Clipped review: Ed O'Neill and Laurence Fishburne drive this slick b-ball drama

New Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne) is barely off the plane from Boston when his rideshare driver questions his judgment. “Why would a championship coach like you take a job with the dog-shittiest team in sports?” Unfazed, Rivers shrugs. “I like a challenge.”

He got one, and then some. The winking new limited series Clipped (June 4, FX on Hulu) chronicles the underdog team’s 2014 playoff run, which was upended by leaked recordings of their bombastic owner, Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill), making racist comments. Based on ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast, Clipped is a slick, well-acted dramatization that inserts moments of soul searching into the tale of headline-grabbing scandal.

Though the “cursed” Clippers have never won a championship when Rivers arrives in 2013, the respected coach believes he can turn things around with a little discipline — and a lot less focus on their buffoonish, 81-year-old owner. “Donald is like a norovirus on a cruise ship, making everybody sick,” Doc growls. His strategy: Ignore the haters and let him deal with the team’s “incompetent” leadership, including Sterling and Clippers president/Sterling’s yes-man, Andy Roeser (Kelly AuCoin). The first time Doc meets Sterling’s comely, 31-year-old assistant V. Stiviano (Cleopatra Coleman), she interrupts a staff meeting to inquire about a rumored trade. “Personnel decisions are none of your damn business, V.,” Rivers barks.

Unfortunately for Rivers, V. will have a huge effect on the team’s business. A former food-truck owner who idolizes the Kardashians, V. plans to use her relationship with Donald Sterling to build her personal “brand” — and like Kim, a shocking tape is going to help her get there. V. routinely records her conversations with Donald, a discovery that horrifies his wife, Shelly (Jacki Weaver). But Donald doesn’t mind. “I’m forgetful, you know that!” he says. “She keeps a record — an audio record.” V. isn’t Donald’s first “assistant,” and though Shelly is unfailingly loyal to her husband, she attempts to shut down the relationship by suing V. for $2.5 million — the amount Donald spent lavishing his assistant with gifts, including a house and a Ferrari. Incensed, V. retaliates by emailing a recording of Donald ranting about “minorities” to the Clippers front office. Soon, the tape makes its way to TMZ — exposing Sterling’s racist views to the world and forcing everyone in his orbit to confront their own complicity.

The Sterling affair, as 30 for 30 dubbed it, plays out on two fronts, and Clipped bounces back and forth between both. Public reaction ranges from outrage to social-media schadenfreude, and some episodes feature breezy interstitials of a scrolling feed replete with gleeful memes. (“It’s ok Blake, he only hates your Black side,” over a picture of the Clippers' biracial power forward, Blake Griffin.) Initially, the blanket media coverage and tsunami of attention is everything V. ever wanted. Certain she’s about to be launched into the celebosphere, she immerses herself in brand-building antics — performing for the paparazzi by roller skating down her suburban street or bringing her pet turtle outside for some night air, always while wearing a full-face solar visor — even as her friend Deja (Yvonna Pearson) blasts her for not calling out Donald’s racism.  

Behind the scenes, the Clippers, who have long put up with Donald barging into their locker room with an entourage and showing off the players like they’re exotic zoo animals, are now faced with an agonizing choice: Continue playing for a man who demeans them or give up their winning streak and shot at the championship. In a poignant scene, the team grapples with the various arguments for and against a boycott — while also lamenting that it took 30 years for Sterling’s openly problematic behavior to come to light. The Clippers, inspired by their coach’s advice to rise above, agree to play — a decision that later haunts Doc. The fourth episode, “Winning Ugly,” flashes back to 1992 Los Angeles, where a young Doc Rivers (Freddie L. Fleming), then a starter for the LA Clippers, reels from the news that four police officers were acquitted for beating motorist Rodney King. As riots roil streets downtown, Doc, ensconced at his nice house in Brentwood, worries that he should be out there protesting, too. “You make white folks feel comfortable,” his father, Grady (Lawrence Gillard Jr.), admonishes him. “You ain’t gonna screw it up on a boycott.”

The problem with Clipped — and many other based-on-a-true-scandal series — is that we can never really know what drives the outrageous figures at its center, beyond the empirically obvious: Greed, bigotry, a burning need for attention. The aforementioned flashback episode also attempts to explain V.’s transformation from cash-strapped food-truck owner with a rap sheet to executive companion, and it reveals Shelly’s long history of refusing to “break publicly” with Donald — even in the face of his blatant infidelity and illegal business dealings.

Some of the most engaging conversations in Clipped never happened. Showrunner Gina Welch creates a fictional friendship between Doc Rivers and 13-time Emmy winner LeVar Burton (who plays himself). After meeting in the sauna in their condo’s fitness center, the two strike up an easy and thoughtful rapport, bonding over the many intricacies of being a successful Black man in a white world. “We are two famous guys with nothing to worry about,” notes LeVar. After a pause, he adds, “And then, you look around, and you’re two Black men sweating in a wooden box.” The duo’s ongoing dialogue throughout the six episodes is the series’ most original and effective conceit; it works not only in the context of the Sterling scandal, but also because the excellent actors delivering the lines know of what they speak.

There aren’t any weak links in the Clipped lineup. As Doc, Fishburne leavens his inimitable gravity with wry incredulity, while O’Neill revels in the absurdity of the bloviating, narcissistic Donald Sterling. The actor presents the infamous millionaire as a man who is all id, a myopic clown who vocalizes every random thought that floats through his mind. (“Aaron Spelling died. Grown man obsessed with the friendships of teenagers. A little seedy.”) Weaver brings a deceptive diffidence to Shelly, and Coleman is suitably enigmatic as V. Stiviano, a paragon of modern fameosexual ambition. P-Valley’s J. Alphonse Nicholson is a standout as the Clippers’ point guard Chris Paul, a devoted family man whose intense drive to win is ultimately eclipsed by regret that his team didn’t do enough to voice their anger against Sterling and the NBA.

“They can’t stick a happy ending on this s--t fast enough,” scoffs a player in the finale. Indeed, the saga concludes with the Sterlings' marriage intact and the Clippers trading one loud, wealthy white-guy owner for another. The most scandalous thing about the entire Donald Sterling mess is how clearly it reminds us that even the hardest life lessons are easily forgotten. Grade: B

Clipped premieres Tuesday, June 4, on FX on Hulu.