‘Clipped’ Review: FX’s American Basketball Story Is a Salacious, Shrewd Account of NBA Racial Strife

Initially, “Clipped” seems content to recap the embarrassing and abhorrent factoids that make up Donald Sterling’s tenure as the owner of the L.A. Clippers. When legendary coach Doc Rivers (played by Laurence Fishburne) initially arrives in Los Angeles — eager to start laying the foundation for the organization’s first NBA title — the team forgets to pick him up from LAX. OK, no problem, he’s happy to order his own Uber. But then Sterling tries to block Doc’s big free agent acquisition because J.J. Reddick, it turns out, is white. Similarly troubling and peculiar events pile up as the story bounces from the shrewd coach to Donald’s wife and co-owner of the Clippers, Shelly Sterling (Jacki Weaver), to a perplexing female employee who goes simply by V. (Cleopatra Coleman).

But like V. herself — and, really, like each of “Clipped’s” main characters outside of the purposefully oafish, entitled Sterling — the series steadily deepens. The significance of Doc’s tumultuous playoff run shifts from winning it all to a missed opportunity to do more than win. Shelly’s tortured quest to escape the clutches of her toxic husband twists into an insulting assertion that she’s right where she belongs. And V., for all her misguided priorities and narcissistic fame-chasing, becomes yet another casualty of America’s oldest institutions: racial exploitation and patriarchal power structures.

“Clipped” lures you in with salacious details of a rich man’s fall from, well, somewhere far from grace, but it’s purpose is to do now what the Clippers didn’t do then: hold the whole broken system accountable, instead of settling to toss out one bad apple.

For those unfamiliar with the infamous events of a decade prior, “Clipped” is set primarily in 2013, when Rivers joined the team as the big-get head coach and his very promising debut season was run off the rails by his owner’s horrific behavior going very, very public. But let’s back up a second. The Clippers have always been a bad team. Not only has the franchise never won a title, they’ve never even reached the NBA Finals, and when Doc came on board, they still hadn’t made the conference finals. (In 2021, they finally got to the Western Conference Finals… and lost.)

Was it bad luck? Bad hires? A bad culture? It could be all of the above (and likely has been), but “Clipped” — which is based on the “30 for 30” documentary series, “The Sterling Affairs,” — throws a heaping pile of blame on the owner in its very first lines: “Mr. Sterling always says some teams sell success. The Clippers sell hope,” V. says via voiceover. “What he means is we usually lose… he says a lot of things he shouldn’t.”

It takes a little time for that last bit of foreshadowing to come around, but the stakes are clear from the jump: The Clippers are overdue for a championship, and with superstar players like Chris Paul (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Blake Griffin (Austin Scott) led by a proven coach like Doc Rivers, they finally have reason to believe they can win one this year. The pressure is on. The time is now. Whether you’re a die-hard sports junkie or a calm, meditative type like Rivers (who makes sure to get in two 20-minute sessions per day), it’s easy to get caught up in a win-at-all-costs mentality.

And that’s right where creator and showrunner Gina Welch (“Castle Rock,” “The Terror”) wants you. “Clipped” moves at a quick pace, driven by bawdy confrontations and characters as big and splashy as the Staples Center’s jumbotron. Doc befriends LeVar Burton (as himself) in his gym’s sauna. V. hits up every designer store west of the 405 by day and goes to masked parties in the Hollywood Hills by night. There’s a locker room brawl between the Clippers and Golden State Warriors, including Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. (The likenesses between the actors and their very famous NBA counterparts are about as close as NBA 2k6 graphics came to reality, but the basketball itself is passable, and authentic game action really isn’t the focus of “Clipped.” Anyone hoping for to see fan service akin to “Winning Time” a) shouldn’t be, and b) missed the point.)

What matters happens off the court. “Clipped” covers many of the lowlights that have been made famous since the scandal first broke, but it also uses those flashpoints to illuminate overlooked issues. Fishburne makes a great Doc, giving just enough of a hoarse growl to the evoke the coach’s distinct voice and delivering thunderous moments like you know he would once the shit hits the fan. Coleman keeps V. from being a complete ditz or a secret schemer; she’s reactive, opportunistic, and lands some of the show’s best throwaway quips. Wever’s Mrs. Sterling is exactly who you think she is, but the Oscar nominee’s invested turn helps tease out key similarities between Shelly and V. That she looks better than her appalling coven of Beverly Hills socialites (save for Harriet Sansom Harris’ clear-sighted best friend) only adds to the hiding-in-plain-sight nature of Shelly’s arc.

And then there’s the slumlord billionaire himself. Ed O’Neill as Donald Sterling makes for ideal casting (as if casting director Alexa L. Fogel would deliver anything less). You can’t help but see Al Bundy and Jay Pritchett at first, chuckling along at Donald stumbling into the locker room after a big win with his rich buddies or yammering on and on about whatever he’s thinking, eating, or watching on TV during team meetings. He’s just a goofy old man! Sure, he’s got some outdated ideas, but he’s harmless!

Wrong. I mean, obviously that’s wrong — so obvious you never fully believe it — but O’Neill’s affable additions to Sterling help explain why so many Clippers staffers spent years, if not decades, going along to get along. (Another brilliant bit of casting is Fogel nabbing “Billions” veteran Kelly AuCoin as Sterling’s right-hand man. Riding the line between stupidly ignorant and willfully so, the moments when AuCoin’s Andy Roeser is pushed out of his naive nice guy schtick into the cold reality of what he’s helped facilitate are among the series’ best.)

Better still, the series devotes the majority of its efficient storytelling to perspectives outside of Sterling’s. Rivers is the focus of a surprisingly pivotal flashback episode, and his finale conversation with Burton proves even more remarkably satisfying. (Burton, quite frankly, is incredible here.) V. is a little less scrutinized, but nonetheless valuable, and I certainly did not expect to be thinking this long about anything said by the TV version of Chris Paul. (No, not that one.)

“Clipped” is flashy, maybe even a little messy to begin with. But if you let its soapy saga wash over you, you’ll realize that cleaning one apple at a time is no way to address a barrel filled with toxic sludge.

Grade: B+

“Clipped” premieres Tuesday, June 4 with two episodes on Hulu. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale on July 2.