Everyone around the league was excited when Adam Silver took over as commissioner in February. He’s insanely smart, but also open-minded, calm, and friendly — a welcome contrast in those last three ways to his predecessor.

He’d exchange ideas with candor and patience, but there was an undercurrent of concern from a minority of those supporters: Did Silver have it in him to be an ass-kicker when the occasion called for one? A small subset of owners had seen him up close during the 2011 lockout and were confident; others worried Silver lacked Stern’s hammer. Those doubters shook their heads a bit when Malcolm Gladwell backed Silver into a few corners during a sometimes awkward one-on-one at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, thinking, David would never have gone for that.

The concern was mostly about labor relations and TV negotiations, arenas that demand hard-line tactics that can rankle the league’s partners. The Donald Sterling situation was, in a way, a bit easier. Sterling is odious. He is a despicable racist. No one supports him, publicly or privately. Owner after owner said Sterling’s sentiments had “no place in the league” and expressed confidence that Silver would do the right thing. The message was clear: “Throw the book at him and we’ll back you.”

This wasn’t a gray-area case. It wasn’t an ethical quandary, but Silver answered the call on Tuesday more swiftly and strongly than most anticipated, especially since the league has passed on other chances to address Sterling’s known racism. He became the hard-liner, banning Sterling for life and announcing that he will invoke a clause in the NBA’s constitution that allows the league and its owners to force the sale of a team.

Silver responded to almost every question from the media with one-sentence answers. He was outraged, certain in his words. The league needs three-quarters of the owners to vote in favor of the forced sale, and Silver was not wishy-washy when a reporter asked whether he had the votes: “I fully expect to get the support I need from the NBA owners to remove him,” he said. Almost every team has already indicated publicly that they will indeed back the sale of the Clippers.

Another reporter wondered whether it was appropriate to punish someone for hateful words uttered in private, and perhaps recorded illegally. It was an attempt to introduce the bogus First Amendment defense that doesn’t really apply here. Silver could have given a vague answer, or spouted legalese about how the league exists in a weird legal purgatory between private enterprise and public “single entity” exempt from some antitrust laws. He didn’t: “Whether or not these remarks were initially shared in private, they are now public, and they represent his views.”

Translation: We don’t care about the origin. The guy is a doddering caveman, and we are excising him from the league.

It was a satisfying moment.

Silver is going to get the votes, even though there are some owners, including Mark Cuban, concerned about the precedent a forced sale might set. And once the votes are in, league sources say the NBA, Silver, and the league’s owners will control the franchise sale process — not Sterling. The league would vet bidders and make the final call on who gets to run the franchise next. The exact details of the process are unclear, but front-office and ownership sources across the league think the Clippers have a real chance to fetch the NBA’s first $1 billion sales price.

Getting top value will require rehabilitating the Clippers brand after several sponsors pulled out on Monday and Doc Rivers raised the possibility he would not return as coach. Rivers is a player magnet. If he leaves, it would shake a franchise that has been mostly incompetent under Sterling’s non-stewardship for three decades.