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

No they are not equally blatant. The Kawhi thing has concrete facts. One may argue that this kind of things happens all the times. But what he and the Clippers did was pretty much out in the open now.

The lottery rigging has no concrete evidence other than an unlikely coincidence after the Luka trade. You cannot say something you have no concrete evidence as "blatant."

 

Yeah tbh that last part of that means it's no longer just a conspiracy theory type narrative. If the Raptors cosign that report and say it was requested then there's got to be some kind of something to happen to them. It's too much evidence to gloss over at that point.

 

no the only difference is that torre and others went and investigated the kawhi situation. Why isnt anyone putting in the effort to investigate the draft? Or when wembanyama conveniently went to his favorite team? Or any of the other crazy "coincidences"?

Anyone with more than a handful of braincells can see how obvious it is

 

Question: How do you know none was investigated?
Answer: You don't.

 

sure thing buddy. Keep telling yourself that

 

Torre dropped a new episode . (and yes more details on the payments).

 

This one slams the door. Clipper's are going down.

a relatively very small, late-entry Aspiration stock agreement contract with the co-Chairman of the Clippers -- Dennis Wong, timed to make a payment to Leonard when Aspiration was late on their payments. And a trail of bank statement receipts proving it.

sheez​

lulz, They go from previous owner being kicked out for racism and next owner getting caught cheating so stupidly (as Cuban frames it).

I'm curious, was Pablo withholding this new bombhell from previous podcast or did the previous podcast (and Ballmer's subsequent denial) encourage another financial officer to provide Pablo with this new info. He's cold-blooded if he withheld it from the first one. Like him saying "I've got everything. But let's put out just some to start, to allow Ballmer to go on TV and deny, and watch some on the internet rationalize for Ballmer (Cuban, etc), and then drop the mic a week later with the most indisputable shlt we have."

That's impressive if he was able to stop himself from using this before, including in his call with Cuban ... But, I think more likely new info from Aspiration came to him over the last week after Ballmer's denial. Mainly because of the timing of the Board of Governors meeting. This extra info (had it previously been released) would have made it so Silver could not avoid talking about it, which Pablo says Silver was able to avoid.

 

According to Pablo Torres Sources - Adam Silver made the conspicuous decision TO NOT discuss the investigation out loud in front of the room with other owners in the board of governors meeting

 

Respect to this reporter. So much more interesting than the draft night Shams/Woj bombs that we’ll all learn a few moments later anyway.

 

Pablo found bank statements. Payments to Kawhi are marked as "Critical". He's also found they were late on payments, so a mysterious new investor shows up and gives them just what they'd need to pay Kawhi. It just so happens to be the only other person who owns a piece of the Clippers, Ballmer's old roommate, Dennis Wong.

He also did this at the point in time where the company was clearly failing, so it was obviously not a good-faith investment. It seems to be the worst look yet. Also, Wong’s daughter worked for Aspiration

 

this is what i expected. in a league infested with rampant corruption from top to bottom much easier to just sweep this under the rug than open a giant can of worms

 

He must not have heard about the Wongdoing of Dennis #2

 

If other teams are doing similar things, they don't want to make this a big deal.

If they don't clean this up, the cap will become a joke. There are so many easy ways to circumvent it.

 

Or doing a sitdown interview with Chael sonnen about LeBrons ped usage, and them having the same connect

that lets me know LeBrons popularity is manufactured

cause aint no way the goat in a sport would be accused of that and the media not address it once

 

One thing I’d like to point out: the podcast guests (and all media) keep asking what does Aspiration get out of this deal? I don’t get why Pablo doesn’t keep pointing out that Aspiration is not just any sponsor … they were scheduled to get the jersey patch after Honey’s deal expired at the conclusion of 202-23 season. That’s what Kawhi does for them … he wears their name on his jersey … that branding is better than anything Kawhi could have done for them. And hence why Aspiration had the termination clause that Kawhi stops getting paid if he’s no longer a Clipper.

That is the only thing I can think of for possible scenario where Aspiration did this on their own.

But linking Wong like this is a death blow. That said, if I were on that podcast with what I know about the Spac merger and all those elite investors already committed, playing devils-advocate like Pablo was having one of the guest do, I would have said … well, as desperate as they were, Sanberg, et al, could have asked Wong for help. So Wong asks Aspiration, “well, how much do you need”, still without knowing about Kawhi. His motivation is saving face for the Clippers who don’t want their sponsor to fail, the one tied to the greening of Intuit Dome (which they honestly want for PR reasons), and who booked and ready for replacing Honey jersey patch deal, and who still has the outside chance of their lucrative Spac deal going through…not to mention helping his daughter keep her job, I suppose.

Everything quickly becomes peaches and cream if that Spac IPO goes through, but yeah, that was absolutely falling apart at that point in time. Churny had already bailed. InterPrivate was amending the deal to require more and more proof of financials, and they were adding more and more termination clauses…as it was going through delays.

It’s just I do think it makes for more thoughtful, compelling podcast to say (which is true) that Aspiration totally had independent motivation for assuring Kawhi wears their name on his jersey.

 

This would be a really bad mistake long term for the NBA and owners.

This erodes the confidence of fans of the product and gamblers as well.

The league obviously cannot quash this story, no matter how badly they want to.

If this is really as clear cut as it looks at this point, the league has to really come down on Balmer.

 

If you have faith in the integrity of the nba after the scott foster stuff then you are beyond help. This is a nothingburger compared to having refs fixing games.

 

Torre's reporting today connects yet more dots to Balmer and the Clippers organization. Wong will probably take the fall, but the team should pay a price for this. Balmer already got busted for circumventing the salary cap with the Deandre Jordan situation. If I am a rival NBA organization, I would raise holy hell about this. A guy with Balmer's net income can literally buy and sell the league. The league's integrity is at stake. Does that matter to people anymore?