Just Balmer money doing its thing

The corporate media starting to downplay this should tell you the results of the investigation.

Being rich really is a super power 

ESPN only now reporting it now and trying to frame it in a way that is good for Kawhi and the Clippers just shows how corrupted things are when two sides are in bed with one another.

It’s laughable to think that the language used in his Aspiration contract is normal for a multi-million dollar contract. Being able to reject any type of work because it’s “not consistent with his beliefs” means he can reject all types of work for any reason.

“Hey Kawhi can you come take a few photos with trees this week”

“Sorry I don’t believing in working on any days that ends in the letter y”

The most egregious line in the whole awful article IMO is *“Another high-level former Aspiration executive told ESPN that Sanberg also told colleagues the Clippers were looking to raise Leonard’s public profile, which could lead to more endorsements for him.*”* 

Kawhi didn’t do a single thing to promote the company, and they never even announced Kawhi being involved in any capacity!

ESPN is in Ballmer’s pocket.

It’s been pretty obvious since the Ramona Shelburne softball interview with Ballmer when this whole thing kicked off

ESPN agreed to pay the NBA $2.6b a year for the next 9 years. Publishing negative stories about the NBA goes against their investment.

What happens when you have a rich owner 

I’m an entreatment attorney and, as an example, it’s not uncommon to include some language in agreements which gives actors approvals over certain kind of merch of their likeness or straight up prohibitions on using them in merch in what we call excluded categories (e.g., alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, pharmaceuticals, etc.). Kind of a similar concept to what’s in Kawhi’s endorsement deal here.

That being said, you always state that the actor has to approve a reasonable amount and make it clear that there’s actual obligations that need to be met before you pay the majority of the compensation. Now maybe Aspiration’s lawyers were just really bad and didn’t anticipate that Kawhi would act in bad faith and just not perform any services despite getting paid millions, but that seems pretty unlikely.

If that had happened, there would be some record of Aspiration trying to get Kawhi to do the work and him pushing back against all of it under this beliefs clause. Instead, we have people from Aspiration that are telling us that the contract was a sham and there was never any intent to have Kawhi actually perform any services for the money (money which was provided to them by Balmer).

This ESPN article seems like bullshit. This is a “news” organization doing dirty work for their business partner and it’s a huge conflict of interest. We’ve seen ESPN do the same thing for the NFL during their scandals around CTE and other issues.

The beliefs clause isn’t even the problem.

The issue is that the money came from Ballmer and was far beyond the scope of what a normal endorsement deal would be. The contract having favourable language to Kawhi is symptomatic of that but the issue isn’t that Kawhi had an open ended beliefs clause. It’s not even really clear that the beliefs clause was ever used. From what I’ve seen Aspiration basically never asked him to do anything anyway.

Maybe having one sports media network with direct ties to leagues and power is a bad thing

It’s not even the clauses of the contract, it’s just the money. The amount is completely unreasonable in regards to anything that Kawhi could’ve performed for Aspiration. It’s no surprise that Kawhi has no partnership that come even close to this one, even when it comes to his partnerships with shoe manufacturers like Nike or New Balance.

And the absence of a smoking gun IS the smoking gun. If this wasn’t intentionally designed to circumvent the cap, Kawhi would have performed any kind of duty. He could’ve done anything for Aspiration, but that would’ve shed light on the fact that he had a contract with them, and there might have been investigations. Doing nothing was the way to go unnoticed… until Aspiration went bankrupt.

also, like, the contract Kawhi signed with Aspiration is not the crux of the issue. it’s important, but it’s not the main thing. it’s completely ignoring the way Ballmer was bankrolling Aspiration at the time for no conceivable reason other than that Kawhi was getting a paycheck from them

[deleted]

I for one am shocked an NBA broadcast partner is running cover for the NBA

Also, like, not to state the obvious but he never performed any of his duties under the contract and yet got paid (at an insane rate) anyways.

And I still think the single most damning detail is just the fact that it was never announced. What kind of endorsement deal is a secret?

If the NBA don’t care then what can we do?

Baxter is trying to enter the DPoY race

This is a good example of publing Public Relations or Journalism. Its all PR in this piece, it isnt journalism

100% propaganda. This case is literally 100% clear and the only rationale for anybody to be arguing the other side is because they are either getting paid or they are trying to brand themselves as an oppositional sports talking head (like Steven A or PK Subban).

I think what sucks about this issue is most people would care more if the clippers were a good team. 

But dispite all the shady business they are still a play in team 

Why Baxter Holmes didn’t is pretty obvious. He’s running propaganda for either the NBA or the Clippers.

To what end?

