New Clips Owner Takes Shot At Thunder

By Randy Renner

The rivalry between the Thunder and the Los Angeles Clippers had already gotten pretty good but now that boisterous Steve Ballmer has taken over ownership of the Clippers from idiotic Donald Sterling things are about to get really fun.

Ballmer is the multi-billionaire former CEO of Microsoft who bought the Clippers for a cool $2 billion and then won a court challenge from Sterling.

He was introduced to Clipper fans yesterday during a wild pep rally inside LA's Staples Center. Ballmer came bounding into the arena high-fiving fans and bouncing around to the beat of an Eminem song.

He told fans if they want to get in touch with him, just shoot him an email (sballmer@clippers.com) and he promised them the good times are about to really roll predicting "many, many, many, many Larrys." Larry is short of the Larry O'Brien Trophy named for the former NBA commissioner and handed out every season to the NBA Champion.

Ballmer seems like the second coming of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban who also likes to communicate with fans and sports reporters through email and he's a big fan of "Larrys" too.

Ballmer lives in Seattle and for a while there was talk that he might buy the SuperSonics before Clay Bennett and his group did so yesterday Ballmer couldn't resist taking a jab at the Thunder.

"I love Seattle but I'm going to love beating the old Seattle basketball team," he said over the roar of the Staples Center crowd.

The Clippers open their home regular season schedule with the Thunder at the end of October and those two teams of course squared off in a memorable Western Conference Semi-Finals series last season.

You can check out the Clippers rally here, Ballmer's shot at the Thunder is about 3 minutes in.