LOS ANGELES: Basketball franchise the Los Angeles Clippers is not for sale, owner Donald Sterling said yesterday, vowing to fight to keep the team he built, NBC News reported, in the latest salvo of his battle with the league.
Sterling, who was banned for life by the National Basketball Association in April over a leaked recording of racist remarks he made, said he had been treated unfairly and must defend his rights to privacy and due process.
“From the onset, I did not want to sell the Los Angeles Clippers. I have worked for 33 years to build the team ... I intend to fight to keep the team,” NBC News quoted the 80-year-old Sterling as saying.
Sterling’s legal representatives did not immediately return telephone calls and messages seeking comment on the report.
Sterling sued the NBA and its commissioner, Adam Silver, on May 30, seeking at least $1bn in damages, just as the league tentatively approved a deal by his estranged wife, co-owner of the franchise, to sell the club for $2 bn to former Microsoft Corp chief executive Steve Ballmer.
Besides the lifetime ban, Silver also fined Sterling $2.5m, the league’s maximum penalty.
Amid fury at Sterling’s remarks from fans, players and sponsors of the Clippers, the NBA commissioner also urged the league’s 29 other team owners to take the unprecedented step of forcing Sterling to sell the Clippers, which he bought in 1981.
In a statement by Sterling carried by NBC, he said he was extremely sorry for the hurtful comments he made in private, and that they were made in anger and jealousy.
But he said he believed Silver ‘acted in haste by illegally ordering the forced sale of the Clippers,’ banning him for life, and imposing the fine and expressed his plans to make a suit.
“The action taken by Adam Silver and the NBA constitutes a violation of my rights and flies in the face of the freedoms that are afforded to all Americans,” Sterling said.
REUTERS
