u/Known-Peak212

Turn the clock back roughly 12-15 years. Every expectation that you have for a modern NBA center is something you should throw out the window. Some of it is modern stat-flation, but a bigger part is that suddenly, overnight, the center position looked to have died.

Marc Gasol at this point does not shoot threes, but that doesn't stop him from being a floor spacer compared to other bigs. Until his DPOY season in 2013, he hadn't made an All-Defensive team (and never would again). There's not really a consensus that he's quite an all-world defender. He averages 14-8. And yet, for a lot of people, Marc Gasol was pretty justifiably the best center in the NBA.

If you put up a double double, you were a good starting center in the league, no other context needed. If you put up 16-10, you were a revelation.

After 60 NBA years dominated by centers, suddenly, in the late 2000s, Dwight Howard was the only true elite talent at that position. Then, when Dwight started a precipitous decline due to back issues, an open void emerged. And, I swear, for a brief time, in stepped Anderson Varejao.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ0jxFOLue8

Prime Anderson Varejao: An elite center in the league

In my mind, it helps Varejao's case here that nobody thinks of his name when talking about underrated bigs. When people do think of Varejao, rarely, he's remembered as the young Brazilian player with the floppy hair, a hustle guy with young LeBron in Cleveland, or when he was the first ever "pure flopper" archetype after a series of injuries in Golden State.

But his best years were in between. At 27 years old, he broke out a little bit in LeBron's last year before The Decision - averaging 9-8, making an All-Defensive team and a run at the sixth man of the year award, where he finished third.

In 2011, in just 32 games, he took another step, nearly averaging a double double and being maybe the only positive player on a deeply depleted roster. When he got hurt, the Cavs lost 26 straight.

But the next two years are the interesting ones, where something very strange happened. Briefly, and suddenly, at an age (late 20s) where most NBA players have peaked, he dramatically expanded his skillset.

Suddenly, he was not just a hustle guy. He may well have been the best rebounder in the league. He was almost as good as the best passing bigs in the league (adjust for early 2010s center expectations). He was one of the more prolific scorers at the position (again, adjust). And he couldn't really shoot looking back on it, but he had an ugly midrange shot that went in sometimes, and that genuinely stacked him well against any of the centers in the East.

In 2011-2012, Varejao averaged 11-11. In came Kyrie Irving, who immediately belonged to a class of point guards that he never really left. In his early years in the league, there was real expectations that the sky was the limit - that maybe one day he could make a run at an MVP, or be an all-time great. It never happened, but if you watched him you could imagine why.

The next year, Kyrie was an all-star, and about as good as any point guard in the East. And for 25 games, before Varejao's inevitable injury, it was 1A, 1B.

Varejao's numbers, 14.1 points, 14.5 rebounds, 5.5 offensive rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.5 steals stand out a bit today. But not like they did in 2012.

He was the best rebounder in the league - Dwight Howard ended up winning the rebounding title with an average of 12.4. He was by far the best offensive rebounder in the league.

It's hard to explain to a modern fan again, but his passing, and his assist total were genuinely elite. He was still a strong defender.

It wasn't the product of unsustainable shooting, or anything like that. Albeit on a terrible team, for a brief period of time, Varejao was an absolute monster.

He opened his campaign with 9 points, 9 assists and 23 rebounds, 12 of them offensive. Against the Big 3 Heat, he had 20-20, nearly leading an upset.

Then, somewhere in there he rattled off 15+ rebounds in ten straight games.

As of very recently, and I'm not sure if this is still true, there were two players in NBA history to have at least 10 points, 15 rebounds, and 5 offensive rebounds in ten consecutive games. Those are 3x MVP and six time rebounding champ Moses Malone, and Anderson Varejao.

For one more cherry-picked stat, those scoring, rebounding and assist numbers hadn't been matched since 80s Charles Barkley https://www.fearthesword.com/2015/8/6/9099103/highlights-from-the-post-decision-pre-return-era?

