Donald Sterling's lawyer: 'I know there are more' incriminating league communications

Following Donald Sterling's ouster as owner of the Los Angeles Clippers for racist remarks, many around the league, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, feared it was the beginning of a "slippery slope."

With Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson now selling his controlling interest in the team after self-reporting a racially insensitive email an internal investigation turned up, Sterling's lawyer is suggesting there is still much more to come.

As Sterling's lawyer, Bobby Samini, told The Los Angeles Times:

I don't think it's a surprise. Anybody who believes the story that it was self-reported by Levenson is completely naive. I have absolutely no confidence it was self-reported. This is clearly the standard which has now been set by the commissioner of the NBA.
...
I know there are more coming. From our perspective, we don't really care about the other owners. There's not a single owner in the NBA who is going to be able to withstand the scrutiny that's been established. This will end up at the doorstep of [Commissioner] Adam Silver sooner or later. I'm sure he's got some emails he's written.

With Sterling having a pair of multi-billion dollar lawsuits filed against the NBA, his team will surely be trying to dig up more documents like Levenson's as a means of showing Sterling was treated differently. Some legal experts have even wondered if it may have been Sterling's investigators that turned up Levenson's email, not an internal investigation.

As Sports Illustrated legal analyst Michael McCann explains within his story, Sterling's "best weapon" is pretrial discovery that could turn up dirt on other NBA owners. While Sterling has no legal recourse to ever regain ownership of the Clippers, he still stands to win a financial award and, perhaps more importantly to him, damage the league's reputation. The Levenson email "may be a momentum-changer" in Sterling's lawsuit, as its existence supports Sterling's claim that he was treated differently than other owners.

As expressed in the past, while Sterling's ownership of the Clippers is a firmly closed matter, the entire situation could go on for some time still.