Clippers'
Sterling Apologizes For Racist Remarks: CNN
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[May 12, 2014]
By Curtis Skinner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Los Angeles Clippers
owner Donald Sterling, who was banned for life from the NBA over racist
comments, has apologized and asked for forgiveness in his first public
statement since the controversy began last month, CNN said on Sunday.
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In an interview to be broadcast on Monday, Sterling told CNN he
made a terrible mistake but was not a racist.
"I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake?
It's a terrible mistake, and I'll never do it again," Sterling said
in the interview, according to CNN. "I'm here to apologize."
His comments came about two weeks after National Basketball
Association Commissioner Adam Silver fined the billionaire
businessman $2.5 million and banned him for life after a tape
surfaced of Sterling telling a female friend not to associate with
black people.
"The reason it's hard for me, very hard for me, is that I'm wrong. I
caused the problem. I don't know how to correct it," Sterling told
CNN when asked why he had taken so long to speak out.
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Sterling's wife, Shelly Sterling, who has co-owned the team with her
husband since 1981, said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday
that she would fight any attempt to force her to sell.
"I was shocked by what he (Donald Sterling) said. And, well, I guess
whatever their decision is, we have to live with it," Shelly
Sterling told ABC News. "But I don't know why I should be punished
for what his actions were."
In response to her comments, the NBA said on Sunday that, under the
league's constitution, the interests of all other owners of a team
come to an end when the controlling owner's stake is terminated.
"It doesn't matter whether the owners are related as is the case
here. These are the rules to which all NBA owners agreed to as a
condition of owning their team," the NBA said in a statement.
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The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Shelly Sterling,
who shares ownership of the Clippers through a family trust, had
hired a law firm to help her. She told ABC she intends to divorce
her estranged husband.
On Friday, the NBA installed Richard Parsons, a former Time Warner
chief executive and chairman, as interim chief executive of the
Clippers. Parsons was appointed three days after Sterling's
long-time top lieutenant, Andy Roeser, was placed on indefinite
leave as team president.
In an audio tape released by entertainment news blog Radar Online on
Friday, Donald Sterling can be heard dismissing the racist remarks
that set off the controversy as jealousy over other men spending
time with a woman he was trying to woo.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Leslie Adler and Paul
Simao)
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