Hulu’s Clipped Review

The Story of Losers, A Racist, And the Right Hand Arm

---

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN DISCUSSIONS OF SENSITIVE TOPICS SUCH AS Racism, AND Sexism. Spoilers from the real life event and the Hulu show may also be discussed. CONSIDER WHEN AND WHERE IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO READ THIS PIECE. 

---

The Sterling Affairs

The infamous Barbara Walters interview

The National Basketball Association is ripe with iconic tales of triumph and scandal throughout its 75 years of existence. You have the Showtime drama of the 1980’s Lakers that had Magic Johnson’s life fabricated into the terrific HBO show, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. How about Michael Jordan’s epic reign of dominance that made for one spicey documentary in the Netflix miniseries, The Last Dance.

The point is that the NBA doesn’t have a shortage of stories to draw inspiration for Hollywood to adapt. Donald Sterling and V. Stiviano’s TMZ infested drama was not on the top of my bingo list to find adapted into a television series. And yet here we are in 2024 with Clipped, a 6-episode somewhat parody-like drama from FX on Hulu.

I’m not going to lie, when I saw the trailer, I was instantly intrigued. After all, this was one of those scandals that I lived through as an adult that honestly doesn’t feel that long ago. Yet in reality, the events this show is based on happened a full decade ago. Time sure flies. 

I don’t think there’s much to spoil here as these events were well publicized and reported on in real life, but the gist of the story can be summed up relatively easily. The socially out of touch rich owner of the Los Angeles Clippers caught his “is she or isn’t she” mistress wanting to bring black people to his basketball games at Staples Center. This leads to the infamous racist conversation being recorded and released to the media, causing immediate backlash that forces him to sell his team.

The infamous Anderson Cooper 360° Interview

On the surface, this is a terrible story with horrible optics. Yet if you lived through this media circus, you’ll remember just how comedic the whole thing actually was. The Magic Johnson and “those AIDS” interview with Donald Sterling on CNN’s Anderson Cooper program. The theatrics of V. Stiviano and her Kardashian-like accessories flaunting her new found fame on television. The whole ordeal really was pure theater if you sit back and analyze it now. It was hilarious.

So it actually kind of makes sense why Clipped works as a drama-dy. This is a narrative based on ESPN reporter Roman Shelburne’s podcast The Sterling Affairs, which I too remember listening to during that time in history. While the television show fabricates the story, I would actually say that it tones down the insanity of what actually transpired in reality instead of the other way around. 

---

Rebel Moon - PArt Two: The Scargiver Review

The second installment of Zack Snyder's space opera continues 

Read

---

The infamous White Party made famous by Donald Sterling

White Party Weirdness

Episode 1 is titled “White Party” and the show picks up straight away with the wackiness of Donald Sterling and his reign of terror. Parading his (mostly black) players around his house while everyone in attendance is forced to dress in white is enough to make anyone cringe at the lack of self-awareness of the situation. Yet the actual real life event is even more out of this world than what we saw reenacted from Clipped’s Donald Sterling which was portrayed by actor Ed O’Neill. With media so spread out through various forms nowadays, we have many records from former Clippers who played under Sterling that retraced the bizarreness of the White parties. Basketball star Blake Griffin once recounted being escorted by his hand from the senior millionaire owner around the pool party as if he were paraded to white patrons of the team as a shiny new toy.   

One thing the show does a great job of doing is to actually incorporate key iconic moments of this scandal into a narrative format. I was waiting for the Anderson Cooper interview to pop up from the very first minute of the series. For the most part, they did a terrific job of capturing the moment. It was cringey, it was comedic, and most of all, it felt out of place. That was exactly how the population felt when that real life interview from Donald Sterling aired. 

Who Is The Biggest Loser?

For all of Ed O’Neill’s brilliance in his Sterling role, I wouldn’t consider Donald Sterling as one of the actual main character perspectives in Clipped. Those positions fell to three unlikely leads that dictate the pace of the entire scandal. It’s a tale about a bunch of losers, plain and simple. Seriously. Everyone is a loser in this story and that is the historical truth. The Clippers were the laughing stock of the NBA for a majority of their existence. Donald and Shelly Sterling lost their team. Doc Rivers lost his mystique as a legendary coach during his tenure with this franchise and has now become an internet meme. V. Stiviano lost everything in the lawsuit. So why do we want to watch their stories? Well, because they’re intriguing.

V. capitalizing on her new found fame

The first perspective the show introduces viewers to is the brand new head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, Doc Rivers. Returning to the city he once played for in the early 1990’s that presided over the civil unrest of the LA riots, Doc finds himself once again faced with a similar conundrum between his personal goals and the morally correct path. Let me just say that Laurence Fishburne played an amazing Doc Rivers. He didn’t portray an accurate Doc, but he was one hell of a fictional parody of Rivers. Take it with a grain of salt to enjoy it for what the performance was. This was Jason Clarke as Jerry West levels of awesomeness. It’s a completely fabricated portrayal of a person who doesn’t act anyway similar in real life, but it sure played out great for the screen.

The second person the show pushes as a main narrative cog is Shelly Sterling, the embattled wife of the controversial owner of the Clippers. She’s technically his equal and partner in their businesses, but her disdain for her husband’s ever advancing assistant eventually draws her ire that leads to their downfall.

