To be frank, watching episodes of the new limited series “Clipped” came with a bit of PTSD for this particular writer. As a longtime Los Angeles Clippers fan, the new FX program is sort of like revisiting one of the worst and most liberating moments in your team’s history. A moment that was so historic that the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, banned an owner from his team and essentially forced him to sell the team. And it was a long time coming.
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The owner in question was the infamous Donald Sterling, who was once known as the worst owner in NBA history (no argument there) mostly for his cheapskate tenure and for being generally creepy. In April 2014, when the Clippers had their best team in history, with All-Stars and future Hall-of-Famers Chris Paul and Blake Griffin on the roster, the team was prepping for a first-round series with the Golden State Warriors. The team had hired Glenn “Doc” Rivers as the head coach the previous summer (they actually traded a first-round pick for him, wild) and were hoping to make an NBA Finals run. Then, just a few games into the series, TMZ dropped a bombshell report. An audio recording of Sterling making racist comments to V. Stiviano, someone many assumed was the billionaire’s sidepiece. The history of the Clippers, the NBA and Los Angeles sports would never be the same (thank you new Clippers owner Steve Ballmer).
Five years after this moment, Ramona Shelburne, a sportswriter and analyst for ESPN, released an investigative ESPN podcast titled “The Sterling Affairs” featuring many of the people directly involved in the events. Another five years later, the television adaptation has arrived with Laurence Fishburne playing Doc Rivers, Ed O’Neil portraying Donald Sterling, Jacki Weaver playing his wife Shelly (a key figure in what unfolds), Cleopatra Colman as Stiviano, and, somewhat predictably, a number of well-meaning actors doing their best to inhabit the personas over very well known NBA players (one of which, DeAndre Jordan, is actually still in the league).
“Clipped’s” creator and executive producer Gina Welch brought a third-party perspective as a non-sports fan when she came on board, but related to everyone in Sterling’s orbit constantly dealing with someone intent on undermining any of their success. It was a different narrative theme than the messy romantic and financial love triangle Shelburne chronicled in the podcast.
“I’ve had experiences like that. I think as a country we’ve had experiences like that,” Welch admits. “And I thought that really has to be at the center of the show because in order to understand the damage that Donald Sterling has done, you really have to feel it in the psyches of the players. And so, that was how we sort of reoriented the show. And really, once I started learning more about Doc and that it was his first year with the team, and for me it was always Laurence Fishburne because, in part, he brings an immediate authority into the room. And so, the idea that Donald Sterling should show up and say, ‘I’m your owner,’ is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous with Laurence. And I also knew, because I grew up watching Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee Herman, that he could carry the show’s silliness too.
That friction between Rivers and Sterling, now at the center of the new series, was integral to Fishburne’s performance. Shelburne says one particular line in the scripts stood out to her. She notes , “Mr. Sterling likes people to call him Mr. Sterling, and Doc was like, ‘I’ll call him Mr. Sterling when he calls me Mr. Rivers.’ That’s what really speaks to it. And I remember we’ve had a whole long conversation about that, what was behind that. And I think that’s what Laurence is like. That’s so ridiculous that you would ever call him Doc versus Don.”
Over the course of our conversation, conducted at the TCA Winter Tour in February 2024, Shelburne gives a deep dive into how initially wanted to sell the story as a narrative before making the podcast, how executive producer Nina Jacobson helped pivot the project toward Welch, how Rivers and unreleased interviews became a resource for Welch, how these events were a foreshadowing of Black Athlete activism over the past decade, and much, much more.
Note: This interview was conducted before Doc Rivers’ Milwaukee Bucks lost in the first round and the Golden State Warriors, with Chris Paul, lost in the play-in tournament.
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The Playlist: I specifically asked to speak to both of you because you don’t always hear about the process of how a podcast gets adapted into a television series. Especially a sports-based story. So, first Ramona, when did the discussion start to turn it into a show?
Ramona Shelbourne: O.K., So, I always wanted it to be a show. And I think I took a few pitch meetings before we even made the podcast with certain studios or certain producers. And there was a head of development at ESPN at the time, his name was Adam Neuhaus, It’s back when Connor Schell was there, Libby Geist was there, and I pitched this anytime anybody would listen to me. I’d be at an espnW summit. I’d be like, “Listen, let me tell you this idea.” And Connor, Schell said, “Yeah, we do documentaries, and if you want to do a scripted show, let’s go to ABC Studios.” And Connor and Libby were really into it, but we just didn’t do that at ESPN. We don’t do scripted. And so, Adam said, “People, oftentimes they do podcasts now as a development tool.” And it used to be books, right? People used to write books, and then now it’s a podcast. And I said, “Yeah, I think I could do that.” It’s hard because I have to talk people into talking to me for this, and nobody wants to talk about this because it was not a fun time in their life. And everybody who talks to you is worried about getting sued, or why do I want to bring up some ugly thing?

