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

Not the evidence Adam Silver claims is needed to punish the Clippers though. He said "concrete proof" is needed and not just “appearance of impropriety”. Likely meant evidence of Ballmer or the Clippers executives telling Aspiration how much and when to pay Kawhi. Or records of Ballmer telling Kawhi, his agent, or uncle that he'll get paid his extra money through Aspiration. If any of those records ever existed it's probably long destroyed by now.

Since most of the NBA owners and Silver seems to like Ballmer, my guess is he and Clippers will go unpunished due to lack of "concrete" evidence or they'll just get a tiny slap on the wrist. Likely paying a fine and losing one or two 2nd round pick.

 

Adam SIlver also said - correctly - he is quite literally making up whatever standard he wants. He has wide latitude to do whatever. There is nothing about burdens of proof or reasonable doubt or anything like that in the CBA.

All this talk about "smoking guns" is pretty much bullshit and an object of crime novels and movies. Nobody is ever arrested with a smoking gun. But if this were a court of law, Ballmer and Leonard would *absolutely* be discussing a plea deal right now because the evidence is overwhelming.

I actually urge anybody to go & listen to both of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcasts on this (the initial one, and the Dennis Wong one from last Thursday) for 2 reasons:

1) it is an entertaining, well made podcast (both episodes)
2) the evidence laid out is *way* more convincing than any of the news reports or hot takes on it can appreciably convey.

Again, I see KL2 Aspiration LLC - as an unsecured creditor of Aspirant listed right there on the bankruptcy filing on PACER, I have eyewitnesses telling me that it's a sham contract, I have the fact that Kawhi was paid 10x as much as Leo DeCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. for - infinity less percent work, I have the mysterious Roomate Dennis cash infusion a few days before Uncle Dennis is about to get paid and the company is insolvent. The whole thing is absolutely damning. The only way you let the CLippers off the hook is if you want to let them off the hook by making up a standard that is pure nonsense.

 

See, if Silver had just said he had signed off on it and of course had heard of it, nobody would’ve even paid attention to his big waterhead. But now he decided to lie in the first place and then lie about what he said. Yeah, Silver has been bought off.

 

Holy ****!

 

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/46271285/inside-tumultuous-kawhi-leonard-era-la-clippers

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/46271285/inside-tumultuous-kawhi-leonard-era-la-clippers

 

I've reached the point of being tired of hearing about this Kawhi stuff and wish we could fast forward to Adam Silver's decision.

 

I am both tired of it, but fascinated at the same time. It took MLB about 2 months to decide on the Astros, but the Astros rolled over. I just don't see anyone saying I cheated after what happened to the Astros.

 

Oh boy, it just got hotter.

 

Le Batard comments on funding Pablo's journalism and notes that his company risks being litigated into bankruptcy if the reporting gets anything wrong: "Pablo and his team inform me, largely after things are over, that yes, perhaps Ballmer can bankrupt you if you get a thing wrong."

Dan Le Batard shares a text from an NBA owner saying this case differs from Sterling because Ballmer is highly respected and has excelled as Audit Committee Chair. At the Board of Governors meeting, the hope was Ballmer hadn’t committed cap circumvention—but the new revelations are potentially huge.

Pablo Torre notes that the Aspiration cap circumvention investigation will likely reveal no classic “smoking gun” — no definitive written proof — but raises the question of how overwhelming the mountain of circumstantial evidence must become before it crosses into embarrassment for the league.

 

It’s a wide spread issue that the NBA already knows about and won’t probe too closely imho

 

I can't look away.

$118M. On the surface, it looks like salary cap circumvention with a little bit of extortion once Balmer was in too deep

 

It would be funny if the nba actually investigated everyone and took away draft picks, and we had no nba draft for a few years.

 

It all the under the table deals were exposed a lot of fans would lose interest because the suspense of free agency, trades etc would be gone. That would affect viewership and gambling revenue.

I suspect this depth of this (beyond the Clippers) to be swept under the rug as soon as the NBA season starts as fans will be distracted by games.

 

Some of it is unenforceable. For example, players collusion about joining force to form a superteam was a thing a few years ago. How do you stop players from talking in private? Agents making handshake deals with teams that would promise some players to some teams is also something very hard to catch. All these actions are circumventing the spirit of contract rules which carries unfair advantages to those who do it.

 

Exactly, a lot of it is almost impossible to catch or prove. Collusion has always and will always exist. It’s just too lucrative for all parties involved (including the NBA). Thumbs will always be on the scale so to speak.

My conspiracy theory is that the league office will push back on it enough to look like they are enforcing the rules for all parties but not enough to actually uncover a whole lot.

 

Does anyone really believe that only Kwahi did this? How many other superstars may also have had such setup? Is anyone thinking Lebron?

 

Definitely not LeBron, he's the one person you'd never ever need to suspect. His legit, fully reported endorsement income is on a whole tier above ANYTHING that the under-the-table deals are bringing people, believe that. Kawhi's not at all marketable, he's a weird dude who barely speaks, and he's clearly got a very sketchy Uncle who sees him as a gravy train. LeBron had people throwing money at his Mom before he'd even left high school, he's the supreme marketing baby of the NBA, he doesn't need that type of dodgy deal or the risk associated with it, it's genuinely beneath him, come on now.

 

Latest episode provided more paper trail and added reasons to the timeline of things.

The more I hear about Clippers and Aspirations, more comes to light what a bunch of crooks they are.