The second day of the CAA World Congress of Sports opened with an interview featuring Clippers Owner Steve Ballmer, who -- as expected -- brought his signature energy to the stage. The longtime Microsoft exec bragged about the character of this season's team, which is headed to the playoffs despite a prediction by many that they would not be close. Ballmer also made it a point to bring Second Spectrum CEO Rajiv Maheswaran to the stage to talk about and demonstrate the work the two sides have done with augmented reality for game telecasts. Among some of Ballmer's other points during the discussion:
* On the Clippers cracking the local zeitgeist, "In L.A., we've got options. It's different than all other cities, except New York. And the fans want to know -- who are we? What do we stand for? And I love what we stand for and what we mean."
* On a potential new venue in Inglewood near the the MSG-owned Forum, which has led to legal disputes, "Madison Square Garden would like to have less competition for the music business here in Los Angeles. Competition's a good thing. I respect competition. And we'll win those lawsuits, and we'll build our arena."
* On added sponsorship opportunities with the Second Spectrum tech, "With the ability to augment, there's a lot of different possibilities. We're being careful as we proceed to make sure that the sponsorship doesn't overwhelm the game.”
* On building a brand identity for the Clippers, “Things have come into both focus and reality this year. We've had some great teams. In a sense, as an owner, I say I was born on third base. We had three All-NBA players when I bought the team. And I guess to start out with I thought, 'Oh, this is the way it always is.' We don't have any All-NBA players this year. We didn't have an All Star this year. But it forced us over the last two years to say, 'Who are we? Where do we want to go? How do we build a roster that takes us that way?'”
* On giving employees freedom while still running the company, “People say, ‘Oh, does that mean you're making every decision? No, it's like any other business. What you're doing is you're pushing your people, asking questions. What about this? What about this? Prompting, hopefully for people to think through a few things that they might not have thought through, or at least be able to articulate them. I think about basketball operations the same way I thought about engineering at Microsoft. I've never written a piece of code and I've never coached or played the game of basketball beyond the ninth grade third team level. And therefore, I can ask a lot of questions. And if I get good answers, great. And if I don't, I just ask a bunch more questions.”
