Considering he’s not a businessman or anything other than Kawhi’s uncle/advisor. If he was the CEO of Amazon, fine, it makes sense they might have done business pre-2019, but this is someone they had absolutely no reason to have any contact with other than to do business directly relating to Kawhi.

Kawhi was also still under contract for 2-3 more years in 2017. It’s not like he was about to hit Free Agency. They literally had no reason to have anything to do with him other than to begin planting the seeds (bribes) required to get Kawhi to LAC.

So is that why he refused to play for the Spurs back then? Imagine pretending to be mad at Tony because of his comments but you just got a deal already in place.

Sure but the Dow is over 50k

The concept of the Clippers having multiple stars under their payroll outside of their team lmao

The latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out he goes really deep into this. Ballmer was basically courting Kawhi via “Uncle Dennis” for years.

He was also getting health updates and stuff via Kawhi’s personal trainer Randy Shelton (who was later hired onto the Clippers, and who paid Dennis some of his Clippers salary as a “finders fee”). All while Kawhi was under contract with other teams.

Ballmer basically implemented this plan over years of very blatant tampering and then cap circumvention.

Yeah, that makes it a lot worse. Not just contract shenanigans, which we’ve seen before (Joe Smith). Basically sabotaging multiple teams (Spurs, Raptors) with fraud.

This is the sort of thing that gets an owner forced to sell, and a player banned.

I heard Uncle Dennis and Kawhi are using all the money to plant trees in deforested parts of the rainforests. 

There you go, a surprising rumor. 

Idk I’d be pretty surprised if Kawhi was in the Epstein files, but we may never know

Billionaires are allowed to commit fraud

The thing is that Pablo already presented overwhelming evidence months ago. And the nba and nba media went full force pushing the narrative that there needs to be a “smoking gun” as if we don’t already have it. Hard to see how more evidence makes them change course.

Part of the reason the investigation is taking a while is the All Star Game is being hosted by Ballmer’s Clippers this weekend…

You cannot convince me that’s not part of it.

The other reason people are concerned is because the type of money Ballmer has is insane even for NBA owners. He could buy like the entire league on his own, he’s one of the richest people ever. So there’s concern the league will cover for him because even other billionaires are scared of his wealth.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the news but a bunch of pedophiles have been identified and are walking around free. Federal agents killed at least two people in Minnesota and have not faced consequences. The FBI concluded Epstein wasn’t trafficking kids.

So you’ll have to excuse our collective doubt at legitimate punishments being handed out.

Iirc We were told that this investigation would be concluded around the ASB. The fact that it hasn’t + the fact that the Clippers have sold off Kawhis entire supporting cast, seems to mean something troubling for the Clippers.

I know Harden wanted out because he didn’t get an extension. But I do wonder if the Clippers getting rid of both Harden + Zu means they anticipate some sort of strong disciplinary action coming for Kawhi. I also wonder if they will end up losing the picks they ended up acquiring in both trades. Wouldn’t make sense then to trade those players though.

My continued fandom of the NBA hinges on their response to this

Yea, he doesn’t even care in the slightest about the integrity of his product.

I think they’re gonna announce their conclusions after all star weekend. They don’t want a cloud over their precious intuit dome.

It’s already bad enough they’ve waited this long. If they just give them a slap on the wrist it’ll open up a floodgate to other teams doing the same. Nobody will be able to compete with Ballmer if that happens

We’ve been saying.

Nate Robinson went on a podcast in Feb 2018 and said he heard that Kawhi was going to LA for a bag.

This was at a time when he was still coming back from injury and when he played in a handful of games, before the Tony comments.

It’s been fishy since the beginning.

This just makes me dislike Kahwi even more. Fuck that guy

It made sense then - fans just weren’t willing to dig deeper than what was being told to them on TV or Twitter.

Pablo Honey? I’m more a OK Computer kinda guy

I don’t even say good morning, I just shake her and already have the clip playing on my phone.

That was the most annoying year ever. The way NBA fans took Kawhis side against the Spurs was so dumb. Kawhi ghosted his teammates, gaslit the medical team, ignored Pop, Duncan, and Robinson, shopped for a favorable medical diagnosis after 8 staffs told him the same thing, and acted injured until the moment he could get traded. Yet, after all that, people were still like yea the Spurs did Kawhi dirty and his teammates threw him under the bus. Ridiculous.

They probably had SOME idea this was happening.

I’m gonna say it…. Silver rigged the recent lotteries to get the Spurs higher draft picks in exchange for having them keeping things quiet.

Totally. I hope he wins the Joseph Pulitzer cup this year and finally gets his ring

I wasn’t a listener but now am. Investigative journalism has been really lacking with everything being so politicized and consolidated. I hope he’s making money and demonstrates there’s money in seeking the truth and having fun.

His ideas are fresh and maybe not for everyone but it’s really hilarious to go from aspiration to chicken eligible free throws to sir mix a lot. They do serious journalism but don’t take themselves too seriously. He’s also transparent that he’s filling a void completely lacking in the current media environment.

Toronto is fine, they don’t even sniff kawahi in the first place without the tampering.

Easy come easy go

Yeah and they tried to make Pop be the bad guy!

Tough one for the player empowerment people who insisted the Spurs correctly diagnosing his quad injury were the problem.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy

Dude imagine if they actually won a ring as intended and then this came out though? The drama and figuring out what to do about it would’ve been insane and league changing. It’s great the clippers have been largely disappointing and embarrassing in the Kawhi era or it couldve been a lot more complicated.

They need to love that team from LA

Because it is what we were yelling all along.

Tony Parker better receive some pretty nicely worded letters of apology from a lot of people after this…

On the legal side of this, in a normal world where a non-bullshit DOJ was in charge of enforcing laws this kind of report could legit cause major damages to the entire NBA and the Clippers ownership specifically. Currently they can probably just pay a few million dollars to buy a pardon.

That fact makes the fact that they’ve now had it come out that they were tampering with Kawhi years in advance makes it guaranteed that the NBA either has to come down with the hammer of Thor on their asses or completely lose respectability as a pro sports organization.

Like holy fuck, the base allegations were already worse than what the previous commissioner determined was worth bashing the T-Wolves into the ground over draft-wise, and this ratchets that up an entire extra three or four degrees of magnitude. Like I legitimately can’t even fathom a punishment serious enough for the franchise if, as I assume he always can when reporting on something like this, Torre can back this up.

Like you legitimately can’t even compare this to college because if a college successfully did this shit but then got caught? They’d honestly have to disband the entire athletics department. And it’s not like you can disband the Clippers, right? But that’s honestly close to the level of punishment required to make it so owners realize they can’t do this shit themselves moving forward.

Agreed he should be banned and face criminal charges

Kawhi is and was a grown ass man. This is on him. Also fuck Uncle Dennis!

Very very different kinds of problems.

How Kawhi’s contract hasnt been voided and he’s not only allowed to play, he’s arguing about being an all star.

Strippers

Takis

Tom Brady suspended 4 games

Thankful. Kawhi was obviously great for us, but he ruined the big 3’s last contending years, slandered professional staff on the way out, and gave us the worst scenario to get the most assets from his trade.

That’s because there is NO sports journalism. I’ve been shouting this for years. These reporters only talk to the teams, players, or agents. They don’t “investigate” anything. Everything is a press release. And anything reported that goes against what the team wants, will mean you no longer have access to that team or it’s players.

Sadly none of the “journalist” at ASW have a spine and it will go completely ignored

We have wemby we’ve moved on but if the league wants to give us a clipper first for our trouble we’ll take it