Ballmer Agrees to Buy Clippers for $2 Billion

The former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, who emerged as the last suitor standing in a dizzying bidding process, reached an agreement Thursday night to buy the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. If the sale is approved - and there are several factors that could derail it - it would be the largest price ever for an N.B.A. franchise.

The deal also has the potential to end a saga that has cast a shadow over the league and its playoffs.

Rochelle Sterling, who co-owns the Clippers with her husband, Donald, signed the deal with Ballmer, and their contract will be sent to the N.B.A. for final approval. Ballmer, 58, was already vetted by the league in 2013 when he was part of an investor group seeking to buy the Sacramento Kings, which means the process could be expedited.

Left more uncertain, however, was the role of Donald Sterling, who has vowed to fight the league in its efforts to terminate his ownership of the team. Sterling is scheduled to appear at a special hearing next Tuesday to answer to charges that he damaged the N.B.A. by making racist statements on a recording. He was banned from the league for life last month.

While Sterling authorized his wife to negotiate with potential buyers, she needed his power of attorney to sign off on an agreement. Maxwell Blecher, his lawyer, said Wednesday that she did not have it. Blecher also said that Sterling wanted the N.B.A. drop its charges that he had violated the league constitution as incentive to agree to sell the team.

Commissioner Adam Silver said last week that he would prefer for the Sterlings to sell the team voluntarily. A vote of the league's other owners could force them to sell.

The Los Angeles Times was the first to report that Ballmer had reached an agreement with Rochelle Sterling.

If the Clippers sell for $2 billion, it would be the most paid for an N.B.A. team, far exceeding the $550 million that the Milwaukee Bucks just sold for. The Clippers' Los Angeles neighbors, the Dodgers, sold for $2.15 billion two years ago.

But a critical difference is that the Dodgers' buyers received much more for their money: the team, as well as Dodger Stadium; an expiring local television contract that the new owners flipped into a long-term, multibillion-dollar payout from Time Warner Cable to start their own network; and a joint venture on the parking lots and land around the stadium with the former owner, Frank McCourt.

Ballmer may have a suddenly ascendant team that has had a miserable past; a training center; and a lease at Staples Center that excludes luxury-suite revenue. The team, under new ownership, will benefit from the financial boons expected in their next local cable contract and the N.B.A.'s next round of national deals. The new local and league contracts will start in the 2016-17 season.

Three bidders were in pursuit on Wednesday.

One group including Oprah Winfrey; the entertainment mogul David Geffen; Larry Ellison, the software tycoon who runs Oracle and made a losing bid to buy the Golden State Warriors; and Mark Walter and Todd Boehly, two of the principals of Guggenheim Partners, who put together the group that acquired the Dodgers two years ago.

A second group included Antony P. Ressler, who runs the private equity firm Ares Management, and the former N.B.A. player Grant Hill. Ballmer submitted a bid without any partners yet.

For Ballmer, the purchase of the Clippers would open a new chapter in the life of a technology billionaire who has lately found himself without much of an occupation. Ballmer left the chief executive job at Microsoft earlier this year, under pressure from its board of directors to accelerate his retirement after the company had struggled in a number of key new markets like mobile.

But unlike his fellow Microsoft billionaires, Ballmer has done little besides work at Microsoft for the past 34 years. William H. Gates, a Microsoft co-founder and former chief executive, has become a philanthropist, and Paul Allen, another co-founder, owns the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Ballmer, by comparison, is relatively unflashy, even though his net worth is estimated at $20 billion by Forbes. He grew up in Detroit, the son of a Ford Motor Company manager, and still favors American cars.

He was known as a commanding, sometimes bullying leader at Microsoft who underestimated major changes in technology which helped lead to the rise of competitors like Google and Apple. He is known for his public displays of exuberance at Microsoft pep rallies that featured him sweating and screaming as he egged on employees.

He has made no secret of his passion for sports, basketball in particular. In interviews in the past while he was running Microsoft, Ballmer has said he made a point of attending as many of his son's high school basketball games as possible. After he announced his retirement from Microsoft, Ballmer told The Wall Street Journal that he was considering an offer to coach his son's basketball team.

He tried unsuccessfully to bring an N.B.A. franchise back to Seattle in 2013 as part of an investor group seeking to buy the Sacramento Kings. Like many people in the Seattle area, Ballmer had felt the sting of seeing the Supersonics leave the city for Oklahoma City, where they became the Thunder.

The $1.1 billion paid for the Miami Dolphins in 2009 is the peak price for a N.F.L. team, with the Cleveland Browns, which were sold two years, a little behind. N.F.L. franchises share in the most lucrative national television deals of all the major leagues, so an N.F.L. franchise could justify a $2 billion price tag even better than the Clippers could. The Buffalo Bills, now in the midst of being sold after the death of their longtime owner, Ralph Wilson, are unlikely to sell for that much. The Dallas Cowboys would.

No one knows if Sterling would have put the Clippers on the market in his lifetime. But the timing for his making a huge profit off inflammatory remarks could not have been better.

With the Lakers suddenly the losing team in town, the Clippers are hot. They have stars like Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and a brand-name, title-winning coach, Doc Rivers.

And just getting rid of Sterling, who has, by nearly universal opinion, run a laughingstock of a franchise, should make the team more valuable to a willing buyer.

Ultimately, what one billionaire, Sterling, chooses to do - sell his team or sue his league - will determine the happiness of some other billionaires.