Shelly Sterling, the wife of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, believes that dementia could be to blame for her husband’s recent racist remarks.

Shelling Sterling On Husband's Possible Dementia

Shelly Sterling is running a campaign parallel to that of her husband, trying to keep her ownership of the Clippers, while agreeing with her husband’s potential dismissal from the franchise. She also wants to see her husband excused for his racist remarks – and his more recent inflammatory comments about Magic Johnson.

"He's not the man I know. Or I knew. There's something wrong. … I really think personally he has dementia," Shelly told Today's Savannah Guthrie. "I don't think it happened overnight, it's been happening but nobody really knew the reason. He gets crazy and yells and screams and hollers one moment. And then the next moment he'll talk about something else. It's like nothing makes sense."

When Guthrie pushed her about whether or not dementia could have led her husband to say, specifically, racist things, Shelly replied, “I really don’t know much about dementia,” adding, “I wish I did.”

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Shelly Sterling Adamant About Keeping Ownership

While Shelly seemed happy to offer a possible reason beyond her husband’s control for his apparent racism, her biggest concern is the punishment she’ll suffer for his blunders. "I'm very angry. And I'm very hurt,” she said. “And I even cried listening to [Donald], because I just feel bad. And then I feel bad: Why am I the victim when he's the perpetrator? If somebody killed somebody, does the wife have to stand trial too?"

Shelly, sitting beside her lawyer, claimed to agree with Adam Silver’s decision to ban Donald Sterling from the NBA, but that the league’s desire to oust her from ownership is inherently sexist. Painting herself as a co-owner beloved by both fans and players alike in the aftermath of her husband’s scandal, she says she’ll go as far as she can to maintain her ownership of the Clippers.

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