He sits in a visible spot on the baseline, where he cheers as if no one is watching.
The big bald man with long sleeves roars with each splashed basket, gestures with each sparkling pass, his face turns red, his arms flail, celebrating with such force that he once tore his dress shirt.
He could be any die-hard Clippers fan, with one exception.
He owns the team.
Steve Ballmer is the perfect symbol of the power of Hollywood hope, the strength of California dreams, and the resilience of those who come here in search of a miracle.
Ranking eighth on the Forbes 500 list, with an estimated net worth of more than $120 billion, Ballmer could afford to buy any sports team in any league.
He chose to buy the Clippersspending $2 billion in 2014 for a perennial loser and one of five teams to never reach the NBA Finals.
“Is a team for sale in a city I love that’s close to me?” said Ballmer, 68, a former Microsoft executive who lives in Washington state. “You say, ‘OK, but it’s the Clippers,’ and my theory is you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”
As the richest owner in North American professional sports, he had the wealth and influence to move the ragtag franchise to a city far from his older brother. Lakersperhaps even in his adopted hometown of Seattle.
“It became clear to me that we needed to have our own home, our own identity.”
Clippers Owner Steve Ballmer
Still, he doubled down and not only kept the Clippers in town, but spent another $2 billion to build his own arena: the glitzy Intuitive domeopening in Inglewood in October.
“It became clear to me that we needed to have our own home, our own identity,” Ballmer said.
Cynics would describe his ownership of the Clippers as charity work, but his true philanthropy has had an even greater impact on the region, with his Ballmer Group investing hundreds of millions of dollars in everything from downtown businesses to the renovation of 500 Clipper Community Courts across the city.
“Impacting kids is the kind of thing that touches my heart,” Ballmer said. “A fan will tell me they walked past a Clipper court and I’ll think, that’s really, really, really cool.”
Ballmer is approachable, generous and, above all, the main cheerleader of a stuffy part of a city owned by the Lakers.
“I love our die-hard fans,” he said. “I love the culture of come on, we have a chip on our shoulders, we have something to prove, we’ve never done this before, let’s go!”
It’s a Thursday afternoon at the start of the 2023-24 NBA season and Steve Ballmer is shouting into the phone, because of course he is, the sound of eternal faith, the voice of a true believer, come on!
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