Ended early due to his injury in late December, the 2013 Anderson Varejao All-Star campaign was a real thing https://www.fearthesword.com/2012/12/6/3732814/anderson-varejao-all-star

Look at who ended up making it in the East. There was Brook Lopez, an injury replacement, averaging 19-6, but he was then actually considered one of the worst defensive bigs in the league, and was on a disappointing team.

There was Tyson Chandler, an elite defender on a Knicks team enjoying the best season of the Melo era. He still was not a clear all-star, averaging 10-10.

Joakim Noah had started to establish himself as an elite defender, averaging 11-11-4-2 blocks.

Before the injury, there had been Varejao. Averaging 14-14, the best rebounder in the league, probably the second best playmaking big in the East behind Noah, a strong defender and enough of an offensive game to compare well to the centers of the time.

He might have been snubbed from the game, because the Cavs were bad enough that coaches may not have wanted them to get two all-stars, but we would have deserved it.

Prime Anderson Varejao is underrated because nobody would think to call him underrated. There are many people who watched parts of his NBA career who would not describe him as a good player. When he came back, he was a fraction of the same player. After another round of injuries, he was terrible.

But if you caught some 2012 Anderson Varejao, when he (even dubiously) put himself in the same sentence as Moses Malone and Charles Barkley, you would know that he belonged alongside some of the best centers in the league.

Then, four of Cooke's five finals losses (1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969) had come to Bill Russell. It’s important to understand the level of pain that Russell had inflicted on Cooke personally at that time.

For example, in 1969, Russell’s last year, it was assumed the Celtics were done. The Lakers were a massive championship favorite, adding Wilt alongside West and Baylor, putting three of the five best players from that decade together on one roster.

The Celtics were old, Russell’s knees were falling apart, and they barely snuck into the playoffs. The Celtics then beat two teams with better records in Wilt’s former Sixers and the Knicks, who won their first championship the year later.

The Celtics had surprised, taking it to a game seven in LA, but that didn’t dampen Cooke’s confidence.

"In anticipation of a Lakers win, Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke had ordered thousands of balloons with "World Champion Lakers" printed on them suspended from the rafters of the Forum.

Flyers were placed in every seat stating, "When, not if, the Lakers win the title, balloons will be released from the raftors, the USC marching band will play "Happy Days Are Here Again" and broadcaster Chick Hearn will interview Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain in that order." Before the game, the Celtics circulated in their locker room a memo about the Lakers' celebration plans.

When Jerry West went to the court for a pre game shoot around and saw the balloons, he became furious with Cooke. Russell noted the giant net hanging from the ceiling during pregame warmups and said to West, "Those fucking balloons are staying up there."

Sure enough, the Celtics got off to a 15 point lead, and barely held on in the fourth. In the final seconds, Russell made a decisive block on Lakers’ center Mel Counts, then gaining possession to help the Celtics win, 108-106. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tHA7w3eG0wM&pp=0gcJCWQCo7VqN5tD&ra=m&t=41m

Counts was in rather than Chamberlain, who left with five minutes remaining due to a knee injury, but then tried to return with a minute left. His coach, famously, did not allow him to, arguing that the team had a better chance to win without him. The coach was then fired. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-21-sp-4674-story.html

Fast forward a year, the Lakers failed to get over the hump again, losing to the Knicks in game seven despite star Knicks center Willis Reed actively playing with a torn quad.

To Cooke, the Lakers must have seemed cursed. At this point, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor had been to seven finals and lost all of them, six of them to Russell. So that’s who Cooke tried to bring in.

After retirement, Russell moved to L.A. and became a Lakers ticket holder. This was objectively a weird dynamic - Russell had harshly criticized Chamberlain in the press following Wilt’s exit in game 7 in 1969, leading to a 20 year stretch where neither were on speaking terms. But during home games, Russell would just be there courtside. https://np.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1ayo8cy/secret_base_wilt_chamberlain_and_bill_russells/

Anyways, shortly after Russell was in attendance at a night honoring Jerry West during the 1970-1971 NBA season, Cooke made Russell a formal offer - come back to the league, play in Los Angeles, and win your 12th championship.

