Donald Sterling

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Donald Sterling owned a professional basketball team for 33 years, and in nearly every one of those years, that team lost more games than it won. Then, in the spring of 2014, a private recording ended everything. Within days, Sterling was banned from the NBA for life, fined $2.5 million, and stripped of virtually all authority over his franchise. The team he had purchased for $12.5 million was sold for $2 billion. What makes Sterling's story worth examining is not just the spectacular collapse at the end, but what the decades before it reveal about how a man can hold power in plain sight while lawsuits, fines, and warnings pile up around him. The questions worth asking: how did he acquire the Clippers in the first place, why was he allowed to keep them for so long despite multiple attempts to remove him, and what finally forced the NBA's hand when so much had failed to do so before?

• 2. From Tokowitz to Sterling

  ›

  Donald Sterling was born Donald Tokowitz on the 26th of April, 1934, in Chicago. His family settled in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles when he was two years old. His parents, Susan and Mickey, were Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. At Theodore Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, he was on the gymnastics team and served as class president, graduating in 1952. He went on to California State University, Los Angeles, class of 1956, and then to Southwestern University School of Law, class of 1960.

  At age 25, Sterling and his wife Shelly filed a formal petition to change their surname from Tokowitz to Sterling. They filed that petition on the 9th of December, 1959. Their stated reasons were practical: peers struggled to pronounce "Tokowitz", and the couple believed a different name would bring financial advantages. The new surname stuck, and so did the ambition behind it. Sterling began practicing law in 1961, focusing on divorce and personal injury cases, but his real ambitions lay elsewhere. His first real estate purchase was a 26-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills, the beginning of what would become a vast Los Angeles property empire.

• 3. The Property Empire

  ›

  In the 1960s, Sterling bought a pair of large apartment buildings in the Westwood area of Los Angeles called Lesser Towers, renaming them Sterling Towers. In 1976, he leased the California Bank Building on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The building was an Art Deco landmark constructed in 1930 by MGM cofounder Louis B. Mayer. Sterling renamed it Sterling Plaza.

  A Sports Illustrated senior writer named Franz Lidz, in a piece published in 2000, revealed the terms of Sterling's lease on the building: a 99-year agreement that required only a modest annual fee and 15 percent of any rental income. The arrangement meant Sterling had little incentive to bring in other tenants. Lidz reported that with no other tenant, the Mayer estate faced roughly 75 more years of minimal income from the property, and that Sterling's patience might ultimately force a fire sale on favorable terms.

  By April 2014, Sterling owned 162 properties in Los Angeles. His wealth and his property portfolio made him, on paper, a substantial civic figure. But his management of those properties would eventually attract federal scrutiny, and the pattern of behavior documented in his real estate business would eventually surface in his ownership of a basketball team.

• 4. Buying the Clippers

  ›

  Sterling's path to NBA ownership ran directly through Jerry Buss, the majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. In 1979, Buss sold a portion of his apartment buildings to Sterling for $2.7 million. That money covered the remaining balance Buss needed to purchase the Lakers, the Kings hockey team, and The Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67 million. Two years later, Buss suggested that Sterling buy his own NBA franchise.

  Sterling paid $12.5 million for the San Diego Clippers in 1981. At his introductory press conference, he promised to "spend unlimited sums" to build the team into a contender. His face appeared on billboards and the backs of buses across San Diego in a marketing campaign. The ads read: "My Promise: I will make you proud of the Clippers."

  The promise did not hold. In 33 years of Sterling ownership through 2013-14, the Clippers lost 50 or more games 22 times, lost 60 or more games on eight occasions, and lost 70 games once. Their first winning season did not arrive until 1991-92, eleven years into Sterling's tenure. Meanwhile, the Lakers, under Buss, won an NBA championship in his very first season as owner, 1979-80.

• 5. Kept In, Nearly Pushed Out

  ›

  Sterling's hold on the franchise was almost severed before it had properly begun. In 1982, the NBA fined Sterling $10,000, the largest fine ever levied against an owner at the time, after he publicly stated he would accept the Clippers finishing last in order to draft a player like Ralph Sampson. In June of that year, Sterling attempted to move the team to Los Angeles without league approval. A committee of six NBA owners investigated, and in September they recommended that Sterling's ownership be terminated. They found he had been late in paying creditors and players.

