THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: June 4, 2014

For those fans that believe that a former Microsoft CEO buying the Los Angeles Clippers is the first step in a long process to land another NBA team back in Seattle, think again.

Not by a long shot.

IT MIGHT be poetic justice to see the Los Angeles Clippers plucked from their home at the Staples Center and moved to Seattle, where they'd be in a new state-of-the-art arena within a few years, but that won't happen.

There's not denying that former Clipper owner Donald Sterling is a bonehead.

He's a racist.

He is trying to bring an NBA Hall of Famer down with him.

Even worse, he believes he hasn't done anything wrong.

He has.

He has done more than just his selling the team, stepping away from the league and having nothing to do with the organization will ever do.

What better way to tell Sterling that he's not longer welcome with the team than moving them out of town and to a new location for a fresh start.

They probably couldn't get that either.

Thanks to Sterling, the Clippers' run in the playoffs has seemed like an afterthought. The Clippers didn't play many games in the postseason in the 1990s and early 2000s, but have turned into a contender in recent years.

Seattle deserves another franchise, but not like this.

It will be difficult to convince the other owners to allow a team to be moved, especially one in such a large media market like Los Angeles to a smaller area.

And expansion isn't going to happen to allow the city to have another team quite yet.

Likely the best-case scenrio, and it's even less likely, is that the Sacramento deal falls through and they've got no choice but to opt to move that franchise.

WITH ALL the talk around the Sterling mess, some fans may have missed that the NBA finals are closing in, with the first game scheduled for Thursday night.

The series will feature a rematch of last year's series, with the San Antonio Spurs taking on the two-time champion Miami Heat.

This year could be a little different, but only if the Spurs can do something about having home court advantage in the series.

Both teams have most of the same players in their lineup as they did last year, and it could really be a great series.

And I hope it is a lot like last year's series, with the teams needing seven games to finish it.

If nothing else, hopefully it is good enough to make up for the chaos that was created at the outset.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d'Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at JEPressSports.