Ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer buys the LA Clippers for $2billion

Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has bought the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers franchise for $2bn, a record for a professional basketball team, sole trustee Shelly Sterling has announced.

He said "I love basketball," Ballmer says in a statement. "And I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that the Clippers continue to win – and win big – in Los Angeles."
In a news release from Greenberg Glusker, Sterling's counsel, she said she had signed a binding contract to sell the team to Ballmer on behalf of the Sterling Family Trust, which owns the club.

"I am delighted that we are selling the team to Steve, who will be a terrific owner. We have worked for 33 years to build the Clippers into a premiere NBA franchise. I am confident that Steve will take the team to new levels of success."

The Clippers were put up for sale this month following former owner Donald Sterling's banishment from the league for making racist remarks. He technically hadn't be required to sell the team just yet, but NBA team owners have been just days away from a vote that likely would have ended in that result. Sterling's lawyer has claimed that he'll fight that sale, though his co-owner and wife, Shelly Sterling, is said to have full authority to make the sale and is the one who brokered it with Ballmer. Sterling also plans to file suit against the NBA for $1 billion over the ban