I was working on a column on humility during the month of Elul when I got interrupted by my obsession with sports, a childhood condition I still can’t shake.
The story of the NBA imposing one of the harshest penalties in league history to the Los Angeles Clippers and owner Steve Ballmer has buzzed throughout the sports world this week.
It’s a human drama, if not a Greek tragedy.
A billionaire former Microsoft CEO buys the Clippers from a previous owner mired in a racist controversy. He pays a record $2 billion and is portrayed in the media as the savior of a losing franchise. He embraces the role. His enthusiasm is so off the charts he looks like a kid when he cheers from his courtside seat.
That’s the thing with sports– it has a crude, childlike simplicity. There are clear winners and clear losers. For an eager team owner by Ballmer, being a clear winner means holding up a championship trophy in front of the national media.
The business world, no matter how high your company’s stock goes, can never provide that kind of macho ecstasy.
To reach that elusive summit, Ballmer knew he needed superstars. In the summer of 2019, one became available– Kawhi Leonard, who had just taken the Toronto Raptors to the NBA championship.
Once Ballmer saw Leonard as his ticket to the top, nothing would get in his way, and Leonard knew it. First, Leonard demanded that the Clippers bring in another star (Paul George), which forced the Clippers to give away the store in a trade.
Then came the issue of money.
The NBA has these salary cap rules to prevent super wealthy teams from large markets to abuse the system. Ballmer knew the rules, but his drive to win overtook his sobriety.
I’ll spare you the details, but after an investigation by a reputed law firm, the league concluded that Ballmer and the Clippers committed “flagrant violations” of salary-cap rules in order to boost Leonard’s pay.
Hence the harsh penalties announced this week, which include the loss of five first-round draft picks and a one-year suspension for Ballmer from all team and league activities.
That might be the ultimate insult: Ballmer won’t be able this year to enter his pride and joy, the $2 billion Intuit Dome, arguably the world’s greatest indoor sports stadium.
Ballmer and his army of lawyers are digging in and threatening legal action, but most experts agree that won’t go far. The evidence is too damning.
Now you can see why a column on humility got interrupted.
The first lesson seems obvious. There are irresistible forces that can hypnotize us. In Ballmer’s case, the combination of unlimited money and an unlimited drive to win blinded him to both ethics and basic business practices.
For a successful billionaire like Ballmer, there was another force that blinded him—faith in his business acumen. This is a businessman who is not used to losing. Why should that start now?
Maybe that helps explain his refusal to accept the public verdict of his failure— it feels too personal, too connected directly to him.
Publicity is both a dream and a nightmare. If you’re holding up a championship trophy, it’s the former. If you’re castigated as someone who tried to win by cheating, it’s the latter.
Ballmer’s wealth—he’s worth north of $150 billion– used to be a sign of his supreme confidence. Now it’s a reminder of a shameful, sudden failure.
Billionaire or otherwise, I take no pleasure from Ballmer’s fall. I take satisfaction from sharing interesting human stories, Jewish or otherwise, and maybe drawing lessons from them. This is a story of both hubris and humility.
Among the definitions of hubris is “an extreme and unreasonable trust in one’s own abilities or importance,” which “causes people to ignore warnings, reject advice, and break normal rules.”
Like Ballmer, we all have these things we believe in so strongly we forget basic things we already know. Sometimes the thing we’re most attached to is the very belief that we’re right and others are wrong.
The art of humility, which prepares us for the process of introspection and accountability at Rosh Hashanah, may be the toughest. Who wants to look weak and admit mistakes? We much prefer to win. It’s not clear how humility can get us there.
Maybe one answer is that humility can get us to another kind of victory—a victory of conscience. There’s some ecstasy in that, too.
Shabbat shalom.
