Uncontested: The life of Donald Sterling

Sterling's Tinseltown fantasy, though, didn't extend to investing much more in his team than he had in San Diego. Throughout the '80s and '90s, he didn't sign a single significant free agent. Instead, the franchise regularly picked players high in the draft -- Michael Cage, Danny Manning, Lamar Odom -- only to develop them for a while before letting them go. Some insiders saw his strategy as something more insidious than mere bargain-hunting. Baylor says that because he tried to pay African-American players such as Cage fairly, Sterling restricted him from negotiating with them; eventually, Baylor contends, the owner told his GM not to talk to players or agents about money at all. Baylor also alleges that when the Clippers got bogged down in negotiations with Manning, Sterling said, "I'm offering a lot of money for a poor black kid." (Clippers general counsel Robert H. Platt responded in a statement that Baylor's "false claims carry no weight and have no credibility," saying his lawsuit is "driven by publicity-seeking attorneys.") All the while, Sterling was building a reputation as an invasive but indecisive owner. Classic example: In 1993, Manning, then an unhappy All-Star, asked Sterling why he wasn't dealt at the trade deadline. Sterling replied that he'd dreamed the Clippers had won a championship after he'd passed the ball to Manning for the winning shot. The following year, though, Manning was dumped for an over-the-hill Dominique Wilkins. "Dealing with Sterling was impossible," Carl Scheer, the team's GM from 1984 to 1986, once said. "If he took the elevator down, he'd ask the operator what he thought, and by the time he had reached the lobby, he'd changed his mind."

Win or lose or lose or lose, though, Sterling is a courtside presence, rubbing elbows with lower-rung celebrities who aren't in the Lakers' orbit: Roseanne Barr, Donna Mills, George Segal. ("Billy Crystal is the gold standard of that crowd," says one longtime Clippers observer. "But he doesn't always sit with Sterling. He has his own seats.") Sterling even used to hold lottery parties at his Beverly Hills mansion (formerly owned by Cary Grant), where D-list actors and buxom hostesses could watch the Clippers' annual shot at getting a high draft choice. In 1990, the team landed the eighth pick. "Well," said Alan Rothenberg, then the team's general counsel, "think about how much money we just saved!" The guests then returned to wondering if Pia Zadora's double-parked Mercedes would get towed. "I like people who are achievers," Sterling once told the Los Angeles Times.

"This is a town where the entertainers work. Where you can call anybody like you've known them for a lifetime and ask them to be a special guest."

Sterling himself has become a celebrity in a town that worships notoriety like no other. He's even achieved a kind of Superfriends status among renegade sports owners, befriending the likes of Al Davis and Jerry Reinsdorf, with whom he had lunch at the Super Bowl in 2008. (Neither man agreed to comment for this story.) Owning the Clippers has yielded tangible benefits, too. For one thing, Forbes estimates that the team is now worth $297 million. Sterling's huge gain is the direct result of the buy-and-hold strategy that made him rich in real estate. He entered the league just as Bird, Magic and MJ were triggering an explosion in revenues, and media rights fees have risen steadily ever since. His Clippers get an equal share of the league's TV and digital cash, about $31 million this year, whether or not they are ever on national TV. In any other industry, another company would have swooped in by now to undercut Sterling, offering a better product at lower prices. But sports teams are monopolies -- or, in the case of the Lakers and Clippers, duopolies -- protected by their leagues from competition. So despite continually woeful performance, the Clippers are now worth 23 times what Sterling paid.

Moreover, since moving to Staples in 1999, the Clippers have turned big profits for Sterling each year. With their perpetual losing and in the shadow of the Lakers, they generate relatively little money from ticket sales, premium seats and signage, and their overall revenue of $99 million in 2007-08 ranked 25th in the NBA. But that's still far more than they ever made at the Sports Arena. They also have no debt and a fairly low payroll -- despite some increased spending in recent seasons at the urging of coach Mike Dunleavy. They have low rent, too. The Staples Center's chief executive, Tim Leiweke, has said his building would make more money from five concerts than from a whole slate of Clippers games. But to guarantee the certainty of the team's revenue stream, he let Sterling renew his lease in 2004 for just $1.5 million a year. Add it all up, and in the nine years after moving into Staples, the team made $140 million in profits.

The Lakers, who spend money on an entirely different scale and win about twice as often, made $322 million over that time. But the Mavericks, another high-spending big winner, lost $137 million. Sterling runs a low-risk, sure-reward game. Who's going to tell him he's wrong?

At his best, Sterling can make you believe anything is possible. He has an infectious grin, boyish enthusiasm and a propensity for hugs and shoulder rubs. His willingness to say everything with conviction can seem downright Clintonian, but it also registers as optimistic. "I thought there was no way the Clippers were going to match the contract I signed with the Heat in 2003. I was in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami when Donald Sterling called," says Elton Brand. "He said, 'I love you, I love Elton Brand.' I was surprised but honored. He honestly feels what he feels at that time."

