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The players were not going to tolerate Sterling's presence in the league. That's the bottom line here. I don't see this primarily as a culture war moment, honestly. It's something that clearly hit the current and ex-players extremely hard at an emotional level. IMO it was the "plantation owner" mentality that he revealed - clearly it hit a deep nerve, when you had people like Michael Jordan, who are almost never publicly outspoken on racial issues, expressing such strong outrage.
From a business standpoint the Clippers would not have been able to keep functioning as an organization with Sterling continuing to run the team.
To the question of "why now and not before"...his prior public racist episodes did not directly relate to his employees and customers in the NBA business. One could certainly have drawn implications from his behavior about his character, but it was "outside the lines." In this case OTOH, he was directly expressing racist attitudes in his role as an NBA owner. It's quite different IMO, and that is why he was punished so harshly this time.