“They had a ceremony for Jerry West and they said would you come,” Russell said, found in Russell’s 2013 oral history for the Library of Congress’ Civil Rights History progress. “I said of course, I like Jerry a lot. So while I was there they put me in a box next to Jack Kent Cooke, who owned the team. That was an experience. Anyway, a couple days later, I get a call from Jack. He says, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I made a decision. I’m going to get you to come out of retirement and play for the Lakers.” I said, “You’re paying a guy named Wilt Chamberlain to play for the Lakers. Now, how would he feel playing backup center?” Jack Kent Cooke didn’t think that was funny.”

In 2013, Russell said he only would have considered playing for the Celtics, despite his strongly documented tension with Boston fans, his decision not to be there for his own jersey retirement a year later, and his own sudden retirement without warning in the summer of 1969. Fans had broken into his house and defecated in his bed, and there were many who expressed distaste about him coaching, even as he led them to back-to-back championships. He sold the story of his retirement to a magazine in August of that year, not telling anyone else beforehand.

It seems likely that when he left, he knew he would never play for Boston again. Whether he really wouldn’t have considered playing anywhere else, or if it came down to a personal feud with Chamberlain is something the basketball world will never truly know.

As it was, the Lakers suffered an early exit in that year’s playoffs. But the next year, after an aging and injured Elgin Baylor determined he had nothing left to give to the game, the Lakers rattled off a league-record 33 straight wins, beating the Knicks (again with an injured Willis Reed) in the Finals. It ended up being the one and only ring of Cooke’s tenure in ownership.

The Warriors were 39-4 under Walton that season, but it'll likely end up getting forgotten (and already has to some extent) for a couple of key reasons.

A. The NBA decided, on the spot, that interim coaching records would now automatically be credited to the head coach if they were absent

Prior to 2015, interim head coaches would, in some cases, get credit for wins and losses. It was decided on a case by case basis. After Walton led the Warriors on a 24 game win streak, the league made the executive decision that the wins would count for Kerr rather than Walton, and in all future such cases. This was a sudden, and meaningful change. When you look up the Warriors' season, Kerr gets credit for 39 wins for which he was not there.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/nba-rules-that-luke-walton-s-only-official-win-with-warriors-is-coach-of-the-month-210547134.html

B. Steve Kerr received the NBA's coach of the year award, despite coaching for less than half the season, and technically having a worse record than Walton

This was always a weird one. Kerr missed 43 games due to an offseason back surgery, but was named the best coach of that NBA year. The Warriors went 34-5 after Kerr came back. Kerr gets the coach of the year and is credited for all 73 wins - people who didn't watch will primarily look back and assume he was there for the whole time, instead of less than half of it.

C. That is the only good thing that Luke Walton did during his head coaching career

If Walton had gone on to become a championship winning head coach, it would have been cemented in NBA lore. Instead, Walton coached three years with the Lakers and three with the Kings, never winning more than 37 games, making him much more forgettable.

Since it's reddit and people have a tendency to distort statements into something entirely different to make it seem dumb if the other person had actually said that thing, this does not mean Luke Walton was a better coach than Steve Kerr. It does not mean he would have had the same success without Kerr's foundation. But it is pretty interesting that the man who led most of the best regular season in history will be ultimately pretty much forgotten, along with that entire chapter.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nba/article/kawhi-leonard-allegations-bring-echoes-of-2019-for-raptors-fans/

Per notable Raptors reporter Michael Grange: "It will be Tanenbaum who will presumably have a voice in what - if any - sanctions are levelled against Ballmer and the Clippers."

" There is a certain irony that for Tanenbaum, one of his last acts as chairman of the NBA’s Board of Governors will be helping decide the fate of Ballmer and the Clippers."

The implication would be that Tanebaum could have pushed for lesser punishments after receiving star Kawhi Leonard.

https://boxingnewsonline.net/news/usyks-team-speaks-out-on-kabayel-fight/

“Agit Kabayel is an excellent fighter, a worthy champion and a man we respect. There is nothing personal here. But fights of this magnitude are not made through social media or public pressure.

