Donald Sterling Sues the NBA for over 1 Billion Dollars
It is more than obvious Donald Sterling is not going down without a fight. The embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner has sued the NBA for over 1 billion Dollars after they decided to ban him for life and force him to sell the team. Sterling who is being represented by Maxwell Blecher claims the recording where he made racist comments, which was released by TMZ is pretty much all the NBA has as the basis for their decision. The twist in that is the recording was done illegally and in California it is against law to record someones conversation without their permission so from the looks of things, the NBA is holding something that isn’t even legal to begin with against him. Oh the drama!. Some other things they are alleged in lawsuit documents are
“the forced sale of the Los Angeles Clippers threatens not only to produce a lower price than a non-forced sale, but more importantly, it injures competition and forces antitrust injury by making the … market unresponsive to … the operation of the free market.” According to Sterling, if he is forced to sell, it will devalue the team an create damages in excess of $1 billion.
Another twist to the story is that just yesterday news that Sterling’s estranged wife, Shelly, had agreed to sell the Clippers to ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion had gone public (Sterling’s camp has denied this). If they really have sold the team, what does this mean? Since Shelly can not sell the Clippers without Sterling’s consent we wait from word from Sterling himself.
Donald Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million. If in fact they do officially sell the team for $2 billion and succeed in suing the NBA for over $1 billion, they walk away with a cool $3 billion+, minus taxes, lawyers, fees, etc. Can somebody say huge profit. Does Donald Sterling lose in all this? The man is 80 years old, he can decide to buy an island and spend the rest of his life there being fed grapes by girls much hotter than V.Stiviano.