Well, downfall is a twofold way to look at it as she eventually did lose her position as a majority owner of an NBA team, yet by the end of the ordeal, she’s billions of dollars richer and still maintains all the amenities of a high status person in the NBA. Actress Jacki Weaver gives the character a sympathetic angle that I don’t think many people actually saw during the scandal. Sure, the real Shelly Sterling was given credit as the person who freed the NBA from Donald Sterling by selling the team to the enthusiastic former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, but she was still complacent in her husband’s escapades and business dealings for decades. Was she really a hero? Clipped actually addresses this too and gives the character a lot of time to showcase her true self.

And finally, the third character that I would say is the main point of view from Clipped is none other than V. Stiviano herself. During the scandal in real life, the media portrayed her as a gold digger who wanted nothing more than money and fame. My impression of her was that she was an aspiring socialite. The show touches on this by showing clips of Cleopatra Coleman’s V. watching the Keeping Up With The Kardashians show. However, Clipped does also showcase the supposed mistress in a surprisingly much more admirable light too. We find out that V. has been attempting to adopt two boys that she has been fostering through the help of her boss, Donald Sterling. He even buys her a duplex that she wants to move her kids into that becomes the center of conflict between her and Shelly Sterling.

I followed the Sterling scandal quite closely as an NBA fan back when it happened and I don’t recall learning that she was a foster mother from any of the mainstream media interviews I saw. Yet Clipped is correct in this portrayal as she actually did adopt the two boys in real life. Out of all the characters on the show, I think Coleman harnessed the characteristics that V. Stiviano wanted the world to see the best out of any other character on the show. She dissected the ruthlessness and desire to move up in the social hierarchy of Hollywood so well that she was a better V. than the real one. Coleman and O’Neill had a unique synergy through their acting abilities to give off the proper vibes of the Sterling and Stiviano relationship. 

Is Shelly a hero or villain?

Was V. really a mistress like the media pushed hard to prove her to be or was she his right hand arm like she claimed she was? Clipped successfully guides viewers on a uniquely effective job at walking the line between answering that question and vaguely implying an answer that might not fit the narrative we might have expected from what we know in real life.

I for one finished the show with the belief that Donald Sterling actually did not view Stiviano in a sexual manner. Sure, it was still a perversion of their roles as an entitled boss and a desperate employee, but in a twisted manner, the actors and the writing did convince me that the two mutually cared about one another in a non-sexual relationship.       

To Stand Or To Sit

Where Clipped occasionally lost me was with its pacing. There are 6 episodes in this miniseries that traces viewers with flashbacks and social media montages to progress the plot forward. While juggling between three main points of view and their troubled histories, the flow of time becomes a bit difficult to follow. This is especially true as the entire scandal part of the ordeal played out during the Clipper’s push to win a championship towards the end of the season and into the NBA playoffs. Between Doc Rivers’ decision of whether to take a stand against racism this time around, and his constant visits to saunas, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that start convoluting the main plot. It felt like the show wanted to drag on a story that in reality was a relatively short ordeal.

Clipped also took viewers into surprisingly deeper serious subjects. Racism is of course the main driving force behind the scandal as Sterling was caught on tape telling V. not to bring Magic Johnson to his games. But the theme about personal desires taking root over moral responsibilities was an intriguing inside look into this scandal that on the surface didn’t seem to be as controversial when it happened. 

Doc Rivers was an NBA player in Los Angeles during the LA riots that devastated the community. The show gives us flashbacks to the inner conflict the coach never resolved within himself for not doing more to speak up against racism at the time. Flash forward to his current predicament, which is to win a title by turning around the perennial losers of the town. The irony is that if he wins, he wins for a racist owner. It makes for an intriguing story. So the big question is should he and his players continue chasing their dreams to raise that trophy at the end of the tunnel? Or should they boycott playing for their racist owner who thinks of his employees as slaves, thus abandoning their own personal dreams of being champions?

I do think the show does a terrific job of really illustrating the magnitude of a decision like this. Don’t forget that in in real life, the Los Angeles Clippers team during the Sterling scandal really had a shot at the title. Superstar point god, Chris Paul had jump started Lob City with Blake Griffin and the team was on the up and coming. We got to see Paul, Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, JJ Redick, Matt Barnes, and Big Baby Davis portrayed in the show. 

Was Reality Better?

As an NBA fan, the easter eggs of spotting former players you remember watching is absolutely a fulfilling experience. Add in a Steph Curry and Draymond Green confrontation in the tunnel and every NBA fan is going to have a blast in more ways than one. It’s absolutely comedic how none of the actors resemble the NBA players they’re portraying. While Winning Time absolutely nailed every single casting role, Clipped is a Saturday Night Live skit by comparison. They look nothing like the real players!

So did the world really need a drama series about the Donald Sterling scandal? Probably not. But for NBA fans who lived through the unnecessary drama caused by the consensus worst owner of all-time, it was fun to relive the event through Clipped. I still think that a YouTube session with all of Donald Sterling, V. Stiviano, and Shelly Sterling’s interviews during this time period are more enjoyable and entertaining to watch, but Clipped is still a decent show that is worthy of an NBA fan’s time.                

---