‘Clipped’ series finds the right actors to tell LA Clippers, owner Donald Sterling’s story

LOS ANGELES — There is one thing that the LA Clippers do better than the Lakers: fake TV shows.

By fake I mean a “quasi-fictionalized but mainly based in reality” television series that reminds viewers of times recent and returned, more in the form of lore and legacy. And though in actual life there have been no winning times for the NBA’s second-tier franchise in the City of Angels. Clipped, which premieres on FX Tuesday, is already the better small-screen production.

Based on the 2019 ESPN 30 for 30 podcast series titled The Sterling Affairs, and executive produced by ESPN NBA Insider Ramona Shelburne, this isn’t just a send-up of a story that a national NBA writer told with aplomb, it’s just a good show.

From the absolutely pitch-perfect marketing imagery — a hand with perfectly manicured blue and red nails firmly grasping two (basket)balls — to the soundtrack’s modernized rearrangements of classic rap songs to introduce pivotal characters, it’s a gem that isn’t overdoing it. Reminder: The Clippers are colloquially understood to be the most slapdash and shortsighted franchise in the history of the league, so how do you visually represent a genuinely dramatic American story without wallowing in the haplessness of the team?

By doing something the Clippers have never done: finding the right rising star to carry the team, support with a few veteran role players and excellent coaching, and get out of the way.

“The only thing I’ll say is the actress who plays V. Stiviano is going to have you out trying to find a visor because she’s amazing,” Shelburne said on ESPN Daily on May 29. “Her name is Cleopatra Coleman. And whoever wants to start merchandising those visors, you should go now, because she’s going to be the star of the show. She kind of already is.”

For a cast that includes Laurence Fishburne, Ed O’Neill and Jacki Weaver, let’s just say it’s, at the very least, a winning formula. The first two episodes serve as sort of mini-movie within themselves. By the time we get along to midseason, we’re reminded that this isn’t just the tale of another franchise stepping on its own neck, this is a story wrapped up in many fundamental American pop/culture tenets: cycles of Hollywood grandeur, the business of major pro sports and, obviously, racial discrimination in America.

“I had ideas in my head while I was thinking about it. But the actresses and actors that they actually ended up casting are just better than I could even imagine,” Shelburne continued, who covered the Clippers for the Los Angeles Daily News from 2002 to 2009. “So it’s kind of fun to watch everything play out in a way that I always envisioned it. But then you hand the ball off to the Hollywood people and let them do their Hollywood thing.”

In 2002, the Clippers were at their most middling. A few recognizable names but largely ho-hum. A guy like forward Cherokee Parks was on his second stint with the Clips, which is wild. That also happens to be the year that the movie All About The Benjamins starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps was released. Directed by Kevin Bray, who directed three of the six episodes of Clipped, the Detroit native who’s also directed more classic rap videos than I need to list understood the importance of authenticity in the show for any of this to feel right.

“I think it was to give context and in fact, it was like sometimes, you know, fashion is function. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense, but like that was the most efficient way for us,” Bray said last week during a taping of the Let’s Talk Clipped podcast. “We actually tried to create an environment that was in some of the earlier drafts. And we shot some material where we tried to, you know, emulate or re-create a sliver of what was going on in the streets and it was just very difficult and it was not as authentic as I thought it should have been.”

He’s talking about the portion of the show where the subject of the LA riots becomes integral to the story, a defining cultural moment that shook America to its core following the savage beating of Rodney King by police that was caught on video in 1991. These are the kind of elements that are really tricky to balance when creating an exciting show, without getting so far from the truth that you escape the reality of why it’s important to begin with.

And when this overlaps with the use of the N-word, an obviously touchy subject in a show that functionally highlights another part of the reason team owner Donald Sterling ultimately was banned for life from any association with the Clippers and the league by newly minted NBA commissioner Adam Silver in 2014. In one scene involving a young Doc Rivers (Freddie L. Fleming) and his father Grady, there’s real care in not just if the word is used, but how.

“My grandfather never used that word. He never swore,” Bray explained Friday in Studio City. “None of his siblings and the grands do. It’s funny the way that Doc’s father said it, it’s like, is he replaying it? Or is he, does he say it like that? Is he uncomfortable to use the word? Like, ‘I’m never gonna use that word.’ I’m not gonna degrade myself to that because he may be from that generation. That was a decision [the man who plays Grady Rivers] made as an actor. But it is, like, that one moment when the dad says it for me was always like, ‘ooh, what’s he doing?’ But at the same time, I’m like, ‘so what?’ You know, this happens. So, it hurt in maybe a good way to see that from the dad.”

Arguably the most difficult hurdle in the storytelling is the awkward space this whole storyline operates in relative to now. It was 10 years ago not 40, 50 or even 25. Point being, most of the target audience likely remembers these events reasonably well. It’s hard to nail a vibe of something that recent without making it feel like it’s set either yesterday or a digital century ago. Through various methods, the goal is achieved, particularly by excellent acting.

