Ballmer is using same style with Clippers that worked in his old business

LOS ANGELES - Steve Ballmer was golfing with a longtime colleague and friend late last month when the conversation turned to what had happened a few days earlier.

On a stage inside a standing-room-only recreation center in South Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Clippers owner burst out of his director's chair, grabbed a microphone, and introduced superstar forwards Kawhi Leonard and Paul George with whoops and hollers that quickly went viral across social media.

"It was kind of like our old sales meetings," Jeff Raikes said Ballmer told him. "I knew what he was referring to."

Before he left Microsoft in 2008 to become chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 20 of Raikes' 27 years at the tech firm were spent working directly for Ballmer. His boss became famous for whipping himself, and employees, into a frenzy at company conferences.

But if Ballmer's outburst during the Clippers' announcement was nothing new for Raikes, it was unexpected for plenty of other people.

"I came off the stage," Raikes recalled Ballmer saying, "and Kawhi said, 'Man, I gotta get me some of that juice.'"

That ebullience, what Leonard called Ballmer's "juice," is genuine, friends and colleagues say.

So is