NBA

Sterling offers pathetic apology

LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his estranged wife Shelly are pulling out all the stops to lay claim to their beloved team, speaking out for the first time over the weekend in separate interviews.

Sterling wore his heart on his sleeve “begging for forgiveness” in his first sit-down interview since the scandal broke. Throughout the interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, set to air Monday night, Sterling apologizes profusely, but falls short of singling out the basketball legends he insulted.

“If I said anything wrong, I’m sorry,’’ Sterling said. “I’m a good [NBA] member who made a mistake, and I’m apologizing and I’m asking for forgiveness.

“Am I entitled to one mistake, am I, after 35 years?’’ Sterling, 80,  said from his home in Beverly Hills.

“When I listen to that tape, I don’t even know how I can say words like that . . . I don’t know why the girl had me say those things,” insisted the billionaire real-estate investor, who was caught on tape telling his then-gal pal, V. Stiviano, not to bring black people — including hoops great Magic Johnson — to Clippers games.

Anderson Cooper sat down for an exclusive interview with Donald Sterling in Los Angeles.CNN/AC360

Despite his alleged contrition, Sterling still blasted Johnson as a bad role model for kids.

“He’s a good person. I mean, what am I going to say?’’ Sterling told Cooper, before adding, “Has he done everything he can do to help minorities? I don’t think so. But I’ll say it, he’s great.

But I don’t think he’s a good example for the children of Los Angeles.”

In a separate interview with Barbara Walters, Shelly said she recently started to believe her husband suffers from the “onset of dementia.” She recounts a conversation she had with Sterling just after the tape was released.

“I don’t remember saying that. I don’t remember ever saying those things,” Shelly said Sterling told her.

“I said, ‘Well, this is the tape,’ ” Shelly said. “And he says, ‘Hmm. I don’t remember it.’”

Shelly, who’s been married to Sterling for 60 years, said she plans to divorce him, but her lawyers have told her to wait it out. Throughout their marriage, she said Sterling has been both “emotionally abusive and verbally abusive.”

“I don’t love him. I pity him and I feel sorry for him,” she told Walters.

As pressures continue to mount against the Sterlings to push them out of their ownership roles, both are planting their feet in the ground.

“I will fight that decision,” Shelly  told Walters about the league’s possible power play. “To be honest with you, I’m wondering if a wife of one of the owners, and there’s 30 owners, did something like that, said those racial slurs, would they oust the husband? Or would they leave the husband in?”

Sterling insists that he made a “terrible, terrible mistake” and was doing it because he was trying to sleep with Stiviano.

“I’m talking to a girl. I’m trying to have sex with her,” Sterling said in the recent conversation, a tape of which was obtained by Radar Online.

“I’m trying to play with her. If you were trying to have sex with a girl and you’re talking to her privately and you don’t think anybody’s there, you may say anything in the world!”

Sterling said he was “baited” and isn’t sure who leaked the tape.

“I thought she liked me and really cared for me. I guess being 51 years older than her, I was deluding myself,” he said.

“I just wish I could ask her why — and if she was just setting me up.”

If the NBA decides to flex its muscle and force Sterling out, Shelly’s ownership would also be “terminated,” according to a statement.

But her lawyer Pierce O’Donell said it won’t be that easy. “We do not agree with the league’s self-serving interpretation of its constitution.’’

And in any case, he added, “California law and the United States Constitution trump any such interpretation.’’

Sterling has reportedly made numerous attempts to snag prestigious legal representation from San Francisco or L.A. to sue the NBA. But at least eight big law firms have shot him down, according to TMZ.

Additional reporting by Joe Tacopino