Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s purported racist tirade was disclosed Saturday morning by TMZ (Deadspin chipped in a director’s cut). Sterling told his alleged mistress, according to the tape, that “it bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people.” He said other vomit-worthy things. He has issued a non-denial denial. The NBA is investigating. But many players have been less hesitant to speak forcefully, and their message might be summed up in what LeBron James told a reporter Saturday: “There is no room for Donald Sterling in our league.” Whose league? Our league.

As the league begins to move against its longest-tenured owner, the moment feels positively catalytic. The National Basketball Association is the sports world’s most progressive league. Its 30 teams are 30 businesses out to make money, but they do it in a game that finds its greatest popularity among the lower and middle classes and as a league with the second-highest proportion of Democratic fans. More specifically, the NBA is society’s cutting edge as far as race is concerned—it’s the league that birthed the first black head coach (Bill Russell, with due respect to football’s Fritz Pollard); first black superstar (Wilt Chamberlain); first black sneaker brand (Air Jordan); first black general manager (Wayne Embry); and only black owners (the Charlotte Bobcats were owned by Bob Johnson and are now owned by Michael Jordan). Its recent surge in popularity and value has been due primarily to an unusually talented and charismatic inventory of superstars who are overwhelmingly young black men.

Over the past several years, NBA players have seized the athletic and cultural zeitgeist, in the process making a ton of money for themselves but even more for ownership, who have seen their properties appreciate at rates not normally experienced outside the top echelons of Silicon Valley and Wall Street—according to Forbes, franchise values have increased 25 percent just in the past year. This imbalance—between who is responsible for the profit and who reaps the profit—makes less sense with each passing year, and incidents like Sterling’s make it seem absurd. So this is a moment of reckoning for the league, and, since the league has always seemed to represent more than just itself on matters of race and of labor, it’s a moment of reckoning for everyone. Will Sterling be allowed to stick around just because he’s the guy who owns the team? Or will the laborers responsible for Sterling’s success get their way? To put it more bluntly: Will the moribund old white guys win another round, or will the young wealth-creators triumph?

Starting with James’ infamous Decision in 2010, the league’s superstars have discovered and wielded their increased power, forcing trades and coach firings, but also assuming responsibility for their own destinies. The biggest stars are not just businessmen but businesses, man: James has his cut of Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones company; in exchange for an equity stake, Dwyane Wade has a sneaker brand with Li Ning, a Chinese sportswear company. In 1990, Jordan refused to endorse a black Democrat trying to unseat the vile Sen. Jesse Helms and defended himself with the memorable phrase, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Twenty-two years later, the Miami Heat donned hoodies in memory of Trayvon Martin, a thoroughly political moment that expressed a lack of concern for sneaker-buyers who might have been offended. NBA players’ new potency hasn’t exactly been harmed by the election of the first black president—who, Sunday morning, condemned Sterling.

One has seen the players’ newfound sense of empowerment in their reactions to Sterling’s purported comments. The players union’s de facto executive director, former star point guard and current Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, called them “reprehensible and unacceptable.” (Ironies of history: The guy in the driver’s seat of one of the country’s most visible unions is married to one of labor’s most visible antagonists, Michelle Rhee.) Kobe Bryant tweeted, “I couldn’t play for him.”