14 DAY TRIAL // Despite reports to the contrary, disgraced LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling did not bail on a scheduled interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. In fact, Cooper flew in for the interview this weekend, with the segment scheduled to air today, Monday, May 12, 2014.
However, excerpts from what went down behind closed doors did emerge online and two things in particular stand out: number one, Sterling is apologizing for the leaked audio recording on which he says terribly offensive, terribly racist things; and number two, he’s throwing V. Stiviano, the woman he told those things to, under the bus.
The first one comes from the KTLA video report also embedded below, which got this quote: “I’m a good member who made a mistake and I’m apologizing and I’m asking for forgiveness. Am I entitled to one mistake, am I, after 35 years? I mean, 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 has long made it clear that, despite the NBA decision to ban him for life and to force him to sell the Clippers as punishment for his racist remarks, he had no plan of actually doing so. One could see his apology as a way to ensure that, because he’s finally owning up to his mistake and, in the process, hopefully mollify the fans and NBA officials.
Word online has it that, in the same interview, Sterling argues that he’s not a racist. TMZ seems to confirm that, saying that he’s laying the blame at Stiviano’s door for “baiting” him into saying those things.
For those new to the scandal, it started when audio of Sterling emerged telling Stiviano to stop “broadcasting” her association with minorities in general and black people in particular on her Instagram. He kept telling her that she could do whatever with them in the privacy of her own home, but not bring them to his games or post photos of them on her social media accounts.
“Well yes, I was baited. I mean that's not the way I talk,” Sterling tells Cooper. Stiviano was recording Sterling because he had instructed her to because of his memory lapses.
“I don't know, an 80-year-old man is kind of foolish, and I'm kind of foolish. I thought she liked me and really cared for me. I guess being 51 years older than her, I was deluding myself,” the LA Clippers owner continues, as per TMZ.
Oddly enough, though he’s blaming all of it on Stiviano, she spoke to Barbara Walters last week and came to his defense, saying those two recordings that leaked were part of a much longer conversation, one that proved that Sterling was not a racist.