Fans' support for the Clippers remains strong, as the team battles the thunder in the playoffs, but Scandal continues to swirl around team owner Donald Sterling. The NBA hopes to force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers,

but his estranged wife Shelly owns a 50% stake in the team. She promises to fight to maintain ownership. Fans say the team needs a fresh start. First night, back in the Staples Center for Game 5, hours after Adam Silver banned Donald Sterling, I noticed a couple sitting in the press room. They were an older couple, wearing matching red shirts that said, Team Shelly on the front. It caught my attention. In all my years of covering the Clippers, I'd never really thought of Shelly as anything more than Donald's wife. The woman who stuck it out with an obnoxious cheating husband for 60 years. But also, Shelly wasn't exactly a popular figure at the time. Anything associated with the Sterling name was downright toxic. So who were these people brave enough to wear team Shelly shirts to a hostile arena? In the middle of all this. The couple wearing those shirts were Shelly's dear friend Katherine Bellman and her husband. My first conversation with Katherine wasn't remarkable in any way. But it did, for the first time, wake me up to the fact that Shelly Sterling was not simply the quiet standby your man housewife that I had imagined she was all those years. She was in the middle of a battle herself. She was not about to go down without a fight. This is episode 5. Not fit.

Doc, the commissioner made it clear that he would like ownership to change with this team. And as uncomfortable as it might be to answer this question, do you think it would be best if Donald Sterling was no longer owner of this team for everyone?

Well, I don't think it will be. I think that's been clear. I think Adam's made that clear. So I think that's already been decided. And yes, I do think that's the right decision. The next step is where do we go?

The Clippers on coach, Doc Rivers, didn't even know what it meant that Donald was banned, but technically still on the team.

Tonight, at Staples Center, every penny will still go to him. And in the foreseeable future, every penny will still go to him. So you look at this for the players and they say Donald Sterling can't come around to anything. You know what, they're really changes for their day to day? Nothing because Donald Sterling is still going to be the one that's out here getting paid.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver wanted to take the team away from Sterling. The faster he moved, the better the chances of that actually happening. The fans in the public were squarely on his side. He needed the pressure of their outrage to back him up. Because when it came down to it, whether or not Sterling had to keep his team was on the other owners.

Your members of a very select fraternity and Donald Sterling is a member of your fraternity. And you are either silently endorsing him or you are publicly rebuking him. And that's what will actually make this change. The other 29 owners, 28 of whom are other rich white guys, need to do something now. They should already have. A lot of these same owners are the ones that kept him in year after year after year when we knew all the racial stuff was going on out

here. The problem is those other owners were guys who also have said plenty of things in private. They wouldn't want to be held accountable for in public. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was the first to voice his unease.

But Donald's done within the confines of the NBA. Adam will deal with that within the constitution of the NBA and I'm all for him taking those steps. But in terms of should we kick him out and go outside of the constitution, should we start taking steps to condemn people for what they say in the privacy of their own home that just happens to be recorded.