This reporter is the same guy who reported on Robert Sarver. 

There’s nothing here that Torre didn’t break. 

Presumably this is the test balloon fed to ESPN before a penalty / fine that is a pittance lands for the Friday 5pm news dump.

Yeah I’m a die-hard Clippers fan, but the Clippers sub is delusional about this. They’re over there like “SEE NOTHING WRONG HERE”. Pretty blatant stuff for anyone with a sense of reality though.

He asked 5 agents. Of course they’re going to say it’s normal they want the most money for their clients.

By this point if there is no action against this then I’m assuming it must be widespread. Can’t take down Ballmer and Kawhi if that means you need to risk exposure to all the other players doing this as well.

I mean. None of us know the intricate details of anyone’s contract so they only thing we have to go on is reporters saying if something is normal or not

Yeah, people seem to think because the agent opined that it could just be aspiration being bad at negotiating simply makes that true.

The reality is, he and Pablo both saw the same thing stand out, and where he thought “nothing to see here”, Pablo thought “we should look into this and see if there is anything here”

Pablo’s opinion on the matter has been supported by the continued investigation into the contract and the sponsorship deal, as well as multiple employees comment on the matter, and a credible whistleblower complaint made under oath that directly says they were circumventing the cap, as well as a continued investment from Balmer in the company despite it failing and being uncovered as a fraud.

But on the other hand the opinion that they are just bad at negotiating with only Kawhi is supported by.. um. Uhhh. Ah Uh oh.

Coincidentally, Victor Wembanyama is prepared to sign a $20 million per year contract extension with the Spurs. Heavily discounted just for the love of big ol women.

NBA is sweeping this one under the rug There is no need for the clippers to go “but what about everyone else” if they get singled out and punished Yes, every team is doing something like this You don’t think players talk amongst each other? Cmon gtfouttahere

This is a good precedent to show teams as long as you don’t have a document entitled cap circumvention it’s ok to pay players outside of the salary cap

nba wasnt gonna investigate themselves

Also even if the contract is “normal” it doesn’t negate the complete absence of fulfillment of the contract and absence of any attempt to enforce it.

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

That’s all I have for you OP.

Ain’t this the same network that had Shelburne do that glazing interview with Ballmer that spun it that he was the victim?!? lmao!

Redditor with no legal experience says multiple legal experts opinion is bullshit.

Reddit massively upvotes because billionaire bad, redditor good.

Classic.

Imagine having all this money if you are Balmer or even Kawhi and still having to do shady shit to get more money. Fuckn 0 shame from these crooks.

Beliefs clauses are normal. As are “morality” clauses.

I love how people who have never written a contract in their lives are suddenly experts on boilerplate terms for pro athlete deals…

Has the Bankruptcy Court imposed sanctions of any kind on Kawhi for his filing in this case? Has it looked to go after the monies previously paid to Kawhi? Is there any explanation for why it has not done so?

It’s funny they go after the Blazers for Hansen issue but not the Clippers.

circumventing the cap to still be shit is crazy

What is the problem? By taking such a stance we will get to the bottom of the issue quicker. IF it is NOT a normal clause you will have plenty of people come out saying so. Then you will get news coverage saying so.

It’s like when a stat tweets… “XYZ just recorded their 200th triple double, the fastest in NBA history”. And sites and fans will either rebut the claim or post some other type comment.

If ESPN is wrong and knowingly so, shame on them.

If this is the case, then I want Jim Dolan to fcking abuse this loophole. 1 million dollar contract for Wemby… 100m per year in endorsement deals under Dolan’s LLC.

Are we just going to let them VILLIFY KAWHI simply because he LOAD MANAGED his doing ANYTHING for ASPIRATION?

Absolutely atrocious reporting

Someone on this sub called me a conspiracy theory nut for saying I thought Balmer’s wealth was going to interfere with this investigation 😭

I’ll quote you and tag Holmes on Twitter, we’ll see if he responds :D

Becomes a lot easier to understand when you see it for what it is - propaganda.

The fact that they’re saying that just tells me exactly what he’s saying lol. All the stars are doing this.

ESPN is basically clippers state media

Endorsement contracts are normal.

But endorsement contracts that aren’t publicized at all by any of the parties and for that insanely large amount is one of a kind.

I’m surprised why other NBA owners aren’t screaming murder.

In the English Premier League footballing competition, teams were very forefront on punishing Man City who were alleged to have paid under the table.

Unless the rest of them are doing it as well, it’s bizarre

i’ve been saying this from the beginning. nothing is gonna happen. also now i’m sure this happens all the time

I’ve said months ago, I don’t think nothing will come out of this.