“Oleksandr has spent his entire career proving who he is. At this stage, the question is no longer what Usyk owes anyone. The question is what kind of event can be built?

“A serious offer, backed by serious people, the right commercial structure, broadcasters and site fee support, is how the biggest fights in the world are made.

“If the numbers and the opportunity make sense for everyone, then everything is possible. We are open to serious business, not noise.”

Moving to one of the most racist cities in the U.S. with the NBA on the Horizon:

The New York Renaissance, also known as the “Rens”, originated in Harlem in 1923. For more than two decades, the Rens were one of the world’s best basketball teams, yet were forced to operate as a barnstorming team due to racial realities of the Jim Crow era.

In 1948, economic desperation forced the Rens’ owner to move his team to Dayton, Ohio, to play in the NBL, an almost exclusively white basketball league (also a precursor to the National Basketball Association, or the NBA).In the first half of the 20th century, in the midst of the Jim Crow era, Dayton increasingly became a city defined by its strict segregationist policies and racial violence, reflecting the state of the U.S. as a whole.

By the 1930s, approximately 1/5 of Dayton residents were estimated to be members of the KKK, one of the highest rates among cities in the entire country. Federal government sponsored economic and social policies relegated Black Americans into an inferior economic position and prevented Black participation in broader society.

It would seem to be a striking dichotomy, therefore, that in what at first appeared to be a major breakthrough for integration in American professional sports, the National Basketball League selected Dayton, with its history of racism, as the site of an all-black, black-owned basketball team in an almost entirely white league, which one year later would allow every team but one to join the newly formed NBA.

Ultimately, the arrangement was a farce, as the Rens' circumstances were a microcosm of the racism which was prevalent throughout the United States during the Jim Crow era.

The Harlem Globetrotters: racial stereotypes, (allegedly) rigged games, and corruption:

In the 1930s, the Rens were the best team in the world, at one point winning 88 consecutive games and the World Professional Basketball Tournament, but were forced to operate as a barnstorming team because arenas wouldn’t support them full-time, and either entirely or almost entirely white professional leagues wouldn’t support an all-black, black-owned basketball team.

The Rens also found themselves competing with the Harlem Globetrotters, a team that was distinctly not from Harlem, but were given their name by their white owner who wanted to indicate to white fans that the team was Black.

Their owner, Abe Saperstein, saw tremendous economic value in attempting to monopolize top Black basketball talent, and encouraging them to play into racist stereotypes of the time period, entertaining white fans who wanted to see Black players act like “clowns”.

The Rens refused to play into these characterizations, as Douglas insisted that he was in the business for “the betterment of the race”. However, Saperstein’s strategy was so effective that in the years immediately after WWII, the Globetrotters, even as a barnstorming team, were the biggest draw of any basketball team in the world. In fact, they singlehandedly supported the top professional leagues at that time.

All-white professional teams would schedule their games as the back half of doubleheaders, following Globetrotter matchups, in order to have a much larger audience. There was an unwritten agreement among Saperstein and professional leagues; in exchange for booking these doubleheaders, the teams would agree not to sign top Black players. The Rens couldn’t compete with Globetrotter salaries.

Meanwhile, adding to the Rens’ struggles, Saperstein’s back-room agreements with those same owners effectively blocked Douglas from booking large capacity arenas they controlled. In 1948, with the Rens beginning to find themselves in a precarious financial situation, the World Professional Basketball Tournament, featuring some of the best all-white teams in the world, presented a major opportunity.

After securing a major signing in the talented big man Nat Clifton https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cliftna01.html, who Saperstein had threatened to go to the Supreme Court in a contract dispute as he considered him “his property”, the Rens felt they could make a run.

The team made it all the way to the final of the tournament where they faced the heavy favorite, the Minneapolis Lakers, then recognized as the best all-white team in the world. With the Rens in a position to win the game in the final minute on an open fast break, Clifton opted for a behind-the-back pass, inexplicably throwing the ball out of bounds and nowhere near any of his teammates.