And so, I think, I don’t know how it was a variety of ways of bending people’s arms and talking them into talking to me for this. But I always, I felt like in reporting on this, I was living in a movie. I’m from LA, I know rich people behaving badly. This has been unlike any other story I had ever covered. I knew Donald was a character, and I was like, “This should be more than a sports story.” And Adam and I actually met with FX maybe three weeks before the podcast came out. We had a meeting with Nick Grad, he was interested. And I pitched it and I did my whole thing where I get excited about “And then Shelly decides to declare him mentally incapacitated, this little old lady….” And he was like, “Yeah, I’m into this.” And I said, “But just wait. The podcast, when you hear it, you’ll know.” And then, literally a week or two after the podcast came out, Adam got a call from Nick, I got a call from Nina Jacobson. I was in New York doing press for the podcast, and we kept missing each other because I was going up and down subways. And when I would pitch this in a room with everyone, I was like, it’s like “The People v. O.J. Simpson.’ We have event casting. Isn’t it so cool to think about who’s going to play Doc Rivers and who’s going to play Shelly Sterling? And it’s such a great story. I was always a little more drawn to the Shelly character because that story of how she stayed married to him for 60 years and then decides to declare him mentally incapacitated and take control of the team is just, it was such a revelation for me at the moment. At the moment she did it, who knew this little old lady who had been sort of ignored for 60 years and disrespected and how did she ever live with him? That was, to me, what elevated it. And then five years later, by the time I did the podcast and they were sort of back together and I was like, “Oh, that moment you saw the light and…” The way I phrased it several times was, they irrationalized their behavior, right? They sort of had this marriage that they couldn’t really…
The Playlist: Stockholm Syndrome, maybe?
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah, I don’t even know if I’d go like that. It’s like they couldn’t get divorced because it’s financial, right?
The Playlist: Yes.
Ramona Shelbourne: But they had always had this dynamic of this sort of toxic relationship, but they did really love each other, which I think Gina captures amazingly. O.K. So, pivot…
The Playlist: Sure.
Ramona Shelbourne: I took meetings with several other producers, but the second Nina called, I was like, “Yeah, it’s going to go to Nina.” And then, they went through a process where they talked to a lot of writers, and this was right in late 2019, early 2020. I did a call with maybe two or three other writers, and I talked to Gina and I loved her. And you had pitched them, right?
Gina Welch: Yeah.
The Playlist: Gina, had you’ve heard about it through the grapevine, or how did it come to you?
Gina Welch: I mean, I was new to LA when it all happened, and I had, I’ve been sort of aware of it as a tabloid story. But I wasted most of my life not watching basketball. And so, when [Jacobson’s production company] Color Force sent me the podcast, I think it was in early 2020.
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah.
Gina Welch: I was like, “What?”
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah. Probably most of the writers I spoke to were total sports fans.
The Playlist: So you’re really one of the few who weren’t?
Gina Welch: Oh, no. I mean, I started avidly going to Clipper’s games and following the NBA because I started to understand, “Oh, it’s a game of personalities.”
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah.
The Playlist: Soap operas.
Gina Welch: But no, when I got Ramona’s podcast, I mean, I gobbled it up and I was like, “This is an insane story.” And Ramona was asking all of the kinds of questions that produce details that help you write a show like this.
Ramona Shelbourne: So, she had access to all the interviews, not just what made it into the podcast.
Gina Welch: Yeah.
The Playlist: Was there any uncomfortableness in that maybe I didn’t want to put this in the podcast, so maybe we shouldn’t put it in the series?
Ramona Shelbourne: No, I was fine with that. There were certain things that we obviously couldn’t put in the podcast, right? There’s a lot of deep background that maybe didn’t go through late.
The Playlist: Oh, right.
Gina Welch: Couldn’t put in the show either.
Ramona Shelbourne: But I felt like Gina understood how sensitive a lot of this stuff was. She understood the difference between, this is an on-the-record podcast interview, and this is something where we’re just chatting.
The Playlist: O.K.
Gina Welch: I mean, Ramona is an incredibly accomplished reporter and still reporting on the league, and has all of these relationships. And so, you have to respect that these are people who gave her access because they know her and they trust her. But she was incredibly generous in sort of opening up these interviews, and yeah, and just asking the kinds of questions I would’ve hoped would come to my mind if I’d been in the room. At some point, somebody gets a salad thrown at them, and Ramona asks, “Dressed or undressed?” The kind of question that we need for production. But no, when I listened to it I didn’t immediately sort of identify myself with Shelly, and I found that the sort of love triangle between these three parties, I felt a little outside of it. And for me, I was really interested in the players, and I think…
The Playlist: And Doc too.
