Attorneys for Donald Sterling plan to ask an appellate court for permission to appeal Monday’s probate court decision, even though the ruling doesn’t allow Sterling to seek a court order stopping the sale of the Clippers as he appeals, according to Brian Melley of The Associated Press. Dan Woike of the Orange County Register details three ways that Sterling can still prevent wife Shelly Sterling from completing the $2 billion sale of the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Monday’s ruling left Donald Sterling unbowed, as his attorney Bobby Samini said to reporters, including Woike.
“His reaction was very calm,” Samini said. “He didn’t see this as the final battleground. This is one stage of a long war. This is one battle. We had hoped for a different result, but this is not the end.”
There’s more on the Sterling saga amid the latest from around the Western Conference:
- Judge Michael Levanas accepted the contention of Shelly Sterling’s lawyers that it was unlikely that anyone would match Ballmer’s $2 billion bid for the Clippers, as Melley notes in his piece. “Ballmer paid an amazing price that cannot be explained by the market,” Levanas said.
- Xavier Henry‘s one-year contract with the Lakers isn’t a minimum-salary arrangement, as first believed, and is instead worth the $1.082MM leftover portion of the team’s room exception, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The other part of the room exception went to Ryan Kelly.
- Joe Abadi, a lawyer for Grizzlies owner Robert Pera, conducted the team’s interviews with candidates for the front office job that Ed Stefanski will fill, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Abadi has taken on a larger role in the organization while Pera has marginalized minority owners Stephen Kaplan and Daniel E. Straus, as Stein details.