“After Steve Ballmer plunked down $2 billion for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, fans might expect the former Microsoft chief executive to be hitting the reset button on a team that has been through a nasty public fight over racism,” Mary Milliken and Eric Kelsey report for Reuters. “Don’t bet on it. That experience, Ballmer knows, makes his team unique, and it will be part of the story he tells to earn one thing that was not guaranteed by the record price tag: a fan base that will sustain the team for years to come.”
“But the man who helped sell personal computing to the masses knows he has to sell a team that has long been overlooked and overshadowed by its more famous L.A. rival, the Lakers,” Milliken and Kelsey report. “Ballmer promises that whether the fan comes to the arena, or cheers from the couch, or follows on a smartphone or tablet ‘you are going to have the best experience and that is not just the best in L.A.'”
“The mobile experience is something Ballmer knows intimately and he acknowledges that under his leadership at Microsoft it was something he did not get right. Competitors such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. seized the mobile revolution and put pressure on Ballmer to innovate. He stepped down as CEO in February after 14 years,” Milliken and Kelsey report. “‘And do I wish a higher percentage of today’s mobile devices were ours and we had birthed that category?’ he mused. ‘Yes, of course I do.'”
“It should come as no surprise, then, that the Clippers will be a Microsoft organization. The son of a Ford Motor Co manager, he’s always been a company and product loyalist, banning his own family from using Apple’s iPhones,” Milliken and Kelsey report. “‘Most of the Clippers on are Windows, some of the players and coaches are not,’ Ballmer said. ‘And Doc kind of knows that’s a project. It’s one of the first things he said to me: ‘We are probably going to get rid of these iPads, aren’t we?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we probably are.’ But I promised we would do it during the off season.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: And, consigning yourself and your team to inferior tablets helps you win more basketball games how, exactly?
Leave it to Ballmer T. Clown to cut off his nose to spite his face.
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Steve Ballmer’s quest for the spotlight – August 20, 2014
Steve Ballmer goes ape at Clippers’ Fan Festival – August 18, 2014
Poor business man
Good, Clippers are super lame and he is even lamer. Have fun with the surface suckfaces!
Ballmer continues his longstanding great tradition of mediocre leadershit, bad decision making, and poor vision. This team was doomed as soon as the Uncle Fester ownership papers were signed.
Ballhead has to live the rest of his life with the fact that he got owned and trampled on by Jobs and Apple. He may have all the money one could ever need but he won’t be able to buy legacy and how history will judge him – the guy that made Microsoft irrelevant.
I can’t wait for the fireworks when Steve Ballmer asks Blake Griffin to stop lending his image to iPhone skins/case covers. Blake Griffin may be under contract for three more years, but if he plays mad he might accumulate even more technical fouls, resulting in more game suspensions, which would lead to more game losses. Best if Steve doesn’t meddle.
From the new LA Clippers playbook
Wow, their marketing is bad.
Someone on YouTube clearly has a school girl uniform fetish. This may have been TAKEN from a real Microsoft commercial, but isn’t a real Microsoft commercial. Thank god…
Can we blame the lad? Those iDevices will remind him too much of his past failures.
“promised we would do it during the off season”
For Microsoft, the last 14 years have been the “off season”
There goes the LA Clipper’s season! I imagine the Clippers organization to be ran as efficiently as Microsoft was under Ballmer.
That should keep some Clipper players and fans awake tonight!
Ever since he put an ipad in his back pocket and sat down, he has been upset with them.
It was just a fart. It bent the iPad and scorched his pants too.
I see in the future those aluminum fold-up chairs the players sit on being thrown in the air during a game when the coach can’t divulge his winning strategy on such a losing device.
“My OS ate my game plan!”
I am so glad that Ballmer T. bought the Clippers and is back in the limelight…when he was heave-ho’ed from Microshaft, I had the same sinking feeling as when Johnny Carson retired:
COMEDY LIVES!
…my condolences to all the die-hard Clippers fans, but comedy is more important than basketball.
LA Clippit.
Please please please Balmy–introduce stack-ranking to the organization.
He’s randomly assaulting anyone he sees carrying an iPhone by pinning them up against the wall with his belly so it’s all business as usual as far as he’s concerned.
Ned Ryerson
Thursday, August 14, 2014 – 5:58 pm · Reply
He said he’s committed to doing what’s necessary to make things better, smoother and more efficient.
“I get a chance to understand from (Doc Rivers), the fans, the players, the staff and the other coaches what I can do as the new owner of the L.A. Clippers,” he said. “What can I do to support them in what I call a Steve Ballmer, hard-core, passionate way?”
Steve — Ban all Apple products and replace them with Surface 3 and Nokia phones!
The as-long-as-it-takes mantle has been successfully cloned.
He knows mobile devices so well that Microsoft today sells less than 2% of all smartphones sold.
Watch out Doc Rivers — better keep those iPads in the back room. Microsoft supplied Surface tablets to the NFL which were only for displaying photos taken during the game to analyze the other team’s strategies, and those crashed mightily.
You might be better off with an old school projected and reel-to-reel film.
HOBBLING YOUR BUSINESS.
How very Ballmer.
“…nasty public fight over racism…”, no way. The fight was about said racial remarks, not racism! If you do not know the difference you should check the dictionary and grammar.
For some unknown reason, I’m reminded of the South Park episode where they changed their mascot to Giant Douche.
What a pompous ass Balmer is. If I were on the Clippers and have an iPad, I would just keep it at home. Out of sight out of mind.
Even as the owner, I don’t think it’s his place to dictate what types of products the players must use. Will he tell them they have to drink Pepsi and not Coke, drive Chevy’s and not Ford’s. What kind of insecure, inept, totally lacking in social skills, apish buffoon would try to micromanage a team of professionals into such a corner? If I was a Clipper, I’d be doing everything I could to get traded to another team. The team went from being owned by a moronic racist to a guy that doesn’t have the slightest clue about basketball.
Take my iPad and iPhone? Only from my clenched bloody dead hands. I’ve checked out Microsoft’s ware. They are without a doubt the worst POS hardware I’ve ever had the displeasure of testing. I guess the guy really like pissing people off. I know I’d be royally pissed if I was a clipper and some bald headed freak tried to ram such a thing down my throat. Somebody needs to smack Ballmer upside his head big time. What an idiot!
A bitter jealous shallow clown…