For decades, his teammates maintained that Clifton intentionally threw the game. In the immediate aftermath of the tournament, Clifton joined the Harlem Globetrotters, becoming one of the highest paid players in basketball. The owner of the Globetrotters may have benefitted more than anyone from the Rens failing to become world champions.

If they had won, they would have had tremendous leverage in negotiations with professional leagues. Instead, the Rens, who were now struggling to book arenas and stay solvent, were forced to join the NBL in a move of desperation. The NBL forced them to in effect replace the current Detroit team, inheriting their win-loss record, the worst in the league and all their debts. If this wasn’t bad enough, the Rens were also forced to move to the City of Dayton, playing in an arena in a white part of town in a city characterized by segregation and racial violence.

Rather than a breakthrough, it was all a farce:

There was no chance that the team was going to receive fan support in such an environment. Often the team would be supported by as few as 2,000 fans. Because of a lack of revenue, the team was forced to split in half, with half of the team continuing to barnstorm in order to stay economically viable.

The team predictably struggled, and because of the 2-17 record that they inherited, the Rens finished as the worst team in the league. However; by their own winning percentage in the games that they actually played, the Rens were good enough to make the playoffs.

Following the 1948-1949 season, the NBL merged with the BAA to create the NBA. In the merger talks the NBL, which included the Rens, agreed on “only on a merger, not any other type of agreement”. However, towards the very end of discussions, the N.B.L. chose to include only eight of its nine teams. To justify omitting the Rens, the N.B.L. voided the franchise agreement it had with Dayton, citing the team’s last place finish.

What seemed to be a tremendous opportunity turned out to be a sham, “On the surface, the New York Rens’ entrée into the National Basketball League was a historical breakthrough for Bob Douglas and for the race. In reality, the team masqueraded as the Dayton Rens for half of a failed season and was shut out of the real deal – the chance to join the N.B.A”.

Following the season, the Rens, possibly history’s most dominant professional basketball team to that point, were forced to cease operations, and Douglas was forced to retire from basketball ownership. The NBA began its inaugural season in 1949 without any African-American players, “as planned”. Ultimately, the Rens were not able to make any discernible impact on racial inequality in Dayton or even in team ownership.

To this day, Dayton remains one of the most segregated cities in the United States, and has striking racial inequalities in the accumulation of wealth. Dayton continues to suffer from segregation in neighborhoods and schools, as well as very different educational standards in “West Dayton”, which at some point simply became code for the areas in which Black Dayton residents lived. Dayton’s racial wealth gap continues to be staggering.

Despite being arguably the best basketball team in the world for a span of close to two decades, the Rens are at times treated as a historical footnote in the history of the integration of professional basketball. In the end, the Rens were denied admission into the NBA, and the team was forced to fold.

However, in 1972, Bob Douglas, once snubbed by the NBA and forced out of business by white owners, became the first African American to be elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. While today, the NBA's player pool has been fully integrated, the effects of racial exploitation are shown prominently through team ownership. Today (this paper is old), Michael Jordan is the only Black majority owner in the major U.S. professional sports.

This was initially a part of a much larger paper that went into racist policies in Dayton and the United States during the first half of the 20th century that I wrote years ago for a class.

Some other notes:

At the time that the Rens moved to Dayton, Ohio, Dayton was sixth among cities in the U.S. in percentage of residents estimated to be in the KKK.

The Rens' applied to join the BAA a year before the NBL added them. Both teams would merge in 1949 to form the NBA. Even with the weight of the very influential Knicks coach Joe Lapchick threatening to resign if they didn't get added, then BAA and later first NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff refused to even put it up for an owners' vote despite little risk it would actually pass.

Sources for larger paper:

Allan, Catherine, et al. Performance by Laurence Fishburne, Slavery by Another Name, Twin Cities Public Television, 2012, PBS.org. Accessed 19 June 2021

Almeida, La-Brina. “A History of Racist Federal Housing Policies.” Mass. Budget and Policy Center, August 6, 2021. https://massbudget.org/2021/08/06/a-history-of-racist-federal-housing-policies/.

