“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.'”
“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