“A lawsuit would only delay the inevitable,” said Daniel Lazaroff, director of the Sports Law Institute at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “He has become a real problem for the league and any intelligent court would be deferential to a vote by a three-quarter majority of the NBA’s board of governors.”

Silver banned Sterling from the game and fined him $2.5 million. The league appointed Dick Parsons, a former Citigroup Inc. chairman and Time Warner Inc. chief executive officer, to serve as interim CEO of the team.

Parsons said May 12 that “a prolonged legal battle is in no one’s interest.” The club lost some sponsors in the wake of Sterling’s comments, including Kia Motors Corp…

Sterling might get further by arguing that a forced sale of the Clippers violates the California Franchise Relations Act, said Jonathan Solish, a lawyer with Bryan Cave LLP in Santa Monica, California.

“It’s certainly not a long shot that the Clippers are a franchise” under state law, Solish said in an interview.