Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling said there’s no way he’ll be forced to sell his team — not in the land of the free.
“You can’t force someone to sell property in America!” the disgraced boss snapped in a telephone conversation with a friend, a recording of which was posted Thursday by RadarOnline.
“I’m a lawyer, that’s my opinion,” said Sterling, insisting he’d keep his team despite NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s decision to ban him for life and demanding that he sell.
Sterling has been in hot water since he was caught in a taped chat with his ex-girlfriend, V. Stiviano, made public last month, making racist comments over a picture she posted online of herself posing with Magic Johnson.
“In your lousy f–king Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with — walking with black people,” Sterling said. “Admire him, bring him here, feed him, f–k him, but don’t put [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don’t bring him to my games.”
The latest taped phone call marked the first time Sterling could be heard addressing the controversy, and he maintains he’s not a racist despite the nearly worldwide condemnation of him as such.
“You think I’m a racist?” Sterling snaps at his pal, who is not identified. “You think I have anything in the world but love for everybody? You don’t think that! You know I’m not a racist!”
The Clippers owner maintained that, by definition, someone can’t be a racist and be involved in basketball.
“I mean, how could you think I’m a racist knowing me all these years?” he said. “How can you be in this business and be a racist? Do you think I tell the coach to get white players? Or to get the best player he can get?”
Sterling, a 1952 graduate of Roosevelt HS in East Los Angeles, goes on say he has always been popular with minorities.
“I grew up in East LA — East LA, you die to get out of there!” Sterling raged in the phone call.
“I was the president of the high school there. I mean, and I’m a Jew! And 50 percent of the people there were black and 40 percent were Hispanic. You ever been to [East LA neighborhood] Boyle Heights? So I mean, people must have a good feeling for me.”
The pal also asked Sterling whether he had spoken to mixed-race Clippers star Blake Griffin since the Stiviano tape became public. “I didn’t talk to anybody! I’m in my house in Beverly Hills,” Sterling insisted.
And Sterling even chided Magic Johnson for not coming to his defense.
“It breaks my heart that Magic Johnson, a guy that I respect so much, wouldn’t stand up and say, ‘Well let’s get the facts. Let’s get him and talk to him.’ Nobody tried. Nobody!” Sterling said on the new tape.
Silver maintains he has the power to force a sale if he gains the backing of three-quarters of NBA owners, which Silver said he was certain to get.
Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12 million. Despite a long, laughable history of losing, they are now one of basketball’s hottest franchises and could be worth anywhere from $575 million to $1 billion.
Meanwhile, Sterling’s estranged wife — and Clippers co-owner — Shelly Sterling said she intends to fight for her rights to the team.
“Commissioner Silver made it clear, that when he announced sanctions against Donald, that the NBA was taking no action against me or my family,” Shelly Sterling told ESPN in a statement Thursday.