(JTA) — Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has approved the sale of the team and will drop his lawsuit against the NBA over his lifetime ban from the league and a $2.5 million fine.
Sterling told Los Angeles television station NBC4 late Tuesday that he was ready to “move on,” AFP reported.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week signed a contract to buy the professional basketball team for $2 billion. Sterling’s wife, Shelly Sterling, trustee of the team, brokered the agreement. Shelly Sterling also reportedly had indemnified the league against further legal action in the case.
It is reported to be the highest price ever paid for an NBA team. Clippers owner Donald Sterling paid $12.5 million in 1981 for the then-San Diego Clippers.
Three-quarters of the league’s 29 owners must still approve the sale to Ballmer.
The NBA moved to strip Clippers owner Donald Sterling, 80, a lawyer and billionaire real estate investor, of his rights to the team after he was recorded making racist comments to his girlfriend and the recording was posted on the website TMZ.
In the recorded conversation and in subsequent interviews, Sterling has mentioned Jewish issues. In a recent interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he accused wealthy African Americans of not being as generous as American Jews and praised Jews for establishing Hebrew free loan societies.