But Sterling also uses his wealth and power like many other rich and powerful men: to impose his eccentricities on others. When dining out, Sterling has on occasion recommended meals for his guests without ordering anything for himself, forcing them to then share with him. He once invited a draft pick to his Beverly Hills mansion, then conducted the meeting wearing only a bathrobe. He also regularly makes large contributions to charities -- like the Special Olympics -- and then when the groups honor him, he takes out self-congratulatory newspaper ads. "Sterling desperately wants people to believe he's a good person, and if they don't, it drives him crazy," says a lawyer who knows him. "But he also just can't get out of his own way."

In 2006, Sterling announced plans to build a sprawling homeless-services center in the midst of LA's Skid Row. One newspaper ad for the project showed a vacant-eyed redheaded child, whom locals took to calling Zombie Girl. Another declared that the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation would develop a "state-of-the-art $50 million dollar [sic]" project for "over 91,000 homeless people." It featured a photo of a smiling Sterling above the quote "Please don't forget the children, they need our help." But while Sterling spent $8.4 million to buy several properties at Sixth and Wall streets, he has yet to move forward with his plans to help the homeless. Some advocates now believe that Sterling is waiting for them to foot the cost of the center. Others suspect he may never build it at all, and has bought the land, as he's done so often, simply because he expected the area to gentrify and its value to rise.

But it's the people who work for Sterling and live in his buildings who say they bear the worst of his unconventional behavior. For years he has run semianonymous ads (crude design jobs he reportedly mocks up himself) seeking "hostesses" for Clippers events and his private parties. In a Times ad last summer, Sterling's company solicited "attractive females" to bring a résumé and photo to his address, where employees reviewed their looks. Some of the women who have gone through this process found it humiliating. "Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life," says a hostess from the 1990s who says she helped set up "cattle calls" to find other women to work the job. "He asked me for seminude photos and made it clear he wanted more. He is smart and clever but manipulative."

"When I didn't give him what he wanted, he looked at me with distaste. His smile was so empty."

In 1996, a former employee named Christine Jaksy sued Sterling for sexual harassment. The two sides reached a confidential settlement, and Jaksy, now an artist in Chicago, says, "The matter has been resolved." But The Magazine has obtained records of that case, and according to testimony Jaksy gave under oath, Sterling touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable and asked her to visit friends of his for sex. Sterling also repeatedly ordered her to find massage therapists to service him sexually, telling her, "I want someone who will, you know, let me put it in or who [will] suck on it."

Jaksy first worked for Sterling in 1993, as a hostess at one of his "white parties," where guests dressed Gatsby style at his Malibu beach house; she eventually went into property management. Jaksy testified that Sterling offered her clothes and an expense account in return for sexual favors. She also testified that he told her, "You don't need your lupus support groups...I'm your psychiatrist." Jaksy left her job in December 1995, handing Sterling a memo that read in part, "The reason I have to write this to you...is because in a conversation with you I feel pressured against a wall and bullied in an attempt to be overpowered. I'm not about to do battle with you." She carried a gun because, according to her testimony, she feared retribution. In February 1997, though, Sterling denied her charges under oath, and his lawyers portrayed Jaksy as unstable. Testifying in a different case six years later, Sterling said he had no recollection of the name Christine Jaksy, didn't recall ever being involved in litigation with her and didn't know of any woman ever having sued him for harassment.

Sterling's testimony in another case, this one involving former associate Alexandra Castro, underscores his aggressiveness with women. When Castro, whom Sterling met in Las Vegas at Al Davis' birthday party over Fourth of July weekend in 1999, visited his Beverly Hills office, Sterling later stated under oath that she brought a lab report proving she was HIV-negative, freeing him to continue having unprotected sex with his wife.

"The woman wanted sex everywhere," Sterling said. "In the alley, in her car, in the elevator, in the upstairs seventh floor, in the bathroom." And he paid her for it. "Every time she provided sex she got $500," he testified in 2003. "At the end of every week or at the end of two weeks, we would figure [it] out, and I would, perhaps, pay her then." "When you pay a woman for sex, you are not together with her," he further testified. "You're paying her for a few moments to use her body for sex. Is it clear? Is it clear?" Sterling's affair with Castro nearly exploded after he took back a $1 million Beverly Hills property she claimed had been a gift. They wound up squabbling in court, where they ultimately reached a confidential settlement.

When it comes to female subordinates in his real estate business, Sterling shows a distinct racial preference. In 2003 he had 74 white employees, four Latinos, zero blacks and 30 Asians, 26 of them women, according to his Equal Employment Opportunity filings with the state of California. (The numbers are similar for the other years in which Sterling has been charged with racial discrimination.) "He would tell me that I needed to learn the 'Asian way' from his younger girls because they knew how to please him."

