LA mayor: Sterling unaware of impact of racist comments

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) on Sunday said Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling does not realize the impact of his recently revealed racist comments.

“He thinks he’s going to be the owner for a long time,” Garcetti said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I don’t believe he realizes what the sting of those remarks are.”

{mosads}On Saturday, NBA spokesman Mike Bass announced that the league will begin looking for a new Clippers chief executive.

But Garcetti, who spoke to Sterling a few days ago, said Sterling is skeptical that will happen.

“I don’t believe that he thinks the league will impose the sort of penalties that they have said they will,” he said.

Sterling caused a national firestorm after an audio recording revealed he had asked a female friend not to publicize her association with black people or to bring them to basketball games.

Garcetti called the remarks “incongruous to who we are as Americans and certainly as Angelinos.”

He did not rule out calling for a boycott of Clippers games.

“I would certainly keep that arrow in my quiver,” Garcetti said. “I want to see a Los Angeles — we’re a great sports town … and we want to see a representation of our city in its best light, not one individual who would besmirch who we are.”

–This report was updated at 3:34 p.m.