He sits in a conspicuous baseline seat, where he cheers like nobody’s watching.

The large balding man in long sleeves roars with every splashed basket, gestures with every scintillating pass, face reddening, arms flailing, celebrating so hard he once ripped a hole in his dress shirt.

He could be any die-hard Clippers fan, with one exception.

He owns the team.

Steve Ballmer is the perfect symbol of the power of Hollywood hope, the strength of California dreaming and the resilience of those who come here searching for a miracle.

Ranking eighth on the Forbes 500 list with an estimated net worth north of $120 billion, Ballmer could afford to buy any sports team in any league.

He chose to buy the Clippers, spending $2 billion in 2014 for a perennial loser and one of five teams to never reach the NBA Finals.

“A team comes up for sale in a city I love that’s near me?” said Ballmer, 68, a former Microsoft executive who lives in Washington state. “You say, ‘OK, but it’s the Clippers,’ and my theory is, you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

As the richest owner in North American professional sports, he had the wealth and influence to move the bedraggled franchise to a city far away from the big brother Lakers, perhaps even into his adopted hometown of Seattle.

Yet he doubled down and not only kept the Clippers in town but spent another $2 billion to build his own arena: the glitzy Intuit Dome, which is scheduled to open in October in Inglewood.

“It was clear to me, we had to have our own home, our own identity,” Ballmer said.

Cynics would describe his ownership of the Clippers as charity work, but his real philanthropy has had an even larger impact in the region, with his Ballmer Group investing hundreds of millions of dollars in everything from inner-city businesses to the renovation of 500 Clipper Community Courts in diverse pockets of the city.

“Impacting kids is the kind of thing that pulls at my heart,” Ballmer said. “A fan will tell me that he drove past a Clipper court and I’ll think, that’s really, really, really cool.”

Ballmer is accessible, generous and, most of all, the head cheerleader for a drowned-out swath of a Lakers-owned city.

“I love our die-hard fans,” he said. “I love the culture of c’mon, we have a chip on our shoulder, we’ve got something to prove, we’ve never done it before, c’mon!”

It is a Thursday afternoon early in the 2023-24 NBA season and Steve Ballmer is shouting into the phone, because of course he is, the sound of undying faith, the voice of a true believer, c’mon!

Occidental College’s Board of Trustees voted this week not to divest from companies with ties to Israel, saying the move would further divide the campus and limit freedom of expression.

In a letter to students, faculty and staff on Monday, Occidental Board of Trustees Chair Lisa H. Link acknowledged the devastating effects of the Israel-Hamas war but said that taking a position on a complex geopolitical situation could alienate certain members of the community and undermine its diversity.

“The diversity of community members’ opinions was a compelling reason to refrain from acting on the proposal, as the Board believes a decision in favor of the proposal would be divisive and damaging to the College community,” she said.

The divestment proposal set forth by leaders of the Occidental chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine in May called for the college to identify and disclose any investments in four manufacturing companies that have provided arms and equipment to the Israeli military.

The board said Occidental’s endowment does not include direct investments in any of the four companies.

Indirect investments in the Israel-linked companies make up less than 0.1% of the college’s endowment assets and are managed by third parties that restrict the college’s ability to divest from specific parts of a fund, Link said.

“The Board believes it is not in the best interests of the College, or our current and future students, to jeopardize the endowment by divesting from managed funds that have minimal exposure to certain companies,” she said in the letter.

The board’s vote on the divestment proposal hinged on students taking down their pro-Palestinian encampment, not impeding commencement and not returning to occupy a space on campus without prior approval.

The board held the vote after Occidental’s school year ended in early June.

Matthew Vickers, a co-organizer of the encampment and spokesperson for Occidental’s Students for Justice in Palestine, said he was disappointed by the board’s decision but not surprised.

“Based off of the pressure from Zionist parents and off-campus organizations such as the Brandeis Center and [the Anti-Defamation League] and personal political biases of the Board of Trustees, they caved in to rejecting divestment,” he said.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in May against Occidental and Pomona College, accusing the universities of permitting discrimination and harassment of Jewish students on their campuses.

Occidental Hillel directed inquiries to Director for Religious and Spiritual Life Susan Young, who declined to comment on the board’s decision not to divest and the alleged antisemitism on campus.

Although the board’s vote came after many students had vacated campus for the summer, Vickers said students who are still in L.A. are planning to hold actions on and off campus to protest the board’s refusal to divest.

On UCLA’s campus, students continue to stage pro-Palestinian protests into the summer, erecting a new encampment on Monday that resulted in about two dozen arrests.

“People are still galvanized and willing to continue the struggle,” Vickers said.

For decades, it seemed that Pixar couldn’t lose.

Starting with “Toy Story” in 1995, the Emeryville, Calif.-based computer animation studio rolled out hit after hit, with movies that achieved critical acclaim as well as box office riches.

