can tie our communities and our country together. It enables us to enjoy a common experience. While we each have separate routing interests, we share events together that always bring us back for more.

The past two weeks have been the exception. Donald Sterling has done what is almost impossible. He has taken away from our country at the best time of the NBA season, the game that so many of us love, and turned so much of the attention of the league in to something that it isn't.

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The NBA is where players from dozens of countries with countless nationalities not only coexist and blend together, but genuinely work as one to combine for excellence and achievement. The league is a model for race and multi-cultural coexistence.

Donald Sterling now stains the achievements the league has made.  He has been an outsider on the inside for more than 3 decades. His issues with the league and his businesses have been well chronicled.

Having reached this boiling point, everyone has played a role, and is at fault for this current circumstance. Certainly no one more than Sterling. He has created his own nightmare and we are now being forced to live through, and ride out his demons.

Over the years, the media has reported all of his vile acts, then somehow we accepted that this was his disgusting norm.

The league tried at times to oust him, but legally couldn't, and hoped at some point, Sterling would just go away.

That unfortunately didn't happen.

The players and coaches knew what they were getting into, but at the end of the day they took the checks and worked for him. Throw in the fact that somehow, some inexplicable way, the sponsors and fans kept buying the product, no matter what they knew about the owner.

In his final act, he has taken things from reprehensible to despicable. His attacks on Magic Johnson are whatever is beyond mindless and senseless.

So now, even after Sterling's banishment,  as the nation sings in unison of universal condemnation , we are all left to become witnesses to a freak show, that none of us want, or like.

So after years of failure, Sterling has finally succeeded. He has become impossible to ignore.

What a shame.