In 2000, Franz Lidz did a Sports Illustrated cover story on Donald Sterling, labeling the Clippers the worst franchise in history.

At SI.com, Lidz told the rest of the story:

Shortly after the Clippers made Danny Manning the top pick of the 1988 NBA draft, team owner Donald Sterling invited the player and his agent, Ron Grinker, to talk contract in Beverly Hills. It was recounted to me how Sterling lounged around his mansion in a bathrobe open to his navel, wearing nothing underneath.

At one point Sterling’s preteen son wandered in and was chastised for skipping Hebrew school. The owner commanded the boy, “Go to your room and get undressed.” The child slouched upstairs. Sterling followed. The next thing Manning heard was a belt thrashing and the boy wailing, as Grinker bounded up the stairs yelling, “Stop! Stop! We’ll sign.”

I heard this in the course of reporting a profile of Sterling (owner of THE WORST FRANCHISE IN SPORTS HISTORY per the cover) that I wrote 14 years ago for Sports Illustrated (April 17, 2000). Except that much of the anecdote didn’t appear in the magazine. The profile did include Sterling’s hiring a former model to be an assistant GM. And his placing newspaper ads for “hostesses” interested in meeting “celebrities and sports stars.” The women were interviewed in Sterling’s suite. But so much of his behavior — extreme parsimony, discriminatory practices, wild sexual escapades — was deemed too weird, too cruel, too contemptible. An editor told me, “You’ve demonized him.”