Floyd Mayweather Jr. has serious interest in buying the Los Angeles Clippers if Donald Sterling is forced to sell the team, the wealthy boxer said Tuesday.
Mayweather met with the media to promote his Saturday fight with Marcos Maidana, and he expressed his interest in purchasing the NBA franchise. He said he spoke with his business adviser Al Haymon, Mayweather Promotions chief executive Leonard Ellerbe and Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer about forming a group to put together a bid for the Clippers.
“I called Al today about that to see if me, Leonard and Al, and hopefully Richard and a couple of other guys, a couple other of my billionaire guys, we can come together and see what we can come up with,” Mayweather said via ESPN’s Dan Rafael. “Hopefully, we can do it, and it’s not just talk.
“With me, I can’t come in talking about Mayweather only gonna get 3 percent, 4 percent. I got to get a solid percentage. Do we want to buy the Clippers? Yes, we do. We are very, very interested in buying the Clippers. We’ll keep the Clippers right where they’re at. When I’m not boxing, I’m at the games all the time. We do want to buy the Clippers. Me and my team do want to buy the Clippers and we can afford the Clippers.”
Mayweather is a regular at Clippers and Lakers games and has long shown off betting tickets for games he wagers on. He said he would stop betting on NBA games immediately as a potential owner.
Mayweather also had some very noteworthy things to say about Sterling.
“Donald Sterling, he’s been getting a lot of negative press and my thing is this — I don’t have nothing negative to say about this guy,” Mayweather said per Rafael. “He’s always treated me with the utmost respect. He has always invited me to games, always. Has always told me, ‘Floyd, I want you to sit right next to me and my wife.’ I don’t know about the mistress. But I’m talking about him and the wife.”
Well, if that’s how Sterling treated Mayweather, then you really have to wonder why he said the things he did on tape. Or maybe Mayweather was one of the few people who earned his respect.
As far as Mayweather’s chances of buying the Clippers go, I think it would be tough. Purchasing groups generally have to be long established and have contact with the league and other owners well ahead of time. This is not something that’s put together last minute. And despite being supremely wealthy as an athlete, Floyd is going to need to partner with several multi-millionaires in order to get the money together for such a purchase. They’re going to need a lot more money than they think. But I’d love to see it happen — Floyd as a prominent owner of an NBA team like the Clippers would be awesome, and you know he’d be able to attract free agents.