Nothing has changed. Society is corrupt and rich people do whatever they want. This is no different.

Am i the only one who doesn’t care abt the controversy? Balmer is a billionaire, if he wants to pay a perpetually injured player way too much to constantly lose in the first round, then who are we to stop him? I am mainly anti-rich people but it doesn’t bother me that he used a publicly available contract to circumvent the nba’s very strict cap rules.

Don’t think thats an issue tbh.

Pablo Torre spun a normal contract into a no show one lmao. This is delusion

Keep crying bitches

Are you saying you have knowledge that the beliefs clause is abnormal? Because I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that is, in fact, a pretty common thing. It seems strange to call it horrible journalism without having seen other deals players have signed. 

What makes this situation abnormal and problematic is not the language of the agreement. It’s the amount of compensation, followed by Kawhi not doing literally anything for that compensation, combined with the years long pattern of strange payments from Clippers ownership to Aspiration that both made no sense as investments and corresponded to Kawhi getting paid. That’s the issue. Not a beliefs clause in his agreement. The language of the contract itself could be perfectly normal, and the situation would still problematic. 

what’s really weird is how many of you guys have an obsessive religious belief in everything this podcaster says

He’s probably just trying not to accuse anyone of anything himself. Seriously, what happened to people’s brains during covid? EVERYTHING is a conspiracy theory now

At least this article talks about the ongoing investigation. Maybe we’ll get less people posting every single week about “wHy Is BaLlMeR nOt PuNiShEd YeT?”. Not that people read articles, but still.

Considering how well respected and credentialed he is, calling anything Baxter does ‘horrible journalism’ is a stretch.

Pablo and laker Stan mad that a report didn’t fit their agenda lol

There’s a ton of shadiness to the Aspiration deal but so many on this sub clearly just take Pablo’s clickbait headlines as fact.

Many talk about how billionaires like Ballmer get away with anything (which, yeah, of course), but they also ignore that a billionaire with his resources would also go into this deal making sure that everything would be, from a legal/rules perspective, defensible.

Since the beginning I’ve felt like the Clippers would get away with this not because they didn’t do anything “wrong,” but because any ultimate conclusion of wrongdoing that would demand a significant punishment requires a level of speculation, which Pablo’s put into everything he’s published (which, of course, helps for clicks but doesn’t make his case stronger). His more credible points are drowned in sensationalist narrative building as he points his finger in every direction. He’s had videos at times that made a claim that just didn’t show up in the video. There’s been a lot of desperate, irresponsible journalism that’s undermined the foundation of it, but people like to jump to the same conclusions he has so it’s done well for him from a viewership perspective.

The truth is, it is a standard contract, or at least easily could be argued to be one. I worked in commercials for years and athletes and celebrities would have sponsorships and deals where they ended up required to do nothing all the time. It always drove us crazy to see rich people make more money for doing nothing. That doesn’t mean that the Clippers pursuing that deal with that intent isn’t wrongdoing, just that it happens. There’s deniability there. They cross those t’s.

Again, I’m not saying the Clippers aren’t innocent of circumventing the salary cap or anything like that (I’m sure this’ll be called cope or something), but just pointing to why they’ll get away with it, and it starts with having a bunch of expensive lawyers at the outset who know how to play the rulebook.

The argument being put forth is that this is standard with celebrities. For example, if you wanted to do a partnership with well-known climate change activist Greta Thunberg, you’re not going to ask her to do a commercial where she clubs a seal or something. Doing so would be against her beliefs.

This does seem “fair” to me, I personally have seen similar language in contracts my company has signed, but it would really come down to the exact phrasing. And Kawhi not signing some memorabilia on behalf of Aspiration because he did not feel like it would not be a legitimate beliefs excuse.

You are approaching this from a heavily biased view since Pablo was the one to frame everything.

Why isn’t it really weird that Kawhi’s totally normal contract is being spun as cap circumventing?

I would love to see HALF the amount of outrage this has caused this sub directed towards the Lakers new ownership group’s shady dealings with UAE sovereign wealth funds to bypass NBA ownership rules. The selective outrage is laughable

Not necessarily. We have to remember that the way we see things on Reddit and YouTube is drastically different from how things are analysed in a legal/investigative setting. Language is everything and lawyers are experts at taking advantage of that.

Y’all are so butt hurt about this

You Pablo sycophants have been annoying for so long

Try reading the whole thing instead of cherry picking partial comments.

Sad and weird conspiracy nutjobs have inflected the NBA.

Pablo Torre’s has made a lot of money and fame from portraying the contract as proof of something it does not actually prove.