Disgraced NBA owner Donald Sterling's alleged racist remarks smearing African-Americans and NBA great Magic Johnson have also dredged up his troubled past with another key minority group: Latinos.

Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has been embattled since TMZ released recordings last week in which he told his girlfriend V. Stiviano not to bring "black people" to Clippers games or post pictures of herself with them on social media.

On Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life from attending NBA games or associating with the Clippers organization in any capacity.

While the uproar from NBA players, owners, African American civil rights groups and activists and President Obama has been heard loud and clear, new attention has also been drawn to Sterling's past legal problems with minorities, Hispanics among them.

In 2003, Sterling, who has a net worth of $1.9 billion and made his fortune in real estate, was sued by 19 plaintiffs alleging that the California-based housing magnate attempted to drive out Hispanics and blacks from Koreatown apartments. As ESPN notes, a federal judge ruled that Sterling was to pay $5 million in fees to plaintiffs' attorneys while he settled for an undisclosed sum that the judge called "one of the largest ever obtained in this type of case." As reported by the Los Angeles Times, Sterling was accused in the lawsuit of preferring not to rent apartments to Latinos, as "Hispanics smoke, drink and just hang around the building."

The Department of Justice also sued him in 2006 in a housing discrimination suit, which he settled for $2.73 million in November 2009.

A Tuesday report from Curbed, an LA-based real estate news site, using data from the nationwide real estate research site known as Property Shark, found that of the 162 Los Angeles-based properties that were "reasonably" identified as owned by Sterling, "there's not a single one in the black and Latino neighborhoods south of the 10 or the Latino neighborhoods east of Downtown."

Sterling's controversial past involving Latino tenants and prospective tenants was not lost on the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which joined several other groups in organizing a 200-demonstrator protest in front of the Staples Center on Tuesday prior to Game 5 of the NBA Playoffs between the host Clippers and the Golden State Warriors. The coalition, a civil rights group that focuses on advancing Latinos and their portrayal in the press and eliminating hate speech in the media, joined several groups, including the Nation of Islam and the NAACP, in organizing the rally, which later became a victory rally following Silver's announcement of the lifetime ban.

Jessica Gonzalez, executive director and general counsel for the National Hispanic Media Coalition, spoke exclusively to Latin Post Tuesday, describing the quick organization of the rally at the start of the week. While the advocacy group -- which has only a handful of members in her office -- was handling several projects at the time, Gonzalez said her group quickly shifted their focus towards the rally.

"We were pretty busy," she laughed, noting how she had to scramble to a nearby store to get markers to draw protest signs, with even the group's president and CEO Alex Nogales rolling up his sleeves and making posters.

The issue regarding Sterling, however, was no laughing matter to the coalition, Gonzalez citing Sterling's "history of racism against Latinos" as a major concern for the group.

"In a city like Los Angeles, where millions of Latinos live, we had to make sure" that Hispanics were represented and that their voices were heard on the issue, she said, while commending the NBA's decision to ban Sterling for life.

"The city of Los Angeles does not have room for Donald Sterling. He needs to go," Gonzalez said.

Gonzales added that Latinos in the Los Angeles area were aware of Sterling's negative history with Hispanics when it came to the housing lawsuits, and while she couldn't speak to whether Latinos nationwide were also in the know about the situation, it should "come as no surprise," given Sterling's history of racially-related legal issues, if he also discriminated against Latinos.

"Most of us understand that people filled with hate tend to discriminate against all minorities, whether they're black, or Latino or LGBT," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez added that regarding the housing lawsuits and Sterling's alleged discrimination against Latino tenants or would-be renters, there might be an opportunity to revisit the issue and see if there was still discrimination against Latinos renting in the many L.A.-area apartments owned by Sterling. She hopes that legal advocates in Los Angeles might look into whether such incidents were still happening in apartments owned by Sterling.

"The lawsuit happened years ago, and you would have thought that he would have learned his lessons, but it is clear [from the current controversy] that that is not the case," she said.

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