Did Steve Balmer pay Kawhi Leonard under the table?

responding to lowe and mcann--I mean, the sarver espn article had a ton of anonymous sources too and eventually the nba found stuff. why is the burden on pablo torre the journalist to be a lawyer all of a sudden?

his job is discovering and reporting on all of the smoke emitting from that carcass of a cluster f**k bankruptcy. now it's the nba's law firm's responsibility to do the rest.

and why is ballmer, who has literally gotten his hand slapped for this in the past, all of a sudden getting the benefit of the doubt here?

people will contort themselves, as pablo puts it, to put this all on kawhi's uncle. (to be clear, they're all shady actors here).

 

usually, where there's smoke, there is at least a little fire. Definitely some smoke coming out of this

there seems to be at least a couple of facts that nobody has really tried to counter: the first being that Kawhi was paid 28M dollars....that's a shitload of money....and he apparently didn't do anything to earn that money; nothing. Has anybody disputed this yet?

and the other 'fact' is that Ballmer got involved financially with this now bankrupt business about the same time Kawhi was reported to have signed the deal that paid him 7M/year...for nothing

 

If Kawhi and his uncle had not gotten greedy, no one would have known. I mean, how stupid can you get for suing for the last 7 million when you already got 21 million for nothing? He won't get punished, but I hope he does.

 

NBA doesn't have to prove anything - it specifically lists in the NBA owners agreements and the CBA the commissioner has broad authority to issue penalties purely with circumstantial evidence. Also that improper compensation is a violation regardless of actually having any documented transaction from the team to player.

Bill Simmons did report how theres tons of improper benefits going on with tons of franchise star players throughout the league. Stars, their family, their friends are able to stay at owners vacation houses and fly on owners private planes for free.

My hope is this gets more scrutinized and cleaned up going forward.

I do think its entirely possible Balmer wasn't even aware of this. In fact I'd be surprised if he was, I don't see it being worth the risk for him to do something so careless as this was done. Regardless of his knowledge or involvement the Clippers should be penalized as Kawhi was inappropriately compensated from an entity affiliated with the Clippers.

 

yeah like, maybe there is no actual smoking gun.

but to your point, kawhi's contract remains diabolically 'no-show' considering it's $28M dollars.

TWENTY EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS.

 

Kawhi and his party didn't sue for anything. Aspiration went bankrupt and the founder was arrested for fraud. This came out because Kawhi owned company "KL2 Aspire LLC" was listed in the financials during Aspiration bankruptcy preceding. This lead to Pablo Torre and others start investigating what that "KL2 Aspire LLC" entity was.

 

What did Ballmer get his hand slapped for before?

 

I think there's zero chance he wasn't aware. I think there's a very high likelyhood there's zero discoverable paper-trail from ballmer on this.

 

salary cap circumvention.

 

You are probably right, but that's not what they have been discussing for the last 2 hours on NBA Sirius radio.
They very specifically said they sued for the last installment.

 

let's say aspiration and the clippers were both on the up and up.

okay.

why did aspiration's contract with kawhi almost literally mandate that he do nothing for them? what would the point for them to pay kawhi that much and have him deliver zero value?

even if the answer is 'to stay in good standing with ballmer', isn't that, on some level, a quid pro quo?

 

Why do you think this?

Donald Sterling or Glen Taylor type of owners I could see. But Balmer track record doesn't have history of this type of behavior. Yes he throws tons of money at things, but he doesn't try to break rules.

I do think he and the Clippers may have failed to put in measures to prevent this. Yes they should be punished. I just don't see why Balmer would have decided this was a good idea to pursue.

 

Oh absolutely its a violation and the Clippers should be punished.

I just find it hard to believe Balmer specifically directed the actions taken here. He might have said "the Clippers and partners should make efforts to help our stars like Kawhi" and then some employees ran too far with that statement and did this violation.

 

"I trust my sources!"

Pablo Torre goes into more detail.

 

More likely Balmer said "make it happen," not wanting to know how to protect himself.

 

exactly.

'take care of it'

<guy dies>