But after the COVID-19 pandemic struck, even the once-unflappable Pixar fell victim to the doldrums plaguing the entertainment industry and the company’s own missteps.

Films such as “Lightyear” did poorly at the box office, partly due to their timing during the pandemic and a perceived falloff in quality, for which Pixar had long been considered the gold standard. Parent company Walt Disney Co. has cut back spending across the board, resulting in about 175 layoffs at Pixar, largely due to the studio pulling back on series for streaming service Disney+.

Now with “Inside Out 2,” the much-anticipated sequel to 2015’s “Inside Out,” Pixar is looking to make a comeback.

Hitting theaters this week, “Inside Out 2” is tracking for one of the highest opening weekends of the year so far, with a projected $80 million to $85 million in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada. Some analysts say the movie could become the first film of the year to clear $100 million in its domestic box office opening weekend. (The movie’s budget is estimated at $175 million.)

“Pixar was the leading edge of creating this art form,” said Ron Bernard, academic chair of animation and motion design at Otis College of Art and Design. “I’m hoping that [“Inside Out 2”] would revitalize the interest in Pixar films.”

“Inside Out 2” continues the story of Riley, now a teenager, who grapples with new emotions such as Embarrassment, Anxiety and Envy alongside longtime pals Joy, Sadness and Anger.

The anticipated numbers are remarkable, considering so many movies this year have come in below expectations on opening weekend, including George Miller’s prequel “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and the Ryan Gosling- and Emily Blunt-led action-comedy “The Fall Guy.” A strong debut will give a jolt of confidence to not only Pixar but beleaguered theaters, whose box office revenues are down 26% so far this year compared with 2023.

Presale numbers are promising. As of earlier this week, online ticketseller Fandango said “Inside Out 2” had already outsold its predecessor in advance ticket sales at five days before opening and is currently the highest advance ticket-selling Pixar film since 2019’s “Toy Story 4” at the same point in the sales process.

“Enthusiasm for the film is impressive as we prepare to dive back into the beloved world of ‘Inside Out,’” Jerramy Hainline, executive vice president of Fandango, said in a statement.

The overall box office this year has been muted due to the combination of still-slow-to-recover theater attendance, production delays from last year’s dual labor strikes and a handful of high-profile flops. Pixar hasn’t been immune to these larger, industry-wide challenges.

Bad timing doomed Pixar’s “Onward,” which was released in theaters on March 6, 2020, right before the pandemic shuttered cinemas across the nation. The movie went on to gross just $141 million worldwide. It also got mixed reviews by Pixar standards.

The move by studios early in the pandemic to move most theatrical films to streaming services also diminished the cultural effect of new Pixar releases.

“Soul” went directly to Disney+ in December 2020 and to theaters in some select countries; it wound up winning Oscars for animated feature and original score. 2022’s “Turning Red” also got sent to Disney+ first, despite theaters having reopened by then.

Exhibitors and cinephiles grumbled that Disney was training family audiences to stay home and stream new movies, rather than load up the minivan and trek to theaters.

“When a movie is a hit in theaters, you can’t do better,” said David A. Gross, who publishes FranchiseRe, a movie industry newsletter. “The theatrical release is the locomotive pulling the train.”

The studio also had some creative stumbles. 2022’s “Lightyear” bombed after replacing Tim Allen with Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz Lightyear. Last year’s “Elemental” had a slow start but eventually made about $496 million worldwide. It got decent — but not stellar — reviews.

Pixar’s quality also suffered from Disney’s orders across the board to produce more content for its streaming service, experts say. Churning out so many films and animated series led to creatives being spread thin at Disney studios, including Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel.

But the studio is also a victim of its own success. Disney’s 2006 acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion is widely credited with reviving Disney’s animation business. Pixar movies of the past regularly hit $750 million at the global box office, making even “Elemental” seem like a flop in comparison.

“There’s nothing wrong with that at all, it’s just the Pixar standard is so incredible,” Gross said. “Pixar has such a remarkable track record, and they’ve set such a high standard for the industry and for themselves.”

The original “Inside Out” generated $858 million in global sales after opening with $90 million in the U.S. and Canada. Pixar’s best-performing movie, 2018’s “Incredibles 2,” tallied $1.24 billion worldwide.

More broadly, families were slow to return to theaters due to health concerns as well as the ease of watching movies in their living rooms. But they are coming back. Last year’s animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment brought in $1.4 billion worldwide.

Box office watchers are hopeful for an animation-heavy slate toward the end of this year, with “Despicable Me 4,” “Moana 2” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3.”

While “Inside Out 2” will be a major test for Pixar, the next question, Gross said, will be whether the studio can recapture its old magic with a new story — not a sequel or spinoff. Its next opportunity to answer that is in June 2025, when Pixar is slated to release “Elio,” an original movie about a young boy’s intergalactic adventure.