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

Haha ok, you’re right people constantly say no thanks to 100 mil, definitely more people would pass on it than accept it.

 

At a minimum I think they have a handshake agreement to keep his dad on the coaching staff as long as Jalen is a Knick. And possibly even a promise to make his dad head coach one day. Which is probably fine these days when considering Bronny and Thanasis.

 

I didn't finish this one. Not much new here. The new things (unless i missed it in another segment) were:
- one of the financial officers for Aspiration basically objecting to the Kawhi deal because it made no sense for Aspiration (i.e., pay was unreasonable for services).
- (Not sure I heard this currently) the Dennis Wong and last Balmer investments were the only investments made from that time period, and all 16 other investment entities that Aspiration approached turned them down. I think Pablo has implied that previously.

 

Yeah the point of “circumstantial evidence” has passed, they are 100% guilty.

 

The big reveal is at the end.

Ballmers (very implausible) defense of "we were the unwitting victim of Aspiration" kind of falls apart when you examine the timeline of how & when their investments occurred, but the big new info is:

Aspirations began circling the drain in 22-23 season
Clippers sponsorship deal collapsed
Federal investigations etc were reported at that time.

Fast forward a year.

A $1.75m Donation goes from Ballmers charity - which is he claims is allegedly a very grant-by-grant based enterprise according to Ballmer himself -

to Golden State Opportunity Fund in Dec 2024, an apparently defunct charity founded & controlled by
...
...
...
Aspiration Founder & CEO Joe Sandberg

So basically, if you believe Ballmers " we were a poor unwitting victim of these fraudsters and we discovered in early 23" (already a ridiculous story based on other facts), it's mighty, mighty strange that Ballmers charity decided to give Sandbergs charity" - while he was under federal investigation more money, over a year after his company collapsed and the so-called fraud was revealed

 

The clippers are so cooked here - if you read all this evidence & try to concoct an increasingly far fetched defense for Ballmer, I guess you can do so.

But, it's pretty obvious what went on! I guess Not a new detail, bur noted today, the secret Aspiration no show KL2 deal -$48m - almost exactly mirrors the $49m that Toronto could offer Leonard than LAC in 2019 (probably more after tax , but whatever). It's almost perfect given Uncle Dennis alleged demands.

This is not a hard case folks, it's just not. Mark Cuban etc trying to obscure it with "well no this is true business deal guy stuff" is misdirection, he wants to mislead you. It's clear what happened and why here.

 

Well, not the poor part, but I think it is possible that what started out as salary cap circumvention may have led Balmer to be an unwitting victim of the salary cap circumvention being used against him by the fraudsters.

 

Walk me through how this works exactly?

I see no set of circumstances with all the documents uncovered that can support this.

Like, for example when Roommate Dennis, Clippers co-owner "invests" Kawhi's overdue no-show payment into Aspiration by means of a stock purchase, and signs a document that the company is basically bankrupt and insolvent and that he will never get his money back - how do you do that and still be "unwitting" even if you pretend that it was all legit before then (which it wasn't).

The next evolution of the Clippers ever shiftng defense would be something like "oh, actually, we just figured out now that we weren't defrauded, instead we just now today deduced that they were BLACKMAILING us 2 months after the story broke!" - that simply isn't a credible assertion.

 

Aspiration is struggling. Balmer convinces them to help him circumvent cap. Balmer invests to pay money to Kawhi and a little for Aspiration's trouble. Aspiration runs out of money and spent money that was earmarked for Kawhi. Aspiration coerces Balmer et al to pay even more money to cover Kawhi as they don't have the money. Balmer and other related entities end up paying a lot more for salary cap circumvention than initially planned.

On unwitting, the salary cap circumvention was intentional. I'm not pretending that part was legit. I'm just not sure that Aspiration didn't use the salary cap circumvention as a way to coerce more money than originally planned out of Balmer.

 

This could be just what does unwitting mean.

Looking up the definiton, I don't see anything that would prohibit Balmer from knowingly circumventing the cap, but unaware (i.e., unwiitting) that that action was going to be used against him. One of the emails read today from the guy that put up his own shares for Kawhi made it really sound like he had more in mind than just taking a premium to help Balmer circumvent the cap in his mind when trying to convince other members of Aspiration to go along.

 

If this version is true, Ballmer is still circumventing the cap so it doesn't really help.

Ballmer's position is that he was "duped" and "conned" and apparently didn't find out about it until the rest of the world did.

