Donald Sterling is the NBA's and its owners' mess, not Chris Paul's and the Clippers'

For now, everyone's turning to the wrong people to make owner Donald Sterling accountable for a lifetime of deviance. From Chris Paul to Doc Rivers, they're asking the African-American leaders of these Los Angeles Clippers to make a stand while missing the years and years of those responsible for the true negligenc

Sterling has never been a Clippers problem, but an NBA problem. The commissioner's office believed Sterling was sick and dying, that he would go away, and only he comes back to haunt and embarrass the NBA again. The NBA deserved those audio tapes to come out from TMZ. The owners and commissioner's office deserved for Sterling to reveal himself again publicly as a racist and scoundrel.

This isn't about Chris Paul, the president of the National Basketball Players Association. This isn't about Doc Rivers, the president and coach of the Clippers. It isn't on them to make declarations and stage protests now. The NBA chooses its owners, and it makes its rules. It wields an iron fist with executives, coaches and players, and now it needs to do its job to begin the process of removing him as an owner.

"The content of his lawsuits alone should have been acted on, but the other members of the club – in addition to Stern – should have [held him] accountable," one high-level NBA official told Yahoo Sports on Saturday. "But no one would touch it. We were always holding players, teams and coaches accountable, yet the standard for owners has been a double standard."

In the middle of a playoff series, in a championship chase, star players are supposed to make a stand on a degenerate owner? Get lost with that nonsense. This is letting the NBA off too easy, letting it stay silent and inactive when that's what it's mostly been for decades on Sterling.