Factchecking 'Clipped', a series about the Donald Sterling scandal

Hulu's new series “Clipped” takes a dramatic look at the Donald Sterling scandal, during which V. Stiviano's recordings exposed the former Clippers owner's racist comments and sparked explosive fallout.

Times writers Ben Bolch, Bill Plaschke and Dan Woike covered the Sterling saga and are helping us fact-check the new show. Plaschke had a brief cameo on the show, which was based on Ramona Shelburne's ESPN podcast series.

Ed O'NeillKnown for his roles in “Married With Children” and “Modern Family,” he took on the role of Donald Sterling during the series. Did he deliver a reasonably accurate version of the Sterling you saw while covering the Clippers?

Bolch: Sterling had a firmer, more menacing presence – you felt uncomfortable simply being in the same room as him. O'Neill captures the buffoonery a lot, but he seems a bit more jovial than the man he portrays. The writers missed an opportunity to add another layer to his character by not dedicating one of the show's flashbacks, probably the best part of the series, to a young Sterling to demonstrate what made him such a hateful person. O'Neill doesn't make Sterling as unlikeable as he is in real life, which is problematic given that he is the show's main antagonist.

Plaschke: Ed O'Neill is fantastic as Donald Sterling. Eccentric, bombastic, sleazy, completely unaware of how the world saw him. In fact, he attended the White Party that he portrayed so vividly in the first episode, and it perfectly captured the way he ruled his kingdom of young women and business sycophants. I brought my then-girlfriend to the party and Sterling flirted with her. Oh really. After walking away from him, she said, “At least that man has good taste!” This scene was so well filmed that I was transported back to that moment and once again felt kind of gross.

Woike: O'Neill's version is more direct and focused, perhaps a little less eccentric, than the version of the man I remember being around the team at this stage. Sterling was never so scathing in my dealings with him. There was more weakness. This portrait is sharper with the disgusting things turned up to 11. But at the center of this, there is a person who cares about himself and his position more than everyone else: people of different races, different classes, his players, his employees. , his wife. etc., and O'Neill certainly gets it. The real guy is so weird, plus all the hate.

No character portrayed in the series has spent more time on television than Doc Rivers. Laurence Fishburne has a different body type than Rivers, but did he reasonably capture the former Clippers coach's personality and reaction to the Sterling scandal?

Woike: After the Sterling tapes, Doc Rivers came even more to the fore: in basketball, in the organization. He handled the situation as well as anyone could have and I think that comes across in the show. It was created for that, and that is here. It's a solid performance.

Bolch: The most authentic and nuanced performance in the series belongs to Fishburne. He captured the essence of Rivers down to the fit of his dress shirts, his facial expressions and his raspy voice. Fishburne also replicated Rivers' ability to guide the Clippers through the scandal, as well as the toll it took on him, convincingly, especially during the room meeting with the players as they decided whether to continue playing. His commanding presence and his ability to vacillate between one-liners and serious comments also reminded me a lot of the way Rivers carried himself.

Plaschke: Like O'Neill, Fishburne is great. He has Doc's look, Doc's walk, Doc's voice. And it's surprising because, meeting Fishburne on set while I was filming my brief scene, it was clear that he didn't know anything about Doc Rivers, he didn't know anything about the Clippers, I couldn't even name more than a couple of them. He apologized to me for not being a sports fan, but he really impressed me that he wasn't a sports fan and yet he took on this role. And he dealt with it brilliantly.

Laurence Fishburne as Doc Rivers, from left, looks on at Ed O'Neill as Donald Sterling and Jacki Weaver as Shelley Sterling during the Hulu series “Clipped.”

(Kelsey McNeal/FX)

What was the atmosphere like immediately after the audio recordings of Sterling's racist comments were first released? Did the program capture that moment well?

Plaschke: It was a day off from the series and I was visiting my brother in Napa Valley and my brief respite turned into a total nightmare, everyone in Los Angeles going crazy, everyone in the NBA going crazy, I'm writing a column at a folding table in a porch in wine country and then running back to the Bay Area for the madness.

Woike: Chaos. Total chaos. You went from covering a basketball series to covering one of America's greatest shames: its racist past and present.

Bolch: It was complete chaos. The horde of media waiting to get into Clippers practice at the University of San Francisco was eager to hear what Rivers and the players had to say about Sterlings' comments. Rivers decided he would be the only one to speak, and he spoke emphatically about the team's collective disdain for what was said. It was one of his most impressive moments during the entire ordeal, showing his ability to deal with pressure on the fly. Interestingly, this scene was left out of the show, which amounts to a huge missed opportunity.

