Every fan of sport has occasionally felt like the universe has it in for their team. Supporters of the Los Angeles Clippers might actually have a point. Eclipsed by their more illustrious rivals the LA Lakers, their consistently poor record in recruitment and retention, and almost legendary losing mentality, has seen them become a national punchline.
Yet the so-called “Clippers Curse” was — until the last decade at least — less the fault of an unfair cosmos than gross mismanagement by the property mogul Donald Sterling, a much-maligned owner whose reign came to an ignominious end in 2014 after he was recorded making racist remarks.
Clipped, a new FX drama, is both a smart take on that controversy and a successful study of failure: sporting, moral and societal. In the way it narrates a high-profile scandal — broaching serious issues surrounding fame, race, sex and power using a pulpy tone and glossy aesthetic — the six-part mini-series can be seen as a successor to Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology.
The story begins in 2013 with the improbable arrival of the championship-winning coach Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne) at the Clippers. Initially up for the challenge, Rivers quickly learns that dealing with Sterling (a superbly skin-crawling Ed O’Neil) is an impossible job. Beyond the everyday “mood swings and boundary issues”, there’s also something deeply unsavoury about the way he parades his predominantly Black squad to his wealthy white friends, fetishising their physical attributes. Later his prejudice is explicitly articulated in a nauseating tirade in which Sterling chastises his assistant for socialising with Black people.
That assistant is V Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman), a young biracial woman who massages Sterling’s ego — and feet — in exchange for a glamorous LA lifestyle. Self-degrading yet shrewd, vain yet conscious of her family responsibilities, when their transactional relationship is threatened she turns to the archive of incriminating voice notes she’s judiciously been keeping.
As V engages in some self-promoting hashtag activism in the aftermath of the leak, Rivers and the team debate whether it’s their duty to take a stand off the court. Sterling meanwhile refuses to take accountability for his words, casting himself as the victim. Billed as a series about “LA’s other basketball team”, Clipped inevitably feels most significant than a diverting sport-world saga whenever it confronts us with the character of the petulant, petty and shameless Sterling.
★★★★☆
Episodes 1-3 on Disney+ now. New episodes released on Tuesdays. Streaming on Hulu in the US