A dynamite performance from Clifton Davis as Elgin Baylor is highlighted by one particularly fantastic scene later in the season with Kelly AuCoin (who starred in Billions on Showtime) that really explains the performance depth of the show.

“He and Elgin, Clifton Davis who played Elgin, when they were doing that scene, it was like watching a little one-act play,” Bray said. “If you’re with a good group of actors who are going to give you the unexpected and they’re going to heighten the material, the crew will come around, because in the first rehearsal or the marking rehearsal, they know they’re going to see something happening for the first and only time.”

AuCoin is more than happy with the work, in exercise and in execution. That scene was one that marked his overall ability to just be his character, then-Clippers general manager Andy Roeser.

“This is kind of like a play. I loved working with [Clifton]. I loved getting to the meat of what makes Andy, our version of Andy, tick,” AuCoin said last week. “He’s made his deal with the devil and this is sort of where he’s all-in.”

For one actor, however, the link between basketball and thespianism is not just one of on-screen convenience. It’s personal.

In Hollywood, the athlete-to-actor pipeline is nothing new. NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown somewhat paved the way in this regard, but then along came guys like Carl Weathers, who weren’t always just random tough guys in films because they were humongous. Weathers majored in theater at San Diego State before playing for the Oakland Raiders and eventually becoming a movie star.

For Sheldon Bailey, who plays DeAndre Jordan in Clipped, that coexistence started even earlier in life, at South View High School and Mount Zion Christian Academy in North Carolina. Somewhat of a military brat, aside from being a star hooper, Bailey also acted in high school plays.

With one exception: musicals.

“I never led a play. But I used to get like some of the more like, juicy roles and some of the roles that have more depth,” said Bailey, who attended Winthrop and Florida International during his college career. “Most of the productions I was in were ensemble cast productions. And also. I kind of had a hard rule: We’re not doing musicals. I did like the singing a bit, but the combination of the singing and dancing, nah. I took theater, drama. Teachers recognized my passion and my talent. The difference in me [is] they never really had a guy that looked like me that played ball and neither had as much interest in the arts as I did.”

Nowadays, at 6-feet-6 — having played stunt doubles for NBA players Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and LeBron James — this role was built for him. As far as image goes, it’s solid casting but this wasn’t a situation in which he was going to try to go all-in and actually talk like Jordan, either. Generally, they say no accent is better than a bad accent, and that was the thinking here from all the actors who played the Clippers players who nearly walked out on a playoff game to protest Sterling’s racist comments then.

Bailey didn’t have to dig too deep for motivation, because he agreed with Jordan at the time.

“I didn’t know at the time that that was his stance, but my stance was I wanted him to boycott. I didn’t want the Clippers to play. And I felt very strongly about it,” Bailey said Sunday. “So then, fast-forward years later, I get this opportunity to play DeAndre as the main guy taking the stand to boycott and so I rocked with it. So, for me it was just like, ‘oh, great.’ Let’s definitely embody this and bring this home, because it’s not even that far from how I really was.”

Let’s not forget, this was a scandal of the first order in the NBA. Before the ousting of Sterling, governors/owners didn’t just lose teams to controversy the way they do now if enough people can muster up the gumption to challenge authority for an extended period of time. We’re talking about a major deal from soup to nuts.

The drama of the reality was as thick as anything a film exec could think up. 

“He didn’t just say I’m banning Sterling for life. He said, I’m banning Sterling for life. He delivered it with all little more oomph because he knew that’s what the moment called for,” Shelburne said on ESPN Daily. “He understood the anger that everybody felt. He understood the seismic nature of the tape, but also what he was about to do. And it was like, there was no discussion. Like, I’m not taking this to the board of governors. I’m not getting everyone else’s opinion.”

If I’m being honest, for a long time Sterling as a character in the NBA was always more comedic than harmful, to me. Over the years in NBA circles, you heard wild stories about what he did, and how he operated with a very plantation-style mentality, which isn’t funny. But the details were always so ridiculous that it almost felt like it was a matter of time before the forces of nature got him out the paint.

For the story to come back 10 years later and still be a fast-paced ride to a satisfying ending is an epilogue with a delightful finish. It’s why for Bailey, he has no problem saying that this is the biggest role of his life.

“The premier movie critics of my generation that are alive today. I am dumbfounded, to be honest with you that, you know, they picked Sheldon Bailey as a standout in the show,” he said with the humility of a guy was often looked at just for his size. “As an actor, you kind of dream of this, and I really, I really am very appreciative. Hence, I have no problem saying is the biggest thing that I’ve done that’s cool. It’s Laurence Fishburne and them on this joint. FX has billboards all over town. So, it’s freaking incredible, man.”

Which in a word, is how I would describe the show, too.