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

Once again I recommend everyone listen to this & the preceding 3 episodes,

it is oh so much worse to hear Pablo play a clip of an incredulous Mark Cuban saying "look, this is all BS if this was really fraudulent they'd have done this - I am super DEAL GUY trust me I know these things"

And then see/hear Pablo unveil a document or documents or interviews that shows the Clippers doing exactly that thing.

The part about the deposition today of the Aspiration owner - taking the 5th(!) - w/r/t to the Clippers deal was just a chef's kiss

I guess Balmer thinks since we're in an Oligarchy now he can just lie & bribe his way out of it. We'll see.

But holy ****, pre 2016/24 id have said these guys should plead guilty and hope for life with no parole. They are cooked as hell in an even superficially just environment.

Last thing I'm wondering - I'm not a bankruptcy guy, but doesn't the Clippers injecting money into an insolvent, circling the drain company to be transferred to No Show Kawhi LLC open Kawhi up to be pursued by the Trustee or other Creditors? Can't they The Claw some of that back?

Need a @MadMax or someone who knows something about bk law here.

 

The brazenness of this scheme in terms of its complexity combined with the weirdness/laziness of Kawhi & his team really sets this apart.

All Kawhi frankly had to do was literally make a post or 2, like this one! Or click a " like" button, or whatever, and he'd have some defense here.

But no, the point for KL2 Aspire LLC was to have a literal no show job and do nothing at all. It will cost them, hopefully.

 

The other owners in the league here have an incentive though

For example the Celtics just broke up their own super team due to 2nd Apron concerns. Joe Lacob basically broke up the Warriors after very loudly complaining how much tax he was paying.

I suspect/hope there is genuine anger on the part of the league that they abided by the rules more or less when Ballmer appears to have put together a $100 million scheme designed to explicitly break them.

This isn't a sweetheart endorsement deal it's an actual scheme designed to conceal, that puts it way over the edge of *wink wink nudge nudge * territory IMO.