V. Stiviano, the woman whose conversation with Donald Sterling sparked the Clippers' owner being banned from the NBA, told Dr. Phil she recorded the octogenarian as part of a sort of therapy she often used for what she called his "bipolar moments."
Stiviano also adamantly denied that she had ever had a sexual relationship with Sterling and said she began working for him after the two met through mutual friends in 2011.
"I was not only his assistant. I was his caretaker. I was his mother. I was his secretary. I was his driver. I did everything for this man, in the last three years," she said.
Because of the demands of that job, she said, she has hours of more recordings which she used as part note-taking and part therapy for the embattled NBA owner.
"Mr. Sterling is very demanding," she said. "He is a very strong man. And occasionally he wants me to write everything down so I do voice memos. Sometimes the voice memos would continue and I would forget to put recording on it. And then when I would go back to it I would listen to some of the conversations and I was surprised. He was surprised. It just became routine.
"Mr. Sterling has certain moments where I used to say he has his bipolar moments where he would just lash out and say certain things that were absurd. Things that were mean, things that were just out of the norm and I would play those things back to him just to remind him of how he acted or how offensive he can be towards another person."
Did he know he was being recorded?
"Absolutely, with his permission," Stiviano said.
Sterling has denied knowing that Stiviano was recording the conversation, though Stiviano told Dr. Phil it was something they did often. He also claimed in an interview last week that Stiviano baited him into making the comments.
"The purpose of us recording was for him to learn things about himself," she said.
It was a friend, she said, who leaked the tapes.
As for the gifts that Sterling lavished her with — including multiple luxury cars — Stiviano said it was just because she is "a good human being" who helped him understand the world a little better.
She insisted she wasn't the only employee driving around an expensive car.
"He was living in a bubble," she said. "He learned things about the people. He learned things about me. Mr. Sterling's a billionaire, he can afford to give someone a gift of that magnitude."
