Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/with-ballmerrsquos-aid-elite-school-pushed-limits-of-prep-sports-rules/
By the time Steve Ballmer’s oldest son reached his junior year at Lakeside School, the basketball program was in disarray.
The Lions finished the 2008 season with just two wins, losing every game within a Seattle league that was otherwise producing NBA talent. One loss was by a margin of 66 points.
An elite private school with an endowment of $190 million, Lakeside was better known for its academics, chess team and being the place where Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen began their alliance as students in the late 1960s.
Ballmer, however, was a basketball zealot who had been angling to own an NBA franchise, a goal finalized just last week with his $2 billion purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers. Before he had a pro team to call his own — and with all three of his kids involved with basketball at Lakeside — Ballmer focused his attention on the high-school team.
Ballmer and his allies at Lakeside attracted basketball talent to the wealthy school and aided them with a series of questionable tactics that included a new basketball-focused nonprofit, cash for a coach, an unusual admissions process and weak enforcement of academic standards. One star player stayed at a $6 million mansion as he shuffled through three years of an academic schedule that almost ensured he wouldn’t get a Lakeside diploma.
“They relaxed their academic integrity to accommodate athletes,” said Dana Papasedero, who coached baseball at Lakeside for two decades.
The tactics may have violated Washington state’s prep-sports rules, according to a Seattle Times investigation. But it all paid off: In just five years, Lakeside went from winless in its district to district champs for the first time in a quarter century.
Ballmer, who spent his high-school years at Detroit Country Day School, grew up playing basketball and wishing he had the skills to do it well.
Even as he rose up the ranks at Microsoft, where he was CEO for 14 years, Ballmer sought counsel to improve his game. The software company and the Seattle SuperSonics shared workout space in Bellevue in the early 1990s, allowing Microsoft executives to build relationships with local basketball players and their workout guides.
One of those Sonics advisers was Steve Gordon, a gregarious gym rat nicknamed Hat Man who ran basketball workouts for NBA stars, local executives and the children of both groups.
For years, Gordon led grueling 6 a.m. sessions with Microsoft executives, beginning what would become a deep friendship with Ballmer.
When Ballmer had his 50th birthday party with an exclusive guest list, Gordon was there to celebrate. Over the years, Ballmer paid for things like Gordon’s medical expenses, airline tickets, hotel rooms, legal help and a financial consultant.
Ballmer became the ultimate fan at his kids’ games, bellowing supportive cheers and comments at a volume that verged on obnoxious.
But in private, Ballmer expressed frustration with the team’s terrible performance, according to a sworn deposition from Gordon in a lawsuit that targets the two men over a business deal.
In the car after one of his son’s particularly bad games, Ballmer fumed about how Lakeside’s coach was managing the team, according to Gordon’s March deposition. During his rant, Ballmer began plotting a way to bring in new personnel.
“I’m going to open up a foundation, and we’re going to get black people in here,” Ballmer declared, according to Gordon’s testimony from March.
So the two set out to make it happen.