  Days before a league vote in October to remove him, Sterling agreed to sell the team. But at the suggestion of David Stern, then the league's vice president, Sterling was allowed to remain as owner, handing operational control to Alan Rothenberg, who became the team's president. By February 1983, Stern was calling the Clippers a "first-class" franchise, and the push to oust Sterling was dropped.

  The following year, encouraged by Al Davis's antitrust victory that allowed Davis to relocate his Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles, Sterling moved the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles without NBA permission. The league fined him $25 million. Sterling sued for $100 million, and the fine was ultimately reduced to $6 million after he dropped the suit. Sterling had learned something important: the league would threaten, but ultimately deal.

• 6. Discrimination Lawsuits

  ›

  In February 2003, the Housing Rights Center of Los Angeles filed a housing discrimination case against Sterling on behalf of 18 tenants. The lawsuit documented statements Sterling allegedly made to employees, including that "black people smell and attract vermin" and that "Mexicans just sit around and smoke and drink all day". The suit also alleged Sterling stated a preference for Korean tenants because, in his words, "they will pay the rent and live in whatever conditions I give them."

  In 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Sterling for using race as a factor in filling apartment buildings. The charges included refusing to rent to non-Koreans in the Koreatown neighborhood and refusing to rent to African Americans in Beverly Hills. In November 2009, Sterling agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle that federal lawsuit.

  A separate lawsuit came from inside the Clippers organization. In February 2009, longtime Clippers executive Elgin Baylor, who had served the franchise for more than two decades and was named NBA Executive of the Year in 2006, sued for wrongful termination and employment discrimination based on age and race. Baylor's lawsuit alleged Sterling told him he wanted to fill the roster with "poor black boys from the South and a white head coach". Baylor later dropped the race accusation, and the case went to trial in March 2011; the jury ruled unanimously in favor of Sterling and the Clippers.

• 7. The Recording and the Ban

  ›

  On the 25th of April, 2014, TMZ Sports published a recording of a private conversation between Sterling and his mistress, V. Stiviano, whose birth name was Maria Vanessa Perez. The recording was made in September 2013. In it, Sterling was irritated that Stiviano had posted a photo on Instagram posing with Magic Johnson. Sterling told Stiviano, who is herself part African-American: "It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people," and he told her she could bring Black people to her home but added, "the little I ask you is... not to bring them to my games."

  The reaction within the NBA was immediate. On April 26, Clippers players held a team meeting. They briefly discussed boycotting Game 4 of their playoff series against the Golden State Warriors before deciding to play, instead wearing their shirts inside-out to obscure the team logo during pregame warmups. Miami Heat players did the same two days later. LeBron James stated, "There's no room for Donald Sterling in the NBA." President Barack Obama described the recording as "incredibly offensive racist statements." The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP canceled plans to award Sterling its lifetime achievement award for a second time. UCLA rejected a $3 million gift from Sterling on the 29th of April.

  On April 29, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced a lifetime ban and a $2.5 million fine, the maximum allowed under the NBA constitution. Silver stripped Sterling of virtually all authority over the Clippers and stated he would move to force a sale, which would require the vote of 22 of the other 29 team owners. Silver later apologized to Magic Johnson after Sterling used a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper on May 11 to criticize Johnson's character and his battle with HIV.

• 8. The $2 Billion Sale

  ›

  Shelly Sterling, who had co-owned the team with her husband since 1983 and served as one of the Clippers' two alternate governors, moved to sell the franchise after the ban was announced. On the 29th of May, she reached a deal to sell 100 percent of the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.

  Sterling contested the sale almost immediately. He said he had not authorized his wife to negotiate on his behalf, called the penalties "draconian," and sued the NBA for $1 billion alleging antitrust violations and constitutional violations. On the 4th of June, 2014, his attorney Maxwell Blecher announced Sterling had agreed to let the sale proceed, but days later Sterling withdrew that support and resumed the lawsuit.

  Shelly pursued the sale through probate court, presenting testimony from three doctors that Sterling was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and lacked the mental capacity to serve as a trustee. On the 28th of July, the probate court ruled in her favor. Ballmer's purchase closed on the 12th of August. Shelly received the titles "Clippers Number One Fan" and "owner emeritus" as part of the agreement. Half of the $2 billion was held in an escrow account pending the conclusion of Sterling's lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin dismissed that lawsuit in March 2016, describing it as "plainly insufficient" and "clearly implausible." Sterling appealed but his attorneys missed the deadline to file an opening brief, and the case ended with a voluntary dismissal. Sterling settled his broader lawsuit against the NBA in November 2016.