Fuck that. His party was asking every single team for these ridiculous asks knowing it was illegal. Imo Kawhi should be banned from the league. 

There is no reason why any professional should get away with fraud.

Exactly. There isn’t a provision for this in the CBA. The player’s union will fight like hell for Kawhi on this and the NBA has no incentive to push hard to punish Kawhi. The punishment should and will fall solely on the shoulders of the organization.

Edit: https://atlhawksfanatic.github.io/NBA-CBA/circumvention.html

Go here, scroll down a little bit to 13.3 Penalties. The only player penalty allowed is voiding the contract. Anything else will be struck down by an arbiter so fast David Stern’s head will spin in his grave.

If I had to choose between fighting the players’ union vs. Ballmer, it would be the NBAPA ¹⁰⁰⁄₁₀₀ times.

Remember, the NBA and Silver work for the owners. And Ballmer is great for the other owners. In contrast, the NBAPA is their natural adversary.

And? Both he and his agent clearly violated the CBA.

The point of the players union is to represent and promote the best interest of ALL of the players. What Kawhi is doing actively harms the majority of other players because it fucks with the distribution of money to the players.

It is in the best interest of the players to have a well defined revenue split with clear max and min contract values. Having the top few players circumvent that fucks over every other player.

The NBA’s players union is the strongest of all North American sporting leagues unions and has been that way since the Magic and Bird era when Stern and the owners ceded marketing and delegation power to the players in order the save the fledging league before the 80s.

You would never see this shit happening in the NFL.

The players union is weak

Depends. If what Torre found about payments to Leonard while he was on other teams is true, there is no way the players association is saving his ass from that.

If they allow that, they’re opening Pandora’s box.

Then they’ll deal with the players union. Kawhi is also bound to the CBA. He broke the rules.

Yep. I see that playing out like the Astros cheating scandal

The downside of unions is the poor performers and bad actors get protected when they should face consequences

Which is absurd. He deserves nothing short of a lifetime ban.

I’m sure they are already negotiating with the union behind the scenes… This is a major, major subversion of the salary cap. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were suspended for multiple seasons - at least one.

There’s nothing for the Players union to fight with, though. He actively, through his representation and in collaboration with the Clippers, actively cheated and circumvented the Salary Cap rules. He should be banned from the NBA for life and the Clippers should lose multiple draft picks.

The players union should back any punishment on Kawhi otherwise the integrity of the CBA is completely shot.

While true, I think the owners would rather deal with the Players Union than dealing with Ballmer.  Kawhi is a much easier sacrifice. 

He loses salary if he is suspended. I’m sure he is rich as fuck but millionaires still love money.

Ehh, yes it would, as it would mean that OKC get a much better pick as they own the Clippers` pick this year.

Why on earth do you think we aren’t trying to win? We literally just beat a full strength Rockets team whilst not being at full strength

suspended? should be banned; Jontay Porter subbed himself out of games, Kawhi was getting paid millions by another team while on the Spurs and Raptors, do you think he played the same when they had the Clippers on the schedule??

This would be the funniest outcome.

Raptors legend Kawhi Leonard.

What’s the diversion? Should explicit tanking be ignored because there’s another scandal happening?

Maybe I’m just optimistic, but I feel like the fact that we basically haven’t heard a peep from the NBA since they opened the investigation is an indicator that they are gonna bring the hammer down.

Like do people expect weekly updates from the NBA on this thing? If there were nothing, I think they would’ve already announced that there was insufficient evidence and closed the investigation. To me, the fact that the investigation has been open for months without a word on it makes me think they’ve found a lot and are making sure to get all their ducks in a row before they do anything.

I understand why people are annoyed, but the NBA can’t dole out massive punishments to teams/players based on a podcast, even if the podcast presents solid evidence.

Not to mention a face of the league becoming an investor in gambling

Sporting integrity of the sport is the most important thing for an organisation to ensure, if teams aren’t trying to win they should be kicked out of the league

He works for the team owners and the owners like Ballmer and his money.

They will always be bad. The position answers to the owners and they will never have someone in that seat that consistently pushes back on them.

I do think something will come down but it will be very small. But I hope it isn’t them getting off easy.

What are the latest odds on ~NBA Bet~ FanDuel?

The NBA and NCAAB becoming what it is has really been one of my biggest 21st century disappointments.

punishing the clippers and punishing lakers fans seems like a win win. 100% intuit for them

yeah this is a fair compromise, driving to Inglewood constantly would be a nightmare. split the games between both arenas

South Bay is down, fuck the inlanders. 

Got bought by the Genocidal UAE and still begging for the clippers arena lol

I believe they’re waiting until after all star break since clippers are hosting it. Picks and fines aside, kawhi should absolutely be suspended

The punishment was later revised to 3 FRPs not 5.

Still an incredibly severe punishment which sets the franchise back years, though.

Precedent only works for the same situation lol. The Timberwolves didn’t use a shell company to funnel money to a max player, they had an under table agreement to pay a player below his value to get his bird rights and sign other players.

2 completely different scenarios aka not a precedent

5 picks and hard cap them make them follow the second apron rules for 5 years. 

Channing Frye was telling Pablo to shut up cause hes going to cost guys like him millions in dollars in future handshake deals..

why are you putting tanking next to fraud and rule breaking like they have anythign to do with each other?

It had gotten worse, more noticeable and more blatant since Silver took over.

This is like the same argument about foul baiting. It’s worse than ever and idk why people deny that.

Hell Stern was way more corrupt with his blatant interference in an FBI investigation

Yes, many people, especially those who seek out sports as a distraction from the “real world”, don’t realize that sports are a microcosm of what’s going on in society.

The NBA has full authority to suspend players if they bring the league’s reputation into dispute. He was blatantly throwing games, he should have been suspended pending investigation and they should have contacted the FBI themselves.

The league is corrupt. Plain and simple.

Exactly! The FBI obviously has more intel than the NBA and obviously the ability to compel someone to provide information.

No they didn’t? I can’t find any updates since Rozier entered a plea on December 8th

Multiple executives told him that they see the Frank extension as “Ballmer hush money.” So he’s not saying this for no reason.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1r2rrff/pablo_torre_per_multiple_nba_executives_they_see/

That was brutal. He was acting as a mouthpiece for a firm that makes it’s business shortselling stocks.

He’s also acting like this is extremely personal , while also claiming to be a “journalist”. Proper journalism means not chasing your personal vendettas. 

I just think you have to do it that way.

I also think the Lakers are going to sign him in the off-season. Maybe give him a contract to play the rest of the regular season, too.

David Stern famously said his dream Finals was Lakers vs Lakers.

Right, I covered all that in the second bullet point at the top of the post.

You’re just agreeing with the OP you’re replying to

We all saw Dirk turn down a max deal from the Lakers to play with Kobe to stay in Dallas for 3y for 25M.

I am certainly dumber than anyone you know