Gina Welch: Yeah. And I think, look, I’m a white woman. And so, I think I was trying to sort of see myself into the point of view of someone who is working, of whom perfection is expected at work, and for whom sacrifice in one’s personal life is just part of the profession, and that you are working under someone who is undermining you at every step. And I think that was the way that I saw myself. I’ve had experiences like that. I think as a country we’ve had experiences like that. And I thought that really has to be at the center of the show because in order to understand the damage that Donald Sterling has done, you really have to feel it in the psyches of the players. And so, that was how we sort of reoriented the show. And really, once I started learning more about Doc and that it was his first year with the team, and for me it was always Laurence Fishburne because, in part, he brings an immediate authority into the room. And so, the idea that Donald Sterling should show up and say, “I’m your owner,” is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous with Laurence. And I also knew because I grew up watching Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” that he could carry the show’s silliness too.
Ramona Shelbourne: We talked about this a lot, about how there’s a great line…Mr. Sterling likes people to call him Mr. Sterling, and Doc was like, “I’ll call him Mr. Sterling when he calls me Mr. Rivers.” That’s what really speaks to it. And I remember we’ve had a whole long conversation about that, what was behind that. And I think that’s what Laurence is like. That’s so ridiculous that you would ever call him Doc versus Don.
Gina Welch: Yeah.
Ramona Shelbourne: Right?
The Playlist: You released the podcast five years after the events now it’s almost another five years since this occurred.
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah.
The Playlist: So, the Doc Rivers in 2014 is much different than the Doc Rivers we know now. So many of these figures went through ups and downs that changed their perception, especially in the NBA world. In terms of NBA fans who are going to watch this show how much of that did you want to tease? When this comes out Doc may be coaching in the finals or he might not be.
Ramona Shelbourne: I mean, he could be playing Chris Paul in the finals.
The Playlist: Yes.
Ramona Shelbourne: He could be playing the Clippers in the finals this year.

The Playlist: Or he could be out in the first round. Again, he’s experienced so much failure in many ways since then. I’m curious, having not seen the last four episodes, is there any sort of foreshadowing of these characters and what happened to them after this at all? Or is it, you’re just trying to tell this very concentrated story?
Gina Welch: I think, to a certain extent, we’re aware of where the real-life figures go in terms of creating their character arc. I think especially because when you look at the event of the tape, and I think this is in Ramona’s podcast, this is in the reporting at the time, no one knew how big it was going to be because there was no precedent event. And there’s a whole history, the revolt of the Black athlete of activism in sports, but there hadn’t really been in the NBA. And this is also before Colin Kaepernick. And so, the idea that the Clippers were going to boycott during the playoffs, it seemed almost unthinkable. And so, you have to sort of try to take the audience back into what that was like 10 years ago before Kaepernick and before the boycotts that were happening.
Ramona Shelbourne: 100%.
Gina Welch: Yeah. And so, knowing that that’s where the NBA is going to go, that we’re going to go to the sort of player empowerment era, sort of informs the arc of this series.
Ramona Shelbourne: Also, just for the purposes of what you were asking us to begin with, Gina and I did hours and hours and hours on the phone at the very beginning of this. I very distinctly remember, it was early pandemic, so the world shuts down March 2020. I feel like you came around, it was right, maybe April or May or something like that.
Gina Welch: Yeah.
Ramona Shelbourne: And one of the things that would blow me away is she had already done so much research, and she would ask me questions and I’m supposed to know everything. And she would be like, “Do you know… Did Doc live in a Sterling property when he first moved to Los Angeles?” And I was like, “I have no idea.” She’s like, “Well, I read it in an interview.” She just did so much exhaustive research. It was unbelievable, to the point where she knows stuff I don’t know, and I lived it, O.K.? And there’s things that, we went to a couple games together, and she came to the Clipper games, and last year when the Sixers were in town, she came to the Clippers game. She had done a lot of conversations with Doc.
The Playlist: Oh, so he did talk for the series specifically?
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah. She talked a lot to Doc for this. And Matt Barnes also is a consultant on the show. But they had done everything over Zoom, right? Phone and Zoom? And you have to remember, it was all pandemic era. So, it was a couple of years ago, he was with the Sixers. And I go, “Come on, we’re going to get you down in there. You’re going to really meet in person.” And it was not that easy because I had to get her a credential and she had to walk into and go into the press conference room, and get this very unique idea of what is the press conference room like? And what does it feel like to be in a Doc Rivers press conference.
Gina Welch: And then I had to go back and completely rewrite the press conference room because I was like, “It’s glamorous. There’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, oh no, this is like folding chairs.
Ramona Shelbourne: Yeah, totally. But it was also to put them in the room together. And I felt like, that’s what I thought, at least from on my end because I know the real people involved and all that, and I had a lot of conversations about it. But it just kind of blew me away how much she and the other writers learned about the characters that I didn’t even know, and having a different take on the story is so much better than I could have even imagined, right? Because I was so focused on the Donald-Shelly-Viv love triangle, and that’s in there, obviously. But she gets a whole different level of Doc than I ever got.
“Clipped” debuts its first two episodes on Tuesday, June 4 on FX with subsequent episodes every week on FX and the next day on Hulu.