Did Steve Balmer pay Kawhi Leonard under the table?

I just don't think Silver will do anything. maybe a "questions remain around integrity but no smoking guns..." No way billionaires are ever going to take a hit. nfw.

 

My spicy hot take:
This is way, way, way worse than what Sterling did, and he was forced to sell the team.

 

This take goes against precedent. There is only one example of this very thing (salary cap evading) in the modern NBA, Joe Smith and the Timberwolves. The league took 5 FRPs from them, fined the team several million dollars and suspended both the owner and the GM for a year. This Kawhi situation is easily worse than the Joe Smith violation.

 

Not to mention Stern basically blacked balled Portland for (alleged cap circumvent) with Dudleys deal and Sportsaction. In gaining an All Star Game.

 

How about moving ASG?

 

Weak

 

The Clippers have multiple picks before then. Some of them are after swaps. The NBA could let the other team swap then just remove whatever resulting pick the Clippers have.

 

I'm not buying that. Many of the NBA owners are super jealous of Ballmer and will be happy to see him punished.

However they won't want something to set a precedent that could come back and hurt themselves. So they will want to do a punishment that can solely be applied to the Clippers but not to all the teams that give their stars private jets to use and vacation house, or plush jobs to their parents/family/friends/etc.

Can't imagine the Blazers letting a star's cousin have a job with the team he clearly doesn't deserve.

 

That's a good point the league can do that and if they use the Wolves/Smith situation as precedent then they'll probably take those two picks that have swaps on them and the picks in 2030-32.

Also regarding your post above. This Clippers situation goes way beyond perks, seemingly. It's not employing a family member or letting a player use jets or beach houses, it was reportedly straight up paying the guy in cold hard cash with the cash of one of the owners laundered through a fraudulent company. That's as bad as this stuff could be.

 

I don't disagree that the Clippers violation appears much worse.

Still I think you either have rules and enforce them or don't have these things against the rules. Giving a bunch of perks to stars is a blatant violation of the current CBA cap rules. There probably have been so many teams violating these that I'm not as worried about investigating all of those prior violations. But they should make very clear rules and expectations going forward - then go ahead with heavily punishments for all future violations.

 

I'm not sure this is the best approach by the NBA if its true. If they just go ahead and get the investigation done within the next month, before the season starts send out the news release on a Friday at 8pm of the penalties, this will become totally old news and old history completely out of the news cycle once we get to February.

Having an ongoing investigation with unknown pending consequences will be a black cloud over the Clipper and the all-star game for the entire season. That will keep it heavily discussed with tons of allegations from favoritism to a wide ranging conspiracy.

 

The only penalties I see would be a large mega fine, and Leonard's contract voided after this year and becomes a free agent. Possibly two first and second round picks taken or flipped to other team automatically.

 

Yeah I like the idea of voiding Leonard contract after the season. Also no bird rights so they can't get value by trading him. Should be something done to the player to discourage and prevent that behavior. They voided Joe Smith deal so there is a precedent for doing that.