The situation with LA Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling is about to get even uglier. The 80-year-old billionaire and his lawyer sent the NBA a letter, notifying them that he is refusing to pay the $2.5 million fine levied against him and may sue the league for attempting to force him to sell the team. The pair claim that Sterling’s “due process” was not properly served and that “no punishment is warranted” after he was heard on leaked phone calls making racist statements.
The league will end up getting their $2.5 million one way or another (ESPN notes that they could just withhold TV money payments to Sterling), but they could be in for a lengthy and ugly legal battle for the ownership of the team. As for Sterling, in the weeks since the phone calls were first leaked, he’s only proved to be even more of a racist. Despite apologizing for the “foolish, stupid, uneducated words” he said on the leaked phone call, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sterling admonished Magic Johnson for being HIV-positive, said that “some of the African Americans … they don’t want to help anybody” and accused Cooper of having a “plantation mentality” …
