Was Donald Sterling only pretending to be a racist?

Now that is some romantic technique.

A week after L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned for life from the NBA, fined $2.5 million and informed he would have to sell the team he has owned for more than three decades, two new recordings featuring what sounds like his nasally Southern California voice have been posted on the gossip site Radar Online.

In a conversation with a friend who sounds skeptical but supportive, the man who sounds like Sterling denies that he is a racist. He only pretended to be one, he says, to get his half-black girlfriend in bed:

“I’m talking to a girl. I’m trying to have sex with her. I’m trying to play with her.... If you were trying to have sex with a girl, and you’re talking to her privately and you don’t think anybody’s there, you may say anything in the world! What difference does it make?”

A moment later he adds, rather cluelessly considering the circumstances, “Who thinks anybody’s gonna tape something?”

Then, “What the hell, I’m talking to a girl. The girl is black. I like her. I’m jealous that she’s with other black guys. So why the hell can’t I in private tell her, ‘I don’t want you to be with anybody. Am I a person, do I have freedom of speech?”

If this is Sterling, and if it really is his explanation for the first recording, which was posted two weeks ago on TMZ, he must think people are not paying attention.

In the first recording, Sterling does not express jealousy. In fact, if the conversation had been a demonstration of sexual jealousy, not rank racism, he probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

As everyone knows, in that recording, which NBA commissioner Adam Silver confirmed was his voice, Sterling is outraged that V. Stiviano, the woman Rochelle Sterling claims is her husband’s mistress, posted photographs of herself on Instagram with black men, including Magic Johnson and Los Angeles Dodger Matt Kemp.

He reminds her that he has asked her to take the photos down and is frustrated and angry that she has thwarted his wishes. “Every day,” he tells Stiviano, “you could be whatever you want, you could sleep with them, you could bring them in ... the little I ask you is not to promote it on that [Instagram] and not bring them to my games.”

So, two things: First, Sterling may not believe he is a racist, but his words say otherwise. Second, Sterling told Stiviano she could sleep with black people, so if that guy on the new recordings is Sterling, he sure has a funny way of expressing jealousy.

My guess is that despite some tawdry language about how men seduce women, and what sounds like an obsession with Johnson, the man who sounds an awful lot like Sterling in the new recordings might have actually wanted the new recordings to be leaked.

“I love the girl and she’s telling me, ‘You’re wrong.’ I know what I said was wrong!” says the man on the new recordings. “But I never thought the private conversation would go anywhere, out to the public. I didn’t want her to bring anybody to my games ’cause I was jealous. I’m being honest, and, ugh, doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna hear it but you and me.”

You tell ‘em, Casanova.