GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS president Rick Welts was in his old office up in Oakland when the call came in. Warriors general manager Bob Myers was checking in, as he often did, after the team's shootaround in Los Angeles.
It was the morning of Game 5 of the Warriors' 2014 first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Four days earlier, TMZ had published voice recordings of then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist statements to his mistress, V. Stiviano, throwing the NBA into a tailspin.
When Myers called his boss with a status report, he told him in no uncertain terms, "'These guys are going to walk off the floor,'" Welts recalled.