“Basketball Hall of Fame Elects Its First Black: Douglas of Rens.” The New York Times, February 6, 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/06/archives/basketball-hall-of-fame-elects-its-first-black-douglas-of-rens.html.

“Dayton, Ohio Population History 1840 - 2021.” Dayton, Ohio Population History | 1840 - 2021, 18 Jan. 2023, https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/dayton-ohio.

Dayton Rens. Accessed May 8, 2023. https://nbahoopsonline.com/History/Leagues/NBL/Teams/DetroitDayton/index.html.

Desmond, Matthew. Poverty by America. New York, NY: Crown, 2023.

Grove, Rashad. “Harlem Globetrotters: Photos of the Legendary Team.” History.com, February 25, 2020. https://www.history.com/news/harlem-globetrotters-photos.

Johnson, Claude. Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era. New York, NY: Harry N Abrams, 2024.

Lawrence, Quil. “Black Vets Were Excluded from GI Bill Benefits - a Bill in Congress Aims to Fix That.” All Things Considered, October 18, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1129735948/black-vets-were-excluded-from-gi-bill-benefits-a-bill-in-congress-aims-to-fix-th.

Madrigal, Alexis C. “The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood.” The Atlantic, May 22, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/.

Massey DS, Fischer MJ. How Segregation Concentrates Poverty. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2000;23:670–691. and Massey DS, Denton NA. American apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1993.

Picca, Leslie, director. Roots of Racism. YouTube, University of Dayton, 10 Nov. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-llRIyOtQI. Accessed 22 Apr. 2023.

Posted on December 18, 2007. “The Hidden Story: Rens Break Pre-NBA Color Barrier, 1948: The Black Fives Foundation.” The Black Fives Foundation | Make History Now!, December 18, 2007. https://www.blackfives.org/rens-break-pre-nba-color-barrier-1948/#:~:text=Meanwhile%2C%20the%20N.B.A.,not%20allowed%20to%20sign%20blacks.

Rayl, Susan Jane. “The New York Renaissance Professional Black Basketball Team, 1923-1950.” Dissertation, UMI Dissertation Services (A Bell & Howell Co.), 1996.

“Redlining: Mapping Inequality in Dayton and Springfield.” Redlining: Mapping Inequality in Dayton & Springfield, Public Broadcasting System, 24 Feb. 2022.

Staff, NPR. “100 Years Later, What's The Legacy of 'Birth of a Nation'?” NPR, NPR, 8 Feb. 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation.

Stoesz, David, “Reparations: An Estimate of the Consequences of Denying Social Security to Agricultural and Domestic Workers”, April 2, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3364315or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3364315

“The Great Migration (1910-1970).” National Archives and Records Administration, June 28, 2021. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration.

Trollinger, William Vance, "Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities and Colleges in the 1920s" (2013). History Faculty Publications. 11.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/hst_fac_pub/11

United States Bureau of the Census. “The African-American Mosaic Migrations.” Library of Congress, July 23, 2010. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam008.html.

Whitted, W.B. “Michael Jordan May Sell Majority Stake in Charlotte Hornets.” Swarm and Sting, March 19, 2023. https://swarmandsting.com/2023/03/19/michael-jordan-sell-charlotte-hornets/.

Ballmer Victim Impact Statement: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/04/23/billionaire-steve-ballmer-tells-judge-hes-clear-and-undisputed-victim-in-aspiration-fraud/

Clip of the recently revealed side deal that Ballmer made and didn't disclose to other investors into the company, which would turn out to be fraudulent: https://streamable.com/k4oy5z

Clip showing five sources within Aspiration claimed the NBA's investigation asked them a series of questions, none of which even looked into Ballmer: https://streamable.com/gb9vwl

The NBA started its investigation in September after Pablo Torre came out with some of the initial information drawing into question whether the Clippers had paid Kawhi up to $48,000,000 over the salary cap on his initial contract to bring him to L.A.

Notably, ESPN covered the story for close to a week, often exonerating Ballmer for his alleged personal role in paradoxical ways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFGzXNILrV4&t=21m08s