NBA COMMISSIONER BANS L.A. CLIPPERS OWNER DONALD STERLING FOR LIFE AND FINED THE MAX $2.5 MILLION FOR HIS RACIST RANT

DONALD STERLING

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life from the NBA and fined the maximum $2.5 million for his infamous racist rant, league Commissioner Adam Silver announced Tuesday.

Silver also said he would try to make Sterling sell the team, which has been abandoned by more than a dozen sponsors.

“I will urge the Board of Governors to exercise its authority to force a sale of the team, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that that happens,” Silver told a packed Manhattan news conference. He said he was confident he had the support of the league’s owners.

Under terms of his lifetime ban, Sterling can never again attend any NBA games or practices, can’t visit any Clippers team facilies and cannot take part in meetings of the league’s owners.

It was unclear if Sterling, 80, would challenge the punishment, which Silver said the league was authorized to impose. Before Silver’s press conference, veteran broadcaster Jim Gray told Fox News that he had just spoken to Sterling, who said the team was “not for sale.”

ADAM SILVER

Silver said he was “personally distraught” and “personally outraged” by Sterling’s incendiary remarks.

He also apologized to the “pioneers of the game” and others insulted by Sterling, including “the great Bill Russell and particularly the great Magic Johnson.”

Sterling’s recorded rant, made public Friday, was prompted when he learned that then-girlfriend V. Stiviano had posted an online photo of herself and a friend posing with Johnson.

Sterling told her to stop posting pictures of herself with black people and not to bring any black people to “my games.”

Silver said an internal investigation, including an interview of Sterling, proved that it was him on the recording.