NEW YORK — 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 Sunday. In an interview to be broadcast 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. Sterling's wife, Shelly Sterling, who has co-owned the team with her husband since 1981, said in an interview with ABC News 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 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. The Los Angeles Times reported 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. In an audio tape released by entertainment news blog Radar Online 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. No Sterling should own Clippers, says Maggic Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson Sunday reiterated his belief that the NBA must oust embattled Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and said players won't play for Sterling's wife, Shelly, either. Johnson is a beloved figure in Los Angeles after leading the Lakers to five NBA titles before his retirement in 1991 after announcing he was HIV-positive. He made brief comebacks, one as coach of the Lakers, before becoming a successful businessman, and in 2012 led a group that purchased baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.15 billion. He has applauded NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's move to ban 80-year-old Sterling for life and fine him $2.5 million over racist remarks, which were made in a private conversation but later made public. NBA owners are now proceeding with plans to strip Sterling of his ownership, a move that could end with Sterling selling the team or instigating a court battle to keep it. In another complication, Sterling's estranged wife, Shelly Sterling, has said she wants to maintain an ownership stake in the club. Johnson, attending the Clippers' home playoff game against the Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday, was asked by an ABC television interviewer if Shelly Sterling was a viable owner. “First the fans wouldn't like it,” Johnson said. “The players definitely wouldn't like it, everybody would boycott. “And then the sponsors have already made themselves clear that they wouldn't be sponsoring this team if either Sterling stayed on as an owner.” Johnson, whose photo with Sterling's girlfriend in part prompted the owners' tirade, had said he wouldn't attend a Clippers game while Sterling was still the owner. — Agencies
