Donald Sterling

The Art Deco landmark was built in 1930 by MGM cofounder Louis B. Mayer.

Donald T. Sterling (born Donald Samuel Tokowitz; April 26, 1934) is an American attorney and businessman who was the owner of the San Diego / Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball franchise of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1981 to 2014.

Donald Sterling was born Donald Tokowitz on April 26, 1934, in Chicago.

His family moved to the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles when he was two years old.

His parents, Susan and Mickey, were Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants.

He attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, where he was on the school's gymnastics team and served as class president; he graduated in 1952.

He then attended California State University, Los Angeles (class of 1956) and Southwestern University School of Law (class of 1960) in Los Angeles.

When he was 25, he and his wife Shelly changed their surname to "Sterling", filing a formal petition to do so on December 9, 1959.

They cited the difficulty among his peers to pronounce "Tokowitz" and the belief that there would be financial benefits for the change.

In the 1960s, Sterling also purchased Lesser Towers, a pair of large apartment buildings in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, and renamed them the Sterling Towers (now the Sterling International Towers).

In 1961, Sterling started his career as a divorce and personal injury attorney, building an independent practice when Jews had fewer opportunities at prestigious law firms.

His biggest ventures were in real estate, which he began when he purchased a 26-unit apartment building in Beverly Hills.

In 1976, he leased the California Bank Building on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills and renamed it Sterling Plaza.

The first instance came in 1979, when Buss used the money he made from selling a portion of his apartment buildings to Sterling (worth $2.7 million), which covered the remaining balance in purchasing the Lakers, the Kings hockey team, and The Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67 million.

Two years later, Buss suggested that Sterling purchase his own NBA franchise, and Sterling bought the San Diego Clippers for $12.5 million.

At his introductory news conference in San Diego, Sterling vowed to "spend unlimited sums" to build the Clippers into a contender, and he embarked on a county-wide marketing campaign featuring his smiling face on billboards and the backs of buses.

The seminal ads read: "My Promise: I will make you proud of the Clippers".

Unlike Buss' instant success with the Lakers (including winning an NBA championship in his first season as owner, 1979–80), Sterling and his Clippers struggled through many lackluster seasons, and they did not have their first winning season until the 1991–92 season, 11 years into his ownership.

The NBA in 1982 fined Sterling $10,000, the largest sum ever levied against an owner at the time, after he commented that he would accept the Clippers finishing in last place in order to draft an impact player like Ralph Sampson.

In June 1982, Sterling attempted to move the team to Los Angeles.

This prompted an investigation of the Clippers by an NBA committee of six owners.

In September, the group recommended that Sterling's ownership be terminated, having found that he was late in paying creditors and players.

Days before a league scheduled vote in October to remove Sterling, he agreed to sell the team, and the league sought buyers who would keep the franchise in San Diego.

At the suggestion of David Stern, then the league's vice president, Sterling was able to maintain his position as owner, instead handing over operations duties of the franchise to Alan Rothenberg, who became the team's president.

By February 1983, Stern called the Clippers a "first-class" franchise, and the ouster of Sterling was no longer pursued.

Encouraged by friend Al Davis' victory over the National Football League in an antitrust lawsuit that allowed him to move his Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles without league approval, Sterling moved the Clippers from San Diego to Los Angeles in 1984, despite again being denied permission from the NBA to do so.

The NBA subsequently fined him $25 million.

He sued the league for $100 million, but dropped the suit when the league agreed to decrease the fine to $6 million.

Sterling was widely criticized for his frugal operation of the Clippers, due in part to a consistent history of losing seasons.

The club was long considered the laughingstock of the NBA.

Their 9–41 record in the lockout-shortened 1998–99 season projected to another 60-loss season.

In 2000, Sports Illustrated senior writer Franz Lidz revealed that Sterling had a 99-year lease with the Mayer estate that required him to pay a relatively small annual fee and 15% of any rental income, which was why Sterling had remained the sole tenant.

"With no other tenant," Lidz reported, "the Mayer estate faces another 75 years with virtually no income from its Sterling Plaza property. By sitting and waiting, Sterling may force a fire sale."

In Sterling's 33 years of owning the Clippers through 2013–14, the Clippers lost 50 or more games 22 times, 60 or more on eight occasions, and 70 games once.

In April 2014, Sterling was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million by the league after private recordings of him making racist comments were made public.

In May, Sterling's wife Shelly reached an agreement for the Sterling Family Trust to sell the Clippers for $2 billion to Steve Ballmer, which Sterling contested in court.

The NBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the Clippers to Ballmer in August 2014.

As of April 2014, he owned 162 properties in Los Angeles.

Sterling and Los Angeles Lakers majority owner Jerry Buss were each indirectly responsible for the other owning his respective NBA franchise.

Sterling settled his lawsuit against the NBA in November 2016 and remains active in Los Angeles real estate.