Is that Ballmer on the tape? The Onion wants to know...

The Onion is trying to discover if the voice on the recording is actually Steve Ballmer, in a discussion about the future of basketball with a most attractive young woman at a small club on Tukwila Parkway, north of SeaTac.

He starts off by asking, "Is this really Gary Ridgway's favorite booth?" and the young lady assures him but adds, "although it's true that most of our dancers aren't alive anymore to show you their Ridgway Memorial Folded Dollar Bills."

After some banter about the woman's background ("A college student? No kidding! I bet you make a lot of A's"), the voice-thought-to-be-Ballmer answers one of her questions.

"Yes, it's true. I don't see any need for the rim. It's useless. I never liked it myself. I never used it, even, so I think we need to get rid of it."

"There will be whiners that complain about missing it, but so? I can load up forums full of people name-calling them, claiming they're too old to accept change, etc. That worked for me before."

The woman asks about the backboard.

"No, we'll leave that, although I think it needs some big color squares on it. If you can touch that, then you score different points."

And about the courts?

"Same thing. Turn them into 4 or maybe 8 color squares, of different sizes, all over. You get points based on the colored-tile you're standing on, and the color on the backboard you mouse over to - er, touch."

"I think it's time for subscriber seating, too. Make everyone log in. I'll probably cut the ticket prices but sell them quarter-by-quarter, and then I'll jack up the 4th Quarter's prices. And OT, well, that's got to be full-price again. By having everyone logged in already, though, no one will need to touch their wallets. I'll do that for them."

 

This was my response too.

I think it's some kind of joke about metro tiles? confused

 

Ballmer is set to buy the LA Clippers, which is the basketball tie in. He also has something to do with Microsoft, I'd tell you but this new Windows 8 interface drives me crazy trying to figure anything out. Gary Ridgway was/is the Green River Killer. Not sure why that would tie into it except they're both from the 206 area code.

Umm, confused:confused

 

And the whole being on tape thing must be a reference to Sterling, the former owner of the Clippers being caught on tape with racist remarks.

 

Please tell me you understand that The Onion is a satire news site.

 

It was honestly hard to tell from the comments, and that kind of scared me.

The whole thing is a rip on Steve Ballmer wanting to change the Clippers (and thus all of basketball) like he did Microsoft now that he's buying the team. Because he used to be the CEO of MS.

It's only funny if you follow the news and are familiar with what he did when he was running MS. If you aren't familiar with the whole Donald Sterling controversy, or with what Ballmer did at MS, then it won't make any sense.

 

I agree.

I did too but it still made no sense at all. Guess it's my fault because I don't follow sports. :-D

 

Yep, I know the Onion. I also follow all of this as I live in the Seattle area. Still not sure about the Green River Killer tie in. Nor can I find this on the Onion's site.

There's big speculation that Ballmer may try to bring a team to Seattle. The area has been screaming for one since the Sonics were bought away. The fact that Ballmer says the Clippers will stay in LA doesn't mean anything apparently to anyone around here. So the whole thing about him changing basketball may not be to far off.

Sorry, I guess I just don't see the humor in it all.