NBA Team to Honor Black History Month...in the Wrong Month

This does not help accusations that the owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, is racist.

In a full-page ad published in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, the team announced it would be celebrating "Black History Month" on Wednesday by admitting "1,000 underprivileged children free." Wednesday is March 2. Black History Month is in February.

"It seems as if Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling forgot when Black History Month is," the Huffington Post writes. Over at ProBasketballTalk.com, Kurt Helin notes that the Clippers did play a lot of road games in February, but the move is still embarrassing.

But Helin also points out that the time of the celebration may not be as offensive as the language of the ad.

"Yes, underprivileged youth are helped (although as Deadspin points out, if children just show up and go to a table to get tickets as proposed, how do you know their economic status?)."

Deadspin says it has "one guess," and its most likely based on the fact that the ad is celebrating Black History Month.

Rollingout.com takes a more direct approach: "The offensive ad equates black children with being underprivileged and makes a generalization about an entire race."

Still, not everyone is up in arms. Robert Littal over at BlackSportsOnline is annoyed by the ad, but not enraged: "I understand that the Clippers only had two home games in February, but they had the schedule for a very long time, just put your celebration on one of those dates. I don’t think it is a huge deal and it is a nice gesture, just looks incompetent."

Yes, yes it does.