LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling said he was only trying to get V. Stiviano to sleep with him when he went on the racist rant that got him barred for life from the NBA.
“I’m talking to a girl. I’m trying to have sex with her,” Sterling said in a recent conversation taped by a pal and obtained by Radar Online.
“I’m trying to play with her. If you were trying to have sex with a girl and you’re talking to her privately and you don’t think anybody’s there, you may say anything in the world!
“Then, if the girl tapes it and releases it, my God, it’s awful,” he is heard saying. “Who thinks anybody’s gonna tape something?”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver booted Sterling from the league after a recording emerged of the owner telling Stiviano, “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people.”
Sterling also lobbied her to quit bringing black pals to games.
But the billionaire insists in the new recording that he was simply jealous that she was interacting with black men and advertising it on social media.
“The girl is black,” Sterling said on the tape. “I like her. I’m jealous that she’s with other black guys. I want her. So what the hell? Can’t I in private tell her, ‘I don’t want you to be with anybody’?”
Stiviano, 31, has insisted that she never slept with the 80-year-old Sterling and that he showered her with expensive cars and a condo only because of their profound friendship.
Sterling had been particularly upset with a photo of her with Magic Johnson that she had posted on her Instagram account, but the real-estate titan said on the new recording that he was just envious of the hoops legend.
“The picture is not [the issue],” he said. “I wish Magic Johnson was talking to a girl, and you’re trying to play with her, and you might say anything. You might say you have the biggest penis in the world! I would have said I could fly over a high-rise building if I had to!
“And you’re talking to her, and then you go away. And the next thing you know, three months later, what you said when you were hot trying to get in her . . . is released!
“I didn’t want her to bring anybody to my games because I was jealous!” he said. “I mean, I’m being honest.”
Striking a desperate tone, Sterling asked on the tape, “Am I a person? Do I have any freedom of speech?”
Sterling is under pressure to sell the Los Angeles Clippers following his racist rant, but he plans on fighting the league to keep the team and says on the latest recording that the NBA and Silver were overreacting.
“So they should take away for life your team [if] you say the wrong thing to a girl?” he asked. “I know what I said was wrong. But I never thought the private conversation would go anywhere, out to the public.”
A lawyer for Sterling’s estranged wife, Shelly Sterling, confirmed the tape’s authenticity to The Post.
“That certainly sounds like him,” said her attorney, Pierce O’Donnell.
Shelly Sterling, who is part-owner of the team and has expressed interest in keeping her share, is also under investigation by the NBA for alleged racism, a league source told Radar Online.
“There is now a separate investigation into allegations involving racism and Shelly Sterling. There is court evidence that was brought to the league’s attention in the last few weeks in which Mrs. Sterling allegedly made racist comments,” the source said.
Shelly and Donald have been photographed together since the scandal broke, but her lawyer told The Post on Friday that they’re completely estranged and don’t talk.
Sterling has said he should have just shut Stiviano up with hush money.
“I wish I had just paid her off,” he told Du Jour magazine.
Sterling told Radar Online he plans to give an interview soon but didn’t specify an outlet.