Sterling bought the team in 1981 for $12 million and presided over decades of losing seasons before engaging in a fierce legal battle with his estranged wife to hold on to his most prized asset.
The team said the sale closed after a Los Angeles court confirmed the authority of Shelly Sterling, on behalf of the Sterling Family Trust, to sell the franchise to the former Microsoft CEO.
‘’I hate losing the team,’’ she said at a news conference.
She later added, ‘’It feels good. It would have felt good to own the team, too.’’
The NBA Board of Governors had previously approved the sale.
‘’Really excited - in a pretty hardcore way - to continue the path to making the Clippers a better and better basketball team, and a better and better citizen of the Los Angeles community,’’ Ballmer told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
The bizarre drama began in April when a recording surfaced of Donald Sterling scolding his girlfriend for bringing black men to Clippers games. The audio spurred the NBA to ban Sterling for life and fine him $2.5 million.
Sterling was apologetic after the audio recording went viral, but his mea culpa backfired when he criticized Lakers great Magic Johnson, who had been photographed with Sterling’s girlfriend, as a bad role model for kids because he had HIV. The 80-year-old real estate mogul was roundly condemned from locker rooms to the Oval Office, where President Barack Obama called Sterling’s remarks ‘’incredibly offensive racist statements.’’