Davenport testified in 2004. Davenport also stated: "If I made a mistake, I needed to stand at my desk and bow my head and say, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Sterling. I'm sorry I disappointed you. I'll try to do better.' "

Sterling's preference for Asians extended to the people he wanted in his buildings. "I like Korean employees and I like Korean tenants," he told Dean Segal, chief engineer at a Sterling property called the Mark Wilshire Tower Apartments, according to testimony Segal gave in the Housing Rights Center case. And Davenport testified that Sterling told her, "I don't have to spend any more money on them, they will take whatever conditions I give them and still pay the rent...so I'm going to keep buying in Koreatown."

At the Towers, Sterling's staff issued applications for garage-door remote controls that required residents to disclose their birthplace and national origin. Darren Schield, controller at Beverly Hills Properties, later denied that Sterling wanted the information to screen tenants by race.

Instead, he said, "sometime after Sept. 11, 2001," an FBI special agent warned that several tenants who were "foreign, I mean as Muslim, or, you know," were targets of Bureau investigations. Even more bizarre but just as effective at driving away African-Americans and Hispanics, Beverly Hills Properties changed the name of the Wilshire Towers complex to Korean World Towers. A huge banner printed entirely in Korean was hung on the building, and the doormen were replaced by armed, Korean-born guards who were hostile to non-Koreans, again according to testimony given by multiple residents.

In August 2003, during the Housing Rights Center lawsuit, a federal judge ordered Sterling to stop using the word "Korean" in the names of his buildings, but the damage had been done. "Even to this day, I still feel leery that at any given point we could be evicted," testified tenant Aubrey Franklin. "[It's] not pleasant to live in a community...[where] the spirit and the camaraderie [are] gone."

It's clear why Donald Sterling stays in the game: He's got celebrity, money and the freedom to do as he pleases, in basketball and in business. And no one outside government looks especially interested in making him change his ways. With litigation ongoing, the Justice Department has no comment on Sterling's actions as a landlord. The NBA also has nothing to say about the owner's legal battle with Baylor or those federal charges. "It would be premature to have any real take on it," says league spokesman Tim Frank. Asked to compare the hands-off treatment of Sterling with the $25,000 fine dropped on Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for Twittering about referee calls, Frank replies, "There's a big difference between business decisions and personal attacks." Other owners don't mind Sterling: He's entertaining in meetings, and his team is so bad that other clubs pick up an extra win or two a year as long as he's around. "I like Donald," says Cuban. "He plays by his own rules." And the Lakers aren't bothered by their shabby co-tenants; they get first dibs on Staples dates. This season the Lakers played 22 games on Fridays or Sundays, versus nine for the Clippers.

Even team executives who have spoken out on racial issues show no inclination to take on a current owner. Arthur Triche, a Hawks VP and the first African-American to head an NBA team's public relations office, recently called for a boycott of Lenny Dykstra's new magazine Players Club after GQ quoted the former baseball player making bigoted comments. But this is what Triche says about Sterling's alleged discriminatory practices: "I'm not fully abreast of the situation, and I don't need to get into that. It doesn't impact how I do my job."

The people who have sued Sterling have almost all accepted payouts in return for silence. "You may be convinced you can win, but at the end of the day, nobody wants to be the person who takes the risk of going to trial," says Paul Murphy, an attorney who represented former coach Bill Fitch in his legal battles with the Clippers. "Everyone wants to get on with their lives."

Except for the Smoking Gun and a blogger or two, the media have remained largely mum about Sterling too, apart from chronicling his dustups with Dunleavy. Most sports beat writers don't cover business issues, most business writers don't cover sports, and most columnists stopped taking Sterling and the Clippers seriously years ago. The NBA Players Association has no comment on Sterling as an owner or a landlord, or even about his relationship with Hall of Famer Baylor. As for prominent former Clippers, from Bill Walton and Danny Manning to Lamar Odom and Shaun Livingston, nearly all declined on-the-record comment for this story. In part, this is because players are trained never to forgo an earning opportunity, and where's the upside in poking the eye of an owner? But talk with enough athletes off the record, and you also get the sense that many pros feel they have more in common with team owners than tenants.

At the very least, nobody likes having his business deals, or private life, scrutinized. TV analyst Mark Jackson (who provides commentary for ESPN) says he "never had a problem" with Sterling, either when he played for the Clippers from 1992 to 1994 or at any other point in his 18-year career.

Then he adds: "I heard about the housing case -- what can I do about that?

That's his business, and it's in the courts. A lot of players, owners, people at ESPN have been charged or sued over something."

In May 2002, Sterling met with the staff of the newly acquired Wilshire Tower Apartments. He talked about his plans to make the 20-story building a beautiful landmark. Then, according to sworn testimony given in 2004 by building manager Dixie Martin, he said, "I like Korean tenants."

Raymond Henson, head of security at the building, who was standing outside the room, heard what happened next. Sterling, according to Henson's 2004 sworn statement, once again expressed his distaste for Mexicans as tenants, saying, "I don't like Mexican men because they smoke, drink and just hang around the house." Later, Sterling told Martin that he knew he shouldn't discriminate. But he had the right to do so, she recalled him saying, because he owned the place.

Prove him wrong, and you'll be the first.