Was anything you highlighted in the first few episodes inaccurate compared to your experience covering the Clippers scandal?

Bolch: The show captured the essence of the scandal, but didn't really hit its stride until the final three episodes, where characters' backstories are revealed and new ground is covered that may not be known to those who happened to follow the ordeal. This was the most compelling part of the series and some viewers may not get there given that the previous episodes are more uneven. If you're even a little intrigued by what you saw at the end of Episode 3, keep watching.

Plaschke: The show has two main drawbacks… first, Blake Griffin is NOT Blake Griffin. He doesn't look like him, he doesn't sound like him, he doesn't act like him, not even close. I remember seeing the actor on set and wondering, who is he playing? When someone told me he was Blake, I thought, they must have done a great job with props, costumes, and makeup. Well, they didn't. He's a good actor, he's just miscast. The second mistake is the lack of attention to the basketball scenes. They were so good in “Winning Time” that we may be spoiled, but at least in the first few episodes, the basketball game is choppy, hard to follow, and pretty awful.

Woike: Blake Griffin's portrayal seems very strange to me: someone I never saw as a selfish teammate or a lapdog for Sterling. He seems totally invented to me. Especially the presentations. Furthermore, V. Stiviano seems here perhaps too normal than any of us thought at the time.

The general disgust of this is pretty accurate. The basketball/casting thing being what it is, the show had the misfortune of airing as closely as the double-duty that “Winning Time” did in its two seasons. I think overall it's pretty close. Some character traits stand out too much. Any heroism assigned to Shelly Sterling doesn't sit very well with me either. There aren't many heroes in this story.

Were you surprised by anything you saw during the series? Was there anything you wish had been handled differently to better reflect that period of the Clippers era?

Plaschke: Chris Paul versus the rest of the team should have stood out. That was the issue that finally brought down Lob City. And CP3 actually looks and sounds like CP3. I also would have liked more from Seth Burton. The PR guru is played by a great actor, and I wanted to see more of Burton's incredible tightrope walking as he navigated this madness.

Bolch: Tensions between Chris Paul and the rest of the team were alluded to in the first episode, but never developed. That could have been another thread on the show that intensified the drama and revealed more behind-the-scenes dissension that prevented the Clippers from maximizing their potential. J. Alphonse Nicholson's portrayal of Paul is good enough to warrant more screen time.

Clippers coach Doc Rivers talks with point guard Chris Paul on the court during the 2015 NBA season.

(Getty Images)

Woike: I think about how “normal” Donald Sterling, Shelly Sterling, and V. Stiviano seem, which probably speaks to how strange these people are. For the people around them, it is very difficult to explain how strange they were.

This is still a dramatization of the Sterling scandal and the creators never promised the public a documentary. Still, the actual saga was salacious enough to garner a lot of attention. Overall, how would you rate the accuracy of the program?

Bolch: The accuracy when it comes to the timeline of the scandal is spot on, but I'm not sure the well-known plot or characters, plus Fishburne as Rivers, make this comedy-drama so compelling. Most of the scenes involving V. Stiviano and Donald Sterling feel like whimsical caricatures compared to the gripping tension whenever Rivers takes center stage. The writers could have done better to fully commit to a transfer or go the other way and turn the Sterlings into more abhorrent figures that you can't stop watching because you need the relief of their forced sale of the team. As it stands, “Clipped” is somewhat like the team it portrays: it never arrives at its intended destination.

Plaschke: With the exception of Blake Griffin, it seems pretty accurate. I love the way he discovers the real V, I think Shelly Sterling's character is spectacularly accurate and Ed O'Neill does an extraordinary job of pulling back the curtain on the real Donald. And the main takeaway for all Los Angeles sports fans should be obvious. Think about it, for the first time, THE CLIPPERS ARE ON TV IN JUNE!

Woike: If the story is about the key factors at play, the storm it caused, the public spread of Sterling's plantation mentality and Doc Rivers and the Clippers players solving this mess, it's a success. But the dramatized parts (the way some employees were made to look like bumbling idiots, the way Griffin was portrayed (he's going to have some of the biggest complaints)) don't strike me as someone who was there every day. In this case, the truth (and the work done by people on that front) is more compelling than fiction.