“I don’t know why they did what they did, and I don’t know how different it is. I really don’t. Frankly, any speculation would be kind of crazy. These are guys who committed fraud. They conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking they were on the up and up, and they conned me.”
​

This defense really falls apart when it comes to subsequent rounds of investment in Aspiration after the company started circling the drain & reneging on its commitments - and then Ballmer and Rommate Dennis started funneling further investments in to make the KL2 payroll.

I don't know what the last mysterious donation from Ballmer foundation to the GSOF (Sandberg org) in Dec 2024 was for but it certainly doesn't seem like something an angry mark would do.

You defrauded me! how dare you! anyway here's $2m a year later.

I don't think Pablo has anything linking GSOF to the KL2 payments yet, but if that link exists we're rising to the level where it's potentially criminal liability for those involved.

 

Yep, it doesn't help with the NBA.

It just reminds me of the Davey Scatino storyline in Sopranos. Davey begs Tony to be allowed into the big poker game, He was aware of who Tony was, but was still naive into what would happen once Tony had the hooks in him with gambling debts. Tony takes over Davey’s sporting-goods store. They start running up debts in the store’s name, taking merchandise, charging expenses to the business, and using it as a front. They run the store to the ground and ruin Davey. It is a little flipped in that Aspiration had the money problems, but was also the one with the hooks in Balmer.

I just find it hard to believe that Balmer would circumvent the cap, and then set it up such that either he or someone else related to the Clippers would have to keep adding money periodically when Aspiration got behind in paying Kawhi.

 

That’s where he WAS duped. He was duped in to thinking Aspiration could manage their money and pay Kawhi on time.

 

I don't doubt that Ballmer, Dennis Wong etc all the alleged participants would have preferred if Aspiration was solvent enough so that they did not have to keep funneling cash through prepaid carbon creds & emergency "stock" purchases - but once they went down the road apparently they had to keep going down it, probably to both keep Uncle Dennis/Kawhi happy and keep the whole thing from being noticed.

If KL2 - Aspirant LLC had managed to get paid in full prior to the company hitting bankruptcy, it's possible the whole thing could have gone undetected, as they would not have appeared on publicly filed creditor lists.

Ultimately the elements of this offense are so established, like I said it's really hard to come to any interpretation other than cap circumvention.

Kawhi/Uncle Dennis -> Clearly wanted to circumvent teh cap/get extra $$$/have a no show job (intent)
-> Did in fact collect $$ and did not show (action)

Aspiration/Sandberg -> Clearly wanted to facilitate the no show job contract (intent)
-> Did in fact send $$ to the no-show guy (action)

Ballmer/Wong/Clippers-> Claim they only made an introduction? Claim they have no knowledge (dispute intent)
-> Did in fact make the introduction and propped up Aspiration when Kawhi's $$ was do (action)

The only thing that Ballmer/Clippers are disputing is the "intent" part of it - but IMO that seems like a "WHO CAN TRULY KNOW WHAT LIES IN THE HEARTS OF MEN" style obfuscation, all of their actions are seemingly consistent with the intent that all other parties here had and don't really even dispute that they had

 

Something that has randomly stuck out as odd to me, was the decision by silver to hire a firm, and wait for a decision. That in itself isn't that random but he gave a timeline of when to be finished and it's all-star weekend? Why give a deadline and why then?

Well its the biggest NBA News cycle. You have all the all-star festivities, as well as all those juicy trade rumors swirling. Fans will be paying attention and care about other stuff.

So, my spidey-senses are tingling and thinking he is hoping it gets swept away under the rug of all the overwhelming news of the time. That paired with all the time passed, and societies short attention span, seems like the best way to escape with a slap on the wrist.

 

You're saying that because you're broke af. See this is where that being a numbers nerd not an athlete thing is causing your disconnect. Brunson signed for £156 million, that's generational wealth he's unlikely to ever spend, and by still getting mega rich but not being greedy he's allowed the team more financial flexibility to try and compete for a championship. The fact you can't even comprehend that possibility tells me you never played anything competitively at any real level. How can you understand a trait you don't have?

 

I

IMO it is a pretty standard timeline for an in-house investigation of this kind. This one may take longer because most of the key witnesses aren't under any obligation to speak to the NBA/wachtell or give them documents - there's no subpoena power or anything here. The only people who are under an contractual obligation to respond are the clippers and they will be lawyered up like crazy and drag everything out.

 

My god you're an ignorant ******* sometimes, it's kinda sad.