Disgraced Clippers owner Donald Sterling has turned things over to his wife Shelly, who is planning on negotiating a forced sale of the team even as the NBA continues its move to terminate the team’s current ownership interests.
The initial steps on the Sterlings’ side are marching on, with Shelly having met with former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about the sale of the Clippers on Sunday.
And apparently, there are already many more lining up who have expressed legitimate interest.
From Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.comShelly Sterling has received inquiries from at least six serious bidders for the Los Angeles Clippers, sources told ESPN on Sunday. Shelly Sterling reached an agreement with her estranged husband, Donald Sterling, to negotiate a sale of the franchise after he was banned for life and fined $2.5 million by NBA commissioner Adam Silver on April 29.
Sterling’s attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, is handling the sale with Bob Baradaran, a managing partner at his law firm Greenberg Glusker, and Darren Schield and Doug Watson of Beverly Hills Properties, a real estate company owned by the Sterling family. ...
Still at issue is whether the NBA will allow Shelly Sterling to control the sale of the team. The league issued a statement Friday stating it intends to proceed with a June 3 hearing that would terminate Donald Sterling’s ownership of the team. The league has made it clear that it would only consider a sale of the team if Shelly Sterling sold it in its entirety.
That last part, which we’ve discussed extensively, is why all of this kind of seems like a waste of time.
It appears as though the league wants to control this process, and it believes it will have the right to do so once the ownership interests in the Clippers are terminated, as is likely to happen following the hearing on June 3. The NBA needs the Sterlings gone, and allowing Shelly to linger on by being involved in negotiating the sale of the team -- which is a process that will likely last months -- keeps the family name in the news, and threatens to spill over into next season.
The league can’t risk that, as the players may reconsider a boycott if they believe the league isn’t doing everything in its power to remove the Sterlings, and do so as immediately as that procedure will allow. Because of all that’s involved, these meetings and initial dealings by Shelly Sterling aren’t likely to have any effect on the outcome of the team sale, unless they help to accomplish the league’s goal of getting it done as quickly a possible.