‘Blackballed’ Ep. 11-12 takeaways and open thread

The final two episodes of Quibi’s documentary series on the Los Angeles Clippers have dropped. After Donald Sterling is banned from the NBA and he gives a truly awful interview with Anderson Cooper where he digs the racism hole even deeper, how did the series wrap up? Don’t want to give away the whole thing, but some takeaways from the final two installments:

• Chris Paul appears to suffer the brunt of the final two losses to the Thunder, and even several years removed from it, he betrays some emotion in looking back at the series. You can tell it will stay with the team and individuals for a long time.
• Shelly Sterling emerges as a hero/co-villain of the story! While she stood by her husband for over 50 years and was certainly complicit in many respects, she also seemingly came out of nowhere to help wrap the long slog with Donald Sterling and the NBA by selling the team. I still think it’s quite possible it was all, ahem, planned, but no matter, they got their money and were sent packing.
• There’s footage of Steve Ballmer losing it with excited energy from day one. It’s priceless.
• The final episode talks a lot about complicity, and there’s certainly a tie-in to what we’re seeing around the country right now, too. Being complicit with racism takes many forms — tolerating a rich person who owns an NBA team is but one example — and it’s worth reflecting on the ways in which all of us come up short when we see and/or experience racism in our midst and have the power to do something about it.

What did you think of “Blackballed?” Let’s chat about the final episodes and the whole series in the comments below.