Steve Ballmer goes ape at Clippers’ Fan Festival

“Steve Ballmer, who just bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion and is also that guy who screamed ‘DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!’ at a conference one time, greeted Clippers fans at a fan festival today,” Tom Ley reports for Deadspin.He spent a good portion of his speech screaming like a crazy person, obviously.”

“The best thing about all of this is watching Doc Rivers and the players try to stifle their laughter while Ballmer has a very earnest nuclear meltdown just a few feet away from them,” Ley reports. “At one point he just starts screaming about how HARDCORE the Clippers are going to be, and the players react like they are watching the world’s lamest dad attempting to sing ‘Rapper’s Delight’ at karaoke.”

See the video in the full article here.

LA Clippers - Steve Ballmer

MacDailyNews Take: Take a look at the players’ faces, particularly during the “HARDCORE!” section of Ballmer’, er… speech (starts at 9:24 in the video below).

That’s some HARDCORE BUFFOONERY!, right there, boys and girls.

“The former Microsoft CEO also gave out his email address on the Jumbotron [sballmer@clippers.com],” Dan Carson reports for Bleacher Report.

“The Steve Ballmer era with the Clippers is off to an emphatic, teeth-grinding start. Ballmer, who picked up the Clippers for an NBA record $2 billion this month, appears ready to set a new tone for his franchise,” Carson reports. “I do feel bad for Mr. Ballmer’s assistant, though. Tending that email address just became a full-time job.”

Read more in the full article here.

“At one point, Ballmer seemingly got frustrated when the crowd didn’t cheer loudly enough to his satisfaction and prodded them to go as loud as they can,” Brad Reed reports for BGR. When outlining his strategy for the Clippers, Ballmer said that “we’re going to be bold,” which means that “we’re going to take risks.”

Reed reports, ‘We’re going to be hardcore,’ Ballmer went on to say. ‘Haaaaardcore! Haaaaaaaard-cooooore!… If something knocks us down we’re gonna get back up and we’re gonna keep coming and coming and coming and coming and coming! DO YOU WATCH THESE GUYS??? THAT WAS HARD-CORE!! HARDCORE, BABY!!! Nothing gets in our way! BOOOOM!!’ (We apologize for spamming you with caps lock here, but that’s really the only way to properly express Ballmer’s extreme enthusiasm for his new team.)”

Full article with video here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on November 19, 2010:

Someone really should explain to Ballmer T. Clown what a microphone does.

Here’s the entire train wreck:

MacDailyNews Take: The Los Angeles Clippers. From a racist frown to the baldest clown. Out of the kettle and into the fire!

[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]

46 Comments

  1. I see passion! Nothing wrong with it. I wish more people had that kind of passion and enthusiasm.

    In your face… yes. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting in front of the loud speaker, if I was in that room.

  2. But you gotta admit, the new Los Angeles Clippers logo/mascot looks really cute, in a 90s cartoon kind of way. As a person who experiencdd the 90s as a kid, it sorta looked nostalgic, and it reminded me of some of the cartoons and comics I enjoyed back then. This is possibly the only good thing to happen sincd Ballmer bought the team.

    1. I wanted to watch it but I didn’t want to see a heart attack as it happened. If he makes it through the first losing streak, are we going to hear “I like our strategy–I like it a lot”?

  3. To call Ballbag an ape is to disrespect our ape cousins.

    The idiot lucked into more money than he knows what to do with but don’t worry there are clever people out there that have begun to relieve him of it.

  4. Steve Ballmer, the gift that just keeps on giving. What a pathetic embarrassment to whatever he’s into. I don’t know how the guy can live with himself, though being a billionaire helps I guess. Here’s a guy that wouldn’t have a single friend if not for his money. Who in their right mind would hang around such an asshole?

  5. We by now all know why Ballmer left MicroSOFT. He wanted to do HARDcore. I am wondering whether in the near future we are going to assist to a rebranding of his favorite company : Microhard would succeed in turning all those flops of late into blatant successes each of them, windows8 surface windowsphone thereby becoming hardows8, hardsurface and hardphone respectively.

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.