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

If this were a real court - There's absolutely enough evidence, hours and hours and hours of interviews thousands of pages of docs, affadavits.

A new one dropped just last week, I don't know if anyone noted it but far from being the unwitting dupe, Ballmer had a *previously undisclosed* secret side deal with the Aspiration CEO to be personally paid back his investment in case everything went bust (tho ultimately he didn't get paid back) unlike other investors

IMO the mountain of evidence is why all of Ballmers defenders/lickspittles pivoted to "well SMOKING GUN???" mode - smoking gun is not actually a thing. But pretend like it is and you can change the narrative.

I wish I could say I had faith in the league doing the right thing but they have spent the last 9 months preparing us for how they can break the news that they won't

 

Well... I can only be happy that it didn't work out for them.

Too many good things happening to bad people recently. Karma has been slacking on the job, or is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of schadenfreude.

 

This.

 

This is not a civil court. My guess is that Silver will need evidence above that of a civil court and below that of a criminal court, though probably closer to a criminal court.

That said, I fully expect a hammer for circumvention, fine for a minor violation without cap reduction/contract voided if NBA says can't prove circumvention, or sternly worded lecture with maybe more compliance rules if they can't even find a minor violation.

 

If salary cap circumvention were a legal matter and it was like, the SEC or FTC prosecuting (at least in the pre-Trump days where you can't automatically bribe your way out) - pretty much eveyr lawyer on earth would advise the Clippers/Ballmer/Kawhi to take a settlement or plea deal here - the evidence against them is substantial and damning in both civil and criminal terms (also those cases alo

If I recall correctly Silver issues a sanction, he has to turn this data over to some arbitrator/mediator if the Clippers choose to contest his decision here who then makes up his own standard.

 

This seems like a 'let's cancel the billionaire' witch-hunt led by the socialist class bluesky crew.