NBA: Shelly Sterling Explains How She Got Steve Ballmer To Pay $2 Billion For The Clippers

With her husband caught in a firestorm of controversy and mental capacity deteriorated, Shelly Sterling had to step from the background into the forefront and make the largest sale in NBA history.  So how did she do it?  She finally sat down and explained the process.

Shay Marie

via the Associated Press:

When asked how much money she wanted to sell the Los Angeles Clippers, the wife of disgraced team owner Donald Sterling handed a piece of paper to her lawyer with two numbers: $1.5 to $2.

“I was given the task and I did it,” she said. “I just did what I had to do.”

She hired well-known attorney Pierce O’Donnell, and prospective buyers started lining up. David Geffen made an offer of $1.65 billion, and an Egyptian princess also entered the bidding war, she said.

Ballmer called her at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

“He was really enthusiastic,” she recalled. “He said I want to come see you immediately.”

She put him off until the next day and quickly called a girlfriend to find out who he was.

When they met, “he was a like a little child,” she remembered. “He was so excited, so happy. We sort of connected. I felt he would be good for the team.”

She said he asked her how much the other bidders had offered and then put forward his own figure — $1.9 billion. That was far more than most observers believed the team was worth, but Shelly Sterling wasn’t satisfied.

“I told him: ‘You won’t have to build an arena or a practice field.’ So he was getting a bargain. And I told him, ‘We have great players, a great coach and you’ll never have the chance to buy a team in Los Angeles again.”

After her speech, she recalled, “He said, ‘O.K. I’ll give you two.’ He really, really wanted the team.”

She said she extracted a promise that he would never move the team to Seattle, his hometown. The deal closed after a bitter probate fight with her husband.