Donald Sterling And Wife Not On The Same Page

Does anyone in the world understand what is going on between Donald Sterling, Shelly Sterling and the NBA? If so, we’d like to speak with them.

It had seemed for days like Donald Sterling had given his wife (sort of?) permission to negotiate a deal with the NBA and sell the Los Angeles Clippers. However, that no longer seems to be the case. Why? Because the Sterling’s are insane and this sale was never going to be easy.

According to Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLA.com, Max Blecher, who is Donald Sterling’s lawyer and apparent mouthpiece, conveyed that the current NBA proceedings are a sham and that Sterling “is going to fight to the bloody end”. Whether this is lawyer speak or a real thing is to be determined. What is does mean is that Shelly Sterling may or may not have permission to negotiate a deal with the NBA and Donald Sterling may or may not be battling against the NBA and his wife concurrently. Does everybody have it clear so far? Ok, me neither. 

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Blecher, who I’m sure we will be hearing from a lot more over the next couple of months, had this to say about any deal between husband and wife.

"“I don’t know what agreement she has with him, but I’m saying to you today, he disavows anything she’s doing to sell the team,” Blecher said. “He says, ‘It’s my team, and I’ll sell it when and if I get around to it.’”"

As for Donald Sterling’s apparent change of heart in the matter of selling the Clippers:

"“He was in a state of shock at first. Now he’s recovering and he’s much more feisty.”"

Let’s recap:

• Donald Sterling audio tapes are leaked, he’s banned by the NBA, and the NBA is currently trying to strip his ownership away.
• Sterling goes on Anderson Cooper and makes more of a travashamockery of the situation.
• Shelly Sterling gets involved and claims that she is a 50% owner of the team despite never saying a world publicly about the Clippers.
• Donald and Shelly, who have been estranged for years, make some sort of deal to allow Shelly to negotiate a sale of the team.
• Donald proclaims, through his lawyer, that Shelly has no right to sell the team and that he will fight to the bitter end.

Does this make sense to anyone? All I hear is crickets.

Meanwhile, the NBA has scheduled a vote for June 3rd and the Board of Governors somehow has to sort out this entire situation and allow for due process. At the same time it seems like the NBA is taking bids from groups who are interested in buying the Clippers, even though the team technically isn’t up for sale yet.

Just in the last two days the NBA has received two offers for the Los Angeles Clippers, according to sports business reporter Scott Soshnick.

All we know about the situation of the Clippers is that it’s going to get a lot uglier and weirder before we reach any sort of conclusion. Prepare for anything and everything.