[Pablo Torre] Steve Balmer paid Kawhi Leonard under the table to avoid salary cap

This is the ‘fire my management but please don’t take my team away, Adam’ media tour.

 

It's his best defense.

 

He clearly got scammed by those young whipper snapper startup CEOs. It directly benefiting his team by circumventing the salary cap is purely unrelated, circumstantial and coincidental. /s

 

If there is anything I know about tech billionaires, it is that they love to invest in small tree-planting companies without doing any due diligence.

 

Once again the clown rich elites think they are above the law…oh wait nothing ever happens to them??? All I know is that 1099 I’ll get for a couple thousand bucks better not be left off my taxes or I’m finished…what a joke.

 

I am shocked by how much Balmer conceded in that interview considering the investigation just started two days ago. He would’ve only done so because he knows the ax is gonna fall and he’s hoping for some mercy from the NBA by coming clean at the start.

If the Clippers had any legal legs to stand on, he would be pleading innocent instead of “no contest“.

 

The league should

1. Take away the Clippers' rights to whatever they get out of the 2027 and 2029 pick swaps, plus their 2030 draft pick.
2. Void Kawhi's contract and Bird Rights.
3. At least a 50 game suspension for Kawhi (mainly to take away his pay for those games). Maybe a full year.

They also need to do their due diligence on other Clippers players, I wouldn't be shocked if James ended up wrapped up in this too.

 

Do you want the league to look into other teams? We know for sure the raptors agreed to do this for Kawhi so they should get the same punishment at least draft pick wise, obviously tons of other teams do this kinda stuff as well.

 

Punish them too. Even if it's the Rockets, though I doubt it knowing Tilman's habits, not that it's out of the goodness of his heart or concern for the rules...

 

I would be stunned if no rockets player had an individual sponsorship from a team sponsor, every team does that. Obviously silver is a corrupt gutless coward so nothing will happen to anyone except the clips but it would be funny if they actually investigated and then we didn’t have an nba draft for a few years.

 

Ballmer invests 50 million dollars in to a company that he introduced Leonard to that pays Leonard 48 million dollars (Salary and stock) for a no show job..... Uncle Dennis got screwed here as it appears he only got a paltry 2 million. You can bet Uncle Dennis is in Balmer's ear about the Clippers finding a way to get Kawhi whole on the Aspiration deal. Mark Cuban is just trying to get out in front of this since he likely circumvented the cap in a similar method.

 

So the Company that paid Kawhi under the table went bankrupt and Ballmer lost his investment money.

 

Someone pointed out on /nba that Cubans defense of Balmer is ‘he’s too smart to do something so dumb’ but apparently he’s not smart enough to sniff out a god@mn ponzi scheme? 6th richest man in the world, former Microsoft CEO, Harvard BA and Standford MBA dropout didn’t do his due diligence when handing over $50 million?!? F@ck out of here!

 

https://www.latimes.com/sports/stor...arly-gave-naming-rights-to-fraudulent-company

 

If Cuban also did this, he'd keep a low profile instead of painting a bullseye on his face by defending Balmer and sparring with Pablo Torre.

But he's in the clear regardless.

 

Basically..... I got an email from them and immediately sniffed out a scam. Ballmer is smart but he doesn't have my skills in fraud detection.

 

Maybe. Maybe not. Let's see how far this investigation goes.

 

Balmer's $50 million investment apparently also bought the Clippers a $300 million sponsorship deal from Aspiration. It looks like one of those arrangements where someone famous pretends to be investing money in a company to help lend legitimacy and attract other investors/suckers but they are secretly getting all their money back and then some.

If the deal was Balmer invests $50 million but Aspiration quickly gives the Clippers $50 million back in exchange and then promises another $250 million over the next whatever years then Balmer would probably take the deal without asking too many questions.

 

Wanting to circumvent is not circumventing.

 

I mean they agreed to it, don’t see the difference in any way