Los Angeles – Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Sunday he expects Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to put up a “long, protracted fight” to retain ownership of the team after being banned for life from the National Basketball Association because of racial comments.
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Garcetti, appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program, was asked about a potential boycott of Clippers games if Sterling balks and said, “I would certainly keep that arrow in my quiver.”
Last week NBA Commissioner Adam Silver fined Sterling $2.5 million and imposed a lifetime ban after the revelation of taped conversations in which he told his friend, V. Stiviano, that he did not want her to bring black people to Clippers games or pose for pictures with them.
The NBA Board of Governors is expected to meet within the next two weeks to vote on forcing a sale of the team.
Sterling, who built a fortune estimated at $1.9 billion through Los Angeles-area real estate holdings, bought the Clippers for $12 million in 1981 and the franchise now is valued at $430 million by Forbes magazine.
Garcetti said he had spoken with Sterling, urging him to apologize for his comments, but that he expects an ugly legal battle.
“I think that he thinks that he’s going to be the owner for a long time, that he wants to stay the owner,” Garcetti said. “And I said, ‘This will be a long, protracted fight and a painful thing for our city …'”
Garcetti said Sterling’s continued ownership could be “very tough” for the Clippers players, who advanced to the second round of the NBA playoffs Saturday, since further success would profit Sterling.
Kevin Johnson, a star guard for the Phoenix Suns in the 1980s and 1990s and now mayor of Sacramento, California, served as an emissary for the NBA players union after Sterling’s conversations were revealed. He said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would like to see a unanimous or near-unanimous result when owners vote on making Sterling to sell the team.
A three-fourths vote by the board of governors would be required to force the sale.
“I think the players feel very strongly that they have confidence in the owners to make the right decision,” Johnson said. “I think the owners are going to put the Clippers in a position where this owner, Mr. Sterling, is going to have to sell the team. Whether it happens this week or next week, it’s going to have to run that process.”
“I think that everyone is anticipating there will be a legal fight,” Johnson said. “However, I’d like him (Sterling) to rethink that position. I think if Mr. Sterling was going to approach it the right way, he would apologize, he would embrace the sanctions and spend the rest of his life proving he wasn’t a racist.”
This mayor is a talk moron who has his head deep where it’s very very dark without sunshine.
Instead of boycott he should be positive. A boycott hurts the clippers but it will also hurry EVERYONE else making money of the clippers FOR EXAMPLE THE CITY THAT WON’T GET TAX REVENUE!
I don’t think anyone really cares anymore. This story is dead, it was all one big PR stunt for “outraged” politicians. He never made a public racist statement like former presidential minister Louis Farakan. Or like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the such.
I hope that Donald Sterling digs in his heels, and hires a battery of well paid Attorneys, who will drag this matter on for years. He should not go down without a fight. As John Paul Jones stated “We have not yet begun to fight”.
At issue here is that everyone knew what Mr Sterling said for well over 30 to 40 years and they all, for the most part , kept quiet about it. Now that the team is finally doing well and seems to have something going AND is making more money someone GOADED HIM into saying this in his private house. I really hope all people involved I sued and don’t wish to the fullest extent of the law because in California you need permission from both people to be recorded and obviously there wasn’t.
And why doesn’t Mr. Sterling have the constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech which allows him to voice his opinion? If the players who work for him don’t like what he said, they can quit and find a job elsewhere. The league is going to force him to sell something that he wons???? That sure sounds unAmerican to me!
Why would anyone defend this low-life? Because being an anti-black racist is acceptable, while Anti-Semites aren’t? Because an 80 year old man with a trail of discarded mistresses is acceptable?
Yes, he’s been a known racist for years, but if his money-hungry wife didn’t always sue his mistresses trying to recoup the marital assets that he lavished on them; this tape probably would never have surfaced.
Yes, Sterling has a constitutional right to be a racist and to say what he wants; just the same as Mel Gibson and John Galiano have the right to be Anti-Semites (specifically they are Anti-Jews). The difference is that Sterling is a franchise owner. And when you buy into a franchise, you buy into it’s constitution. His actions and comments, no matter what the context, can and did adversely affect the team and the league. The only difference I see between Donald Sterling and Marge Schott is that Donald is a racist Jew and Marge was a racist Catholic. He deserves the same fate as Marge.