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

Cuban makes several strong points. Definitely a must watch for those interested in additional critical thinking on this …

 

Yeah tbh I'm halfway through and Mark sounds completely plausible and the other guy sounds like a crazy conspiracist clutching at straws to try and defend his "scoop" despite Mark slapping down every assertion he makes lol.

 

While also being agreeable to plenty of what Pablo asserts. Cuban is a really good interview…always wants to keep it friendly.

 

Yeah it's actually genius tbh. He's not challenging anything he says directly, he's just making a significantly more plausible, authentic and stronger case. It's making Pablo look crazy at this point, his energy's way up and more confrontational now which makes him look like he's really clutching at straws to defend his scoop. Even if Cuban's full of **** tbh, he just comes across as infinitely more credible. Pablo sounds more and more annoyed and emotional, he actually sounds a bit like a spouse trying to win an argument on her made up bullshit lmao.

 

The easiest way to stop this is that upon voiding the player's contract, they are out of the NBA permanently.

It's way worse than what Pete Rose did to get banned from MLB for life.

 

Uncle Dennis is making the rounds around the NBA asking for shady money and accommodations that violate salary cap rules so much that the league has to warn the teams to be wary of circumventing the cap. Ballmer who has already been fined in the DeAndre Jordan incident for circumventing the salary cap. What does he do when dealing with Uncle D? He introduces Uncle D to a large sponsor knowing D's game. Then Ballmer invests almost the same amount with the sponsor as we are finding out Kawhi was scheduled to earn from them. With those connections to the sponsor it is utterly stupid of Ballmer to NOT make sure whatever Uncle D was doing was above board.

Cuban is making excuses not strong points.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ba...ions-during-pablo-torre-interview/ar-AA1LY9XU

 

Of course. Forensic accounting is the most fun accounting.

 

They were expecting to have "brand synergy" with Kawhi Leonard and a tree-planting company?

It's funny that in every article about this, nobody ever actually formulated exactly what it was that "Aspiration" was doing (other than operating a ponzi scheme of course). It's just a bunch of techy mumbo-jumbo meaningless buzzwords.

 

Kawhi has been under investigation 4 times and so far nothing. Glad this time there’s evidence, but I doubt the league will take a stand. I believe uncle Dennis and Kawhi are shady AF, especially now that’s come out Lawrence Frank of the Clippers as early as 2017 had contact with Kawhi about his health and were clearly in violation of tampering.

 

Mark Cuban mentioned something around carbon offsetting, so I should be able to explain (I've worked in the energy industry for decades.) If it's anything like here in the UK, large companies have certain quotas they have to meet in terms of their emissions/evironmental impact. Because of this loads of companies sprung up where they gain almost like "green credits" by planting trees en masse, and they then sell these credits to large/polluting companies (in my case, as an example we're the UK's largest energy provider, buying into those kind of schemes offsets the carbon output of our fossil fuel power plants alongside other green incentives) who are able to then maintain the required environmental impact KPI's. It sounds like Aspiration sold a lot of those credits/equivalent whilst promising the moon to investors, only they probably never did any of the actual work so then the credits were worthless which means any of the investment was also worthless.

 

is it?

I think this is a case where you have to punish the team far more than the player. On one side you have a player signing contracts that are offered to him, which he may or may not fully understand in the context of a framework of arcane salary cap rules. On the other side, you have a multi-billion dollar organization staffed by lawyers and financial professionals who know EXACTLY what the rules are and what they are trying to circumvent. I’m not saying Leonard is an innocent victim, but the teams are the ones that know better.

 

The heat have blatantly cheated to circumvent the cap a bunch but nobody cares. They did it with haslem for years, they did it with carter when the agent “forgot” to opt him in. It’s never the actual cheating anyone cares about, it’s only who “did” the cheating.

 

Basically, people care as long as it isn't their team. NBA, MLB, NFL don't want to catch teams cheating, but have to protect integrity of the game if a team is too blatant.

I'd assume most NBA teams cheat (probably all). This would seem to be a big one though that the NBA will have to come down hard on the Clippers if they can prove it.

 

What miami did with haslen is WAY more blatant and obvious and actually genuine cheating than what the clips did even in the worst case clips senerio.

 

Current Clippers regime strikes me as a org that may not care about rules or norms.

For a while the running joke was that when a player got kicked off of a team, Clippers will try to sign that player. (Josh Primo, KPJ, Kai Jones).

 

Some points to note from the recent round of reactions:

1. From Lowe, who looked at the wording of the NBA 'constitution', and read the definition and punishment.

Highlights:
a. Circumstantial evidence IS enough to convict. This isn't the criminal courts, it's rules and guidelines for the NBA
b. The commissioner seems to have lot of power and discretion to act fairly broadly as far as punishments.

​

2. NBA officially hired a law firm to investigate. A highly reputable one, same one that did Donald Sterling.

3. On cap circumvention, it's possible different teams may have also done this, but the key thing is to not get caught. Kawhii and Balmer got caught. The amount of attention forces Adam's hand.

4. The amount is a lot.

$28m ($48 if you count the undelivered promises stocks) is a lot. To put it in perspective, Kawhii's new balance deal is reportedly $5m. And Kawhii actually did endorsement activities for that.

Any money not pay through the legal channel, including Clippers would-be Luxury tax, half of that stays in NBA League office, the other half goes to the NBA teams stayed under the luxury tax those years. Balmer and Uncle Dennis cheated possible income from other NBA team owners.​

5. The other owners also know if they go into a rat race of circumventing the cap, they'll never out-spend the 6th richest man in the world, including our Rockets.

 

Balmer --> 50m --> Aspirations. --> 48m (promised) --> Kawhii LLC.


Clippers gets to have more cap room to work with and a smaller Luxury tax bill. If Aspirations didn't get caught and the pryamid scheme continued, Balmer's 50m investment was supposed to turn into 300m, that sponsor money for his Intuit Dome.

Aspiration pockets at least a projected $2m for green washing the money. But more importantly, the Clippers sponsorship and relationship with Balmer gave them creditbility. Allows them to convince more companies to sign on and defruad upon.

Unc Dennis and Kawhii still get paid. And during the original signing, score publicity points with the fans for taking less money.


Axis of greedy parties playing outside the rules.