Donald Sterling’s Wife Shelly Proclaims She’ll Keep Stake Of Clippers

Donald Sterling might be in the midst of getting forced out of the NBA, but his wife Shelly Sterling claims she isn’t going anywhere.

USA Today reports that Donald Sterling’s wife has given her first interview since the scandal involving her husband broke. In the Interview, Shelly says she plans to divorce Donald Sterling eventually, but doesn’t say exactly when her plans are moving forward.

Shelly also said she plans to keep her shares of the Los Angeles Clippers, even when the sale of Donald Sterling’s stake in the team finally occurs. For his part, NBA commissioner David Silver hasn’t said whether or not Shelly Sterling will be allowed to keep her shares.

It appears that if he does decide she is too closely linked to Donald Sterling to keep her stake in the ownership, she will fight it. During the interview Shelly Sterling said, “To be honest with you, I’m wondering if a wife of one of the owners, and there’s 30 owners, did something like that, said those racial slurs, would they oust the husband? Or would they leave the husband in? I don’t know why I should be punished for what his actions were.”

Shelly went on to say that she was as appalled by Donald Sterling’s comments as anyone else. “I was shocked by what he said. And — well, I guess whatever their decision is — we have to live with it,” she said.

Donald Sterling has been drawing fire for comments he made to his girlfriend, who has both an African American and Hispanic heritage. In a taped recording of the comments, Donald Sterling told his girlfriend that she shouldn’t bring any black people to Clippers games because it wouldn’t look good if she was seen socializing with them.

After there was quite a bit of talk about Donald Sterling’s own team boycotting their playoff games until something was done about the Clippers’ owner, Silver acted quickly and convincingly.

The talk about divorcing Donald Sterling is clearly an attempt by Shelly to distance herself from her husband. In the interview, she claimed she’s actually been thinking about making a formal split for the last 20 years but hasn’t gone through with it yet.

Shelly says there are quite a few financial implications as to why she and Sterling haven’t officially broken up yet. Since the tape has leaked, Mrs. Sterling has hardly seemed shocked that Donald had a mistress, indicating that she and Donald Sterling have likely been living separate lives for a while.