Donald Sterling Reportedly Tried to Kill Trade for JJ Redick

LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling remains an out of control lunatic, in case you were wondering. According to Yahoo! Sports, Sterling attempted to kill the blockbuster deal that landed the sharp-shooting JJ Redick (a move that new head coach Doc Rivers apparently talked the crazy, old man out of): “In the early afternoon hours of July 3, owner Donald Sterling called Los Angeles Clippers president Andy Roeser and informed him he had rescinded approval on moving Eric Bledsoe and acquiring free agent J.J. Redick in a sign-and-trade agreement. The three-team deal – delivered the owner’s blessing only two days earlier – no longer interested Sterling. Call it off, Sterling instructed Roeser, league sources said. Deal’s dead. It didn’t matter the news had broken 24 hours earlier of the Clippers sending Bledsoe and Caron Butler to the Phoenix Suns with the Suns’ Jared Dudley and Milwaukee’s Redick, on a four-year, $27 million contract, joining Los Angeles. It didn’t matter the public had been praising Doc Rivers’ first deal as the new senior vice president of basketball operations and coach, that Rivers and general manager Gary Sacks had given their word to teams, agents and players that this was a finalized agreement. […] Rivers’ job was to convince the owner – for a second time, in this instance – and there were those who believed a flat refusal on Sterling’s behalf could’ve resulted with Rivers’ resignation. ‘It never got to that,’ one source said, ‘but it might have had Sterling not come around.’ Only Rivers will ever know, because Sterling did change his mind and the deal was resuscitated within 72 hours of it falling apart. Downright disaster had been averted, and on the night of July 11, Clippers officials, Redick and his representatives came together to sign the contract papers in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel. Someone offered to make a toast, and finally it was over: No one could stop the deal. Once again, the organization had survived Donald Sterling. Against the odds, against history, against the franchise’s lingering self-destructive bent, the Los Angeles Clippers could chase a championship.”