According to a brilliant profile piece by ESPN's Ramona Shelburne, Donald Sterling was kicked out of his Malibu beach house by his wife because of a loud phone argument with a mistress...right as the family was sitting down to Christmas dinner.
From Shelburne's piece:
Sterling had been living across the street from the Beverly Hills Hotel since the end of 2012. His wife of six decades, Shelly Sterling, had kicked him out of the Malibu beach house they shared after he started arguing loudly with a mistress over the phone as the family was sitting down for Christmas dinner. The divide between them grew larger when their son Scott died of a drug overdose a week later and Donald didn't come by the house for nearly 24 hours to console her. "He doesn't handle death very well," a family friend says.
The entire piece is absolutely worth reading, and it manages to reveal even more shocking details about a man who we thought had lost his ability to shock us. Other highlights:
When Shelly saw Donald's meandering interview with Cooper on CNN, in which he went from apologizing for his comments to insulting Magic Johnson and the black community, she returned to L.A. and suggested to him that he get checked out. He agreed, and on May 16 his friend Lawrence drove him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he had CT and PET scans. Three days later, he was examined by a neurologist, Dr. Meril Sue Platzer, who put him through a standard mental status exam. She asked him to spell the word "world" backward. He could not.
The NBA had tried to get rid of Sterling in 1982 when he tried to move the team from San Diego to L.A. without securing league approval. There were also unpaid hotel bills, late payments to players and vendors, and a public admission that the Clippers needed to finish last to draft Virginia's Ralph Sampson at No. 1. A committee of six owners voted to terminate his ownership. A full hearing and a vote from the league's advisory and finance committee was needed to complete the process.
The vote never happened. Sterling said he was sorry, stalled for a while by saying he would look to sell the team, then did as then-deputy commissioner David Stern suggested and hired well-respected executive Alan Rothenberg to straighten things out.
