I have a feeling the recordings will be inadmissible in court, and the NBA will have no way to justify its actions. I will have to check the California Evidence Code on admission of illegal recordings.
Section 631 makes recording telephone conversations illegal without consent. Section 632 makes recording private conversations illegal without consent. Both go on to state: "Except as proof in an action or prosecution for violation of this section, no evidence obtained as a result of eavesdropping upon or recording a confidential communication in violation of this section shall be admissible in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding."
Whether these sections apply to recorded private conversations that are not communicated by telephone or cell phones is not clear.
Lawyer: "Ms Bimbo did you record the plaintiff saying this?"
Ms Bimbo: Invokes the 5th amendment.
They don’t need the tapes, they have the press clippings. Nobody really cares what he said, what they care about is that it blew up into a giant kerfuffle that damaged the reputation of the league. A big part of the problem is that everybody has known Sterling is a jerk for a long time, there’s guy that cover the NBA pointing to articles they wrote about him 5, 10, 20 years ago. That’s really why this has blown up, it’s not the first time he stepped over the PC line, it’s not even the first time he’s generated press with it, but it’s now hit enough times that people are asking why nothing has ever been done about him before. Stern got really lucky he retired before all this since he was the commish for most of Sterling’s other incident, he’d have a lot of explaining to do; with him out Silver is free to ignore the past and deal with the now.