So what your saying is the Timberwolves are gonna get the First Overall Pick?

We need to draft AJ Dynbasa so we can pair him with Ant.

The Wizards have Trae Young and AD. You can build around that for 15 years 😎

“After a thorough investigation, I have decided to make the Clippers vacate all of their NBA championships. Although this was an extremely harsh penalty, this was needed to send a strong message to all teams.”

Well, they’ve successfully dragged it out so nobody cares anymore, so congrats to you, Adam Silver. Your plan worked.

Gotta add a “Go Knicks!” at the end

You joke but that’s exactly what will happen. Except the Lakers will be way smarter about it and the sponsorships will be the bare minimum but real.

I imagine a cross-sport shell game. Dodgers sponsor a Laker. Lakers sponsor a Dodger. Compared to what Balmer did, this is at least transparent.

I hear this new ownership has money

LeBotanist.

they already gave you Luka 😂

This is how LeBron goes to the Dubs

If some corruption is allowed openly then you just have to assume a lot more has been happening for ages quietly.

It’s absolutely wild, the cap is hugely significant in basketball and this is very blatant manipulation and exploitation of it. You have to absolutely end that shit instantly. None of that. Big penalties. If we catch anyone doing this again big big penalties. You will suffer.

Instead it’s been a whole season and NOTHING. The only conclusion, as you say, is that they don’t care so it’s either widespread or will be now

Most of the owners are too cheap to pay extra. The whole point of the cap is to limit how much they have to pay.

The other thing to consider is that the Clippers could have paid the luxury and repeater taxes and still gave Kawhi what he wanted. By hiding it like they did, they figuratively took that money out of the other owner’s pockets.

The game is rigged and the rules are rigged too. Double whammy

I promise you Jerry Reinsdorf is not paying anyone under the table.

He’s reluctant to do so over the table

It definitely feels like the Astros scandal. MLB wanted to put it to bed real quick because a lot of teams were doing some form of cheating. The Astros just took it to another level. I doubt Ballmer a new owner came up with the idea. He probably heard about other teams doing and with his unlimited bankroll just took it to a ridiculous level.

You don’t need anyone to be paid under the table, its just in the interest of everyone involved to let it blow over. It looks really bad for the league as a whole for this story to be in the public eye

It’d be funny/crazy if WLRK actually did such a good job, they just ended up revealing the whole league’s got some shady dealings.

Damn. If you told me a year ago that Silver would effectively announce Pablo and Cuban are right, it’s a double technical and no free throws will be awarded, I would have said no way.

Seems like the most probable outcome at this point.

it wasn’t under the table, though in the sense that many people and 3rd party companies were aware of the Kawhi/Aspiration relationship and there was an official contract written up that the Clippers continue to have plausible deniability about.

Aspiration signed him to a 4 year brand ambassador deal paying him 7 mil/year that was alongside the 350 mil they had agreed to pay the Clippers as part of the major endorsement deal. Not all that different from Rakuten paying the Warriors for a jersey patch and then Steph separately. The deal was 4 years, because it aligned with the contract extension Kawhi had just signed and had a clause in there that would break the contract if Kawhi was traded elsewhere, because obviously it made no sense to do it unless he was playing for the team Aspiration was a major sponsor of.

They had meetings with Kawhi and went as far as to bring in a creative agency to start planning a campaign. Then, the entire company went to shit for reasons unrelated and Kawhi only ever got his first two quarterly payments (both late) totaling 3.5 mil.

Pablo’s entire schtick was claiming that Ballmer personally put 50 mil into the Aspiration and then Aspiration paid that 50 mil to Kawhi, but that simply didn’t happen. Pablo’s own reporting disproved it. Between the Clippers and Ballmer, they put 118 mil into Aspiration. Aspiration agreed to pay them 350 mil. Aspiration agreed to pay Kawhi 7 mil per year. Then, Aspiration failed to ever pay the Clippers and only got Kawhi a small pittance of the agreed contract (3.5 mil).

It all still smells fishy and there’s a few things here or there that raise major red flags (most importantly the internal company rumor mill where multiple employees convinced themselves without proof that it was a cap circumvention scheme), but if it had actually been a cap circumvention plan, they failed miserably at it and there remains no actual proof. The independent investigation might uncover more like Sanberg himself admitting to it, but as-is based on the podcasts there’s not enough there to punish yet.

Absolute cinema

Naw, you can null his contract but c’mon lol.

Can ask for whatever you want, almost all the time you just get laughed at.

The team that actively schemes the workaround is the side that needs to get checked for precedence. Otherwise, even if a player doesn’t ask for Extra, a team that knows it can cheat like that can bring that up themselves, unprompted.

yeah I was gonna say, his free agency departure was corrupted by this, structurally he’s heavily incentivized to stay with the raptors. they literally lost their prime FMVP superstar because the clippers overrode that.

I’m not sure how the other teams aren’t up in arms over this. especially considering that even other big market teams like the lakers wouldn’t even consider doing it. this is a serious threat to everything the league worked to eradicate, increasing incentives for players to stay on small market teams.

i know they’ve been quiet about it but honestly i hope and even suspect there could be huge, severe punishment for the clippers coming. I mean in my opinion they should be forced to sell. picks voided, etc.

I liked it!

so what. its their pick now. I don’t see why the NBA shouldn’t consider voiding any of the picks the clippers have.

Then Zubac goes back to the Clippers.

It’s just common sense

to be fair, i did write Army of lawyers runs out, start doing intricate choreography

okay. uhh….

(a series of whispers) kawhi’d he do it/kahwi’d he do it
Kawhi’d they do it/Kawhi’d they do it
Kawhi’d They Do It/Kawhi’d They Do It
KAWHI’D THEY DO IT/KAWHI’D THEY DO IT

Aspiration!
The fraudulent, petulant, salary sensation!
Aspiration!
The illegal, pure evil, retrieved remuneration!

Once the sun was shining
On the Clippers of L.A.
But then the dome came down
And Uncle Dennis came to play
And now we’re finding seedy seeds
With deep shade all the same
What’s its name…. Who’s to blame….

Aspiration!
The money faker hurt the lakers earth shaker calculation
Aspiration!
The Ballmer Clipper seal your lipper money gripper innovation

Kawhiiiiiiiiiiiii do people take and take and take as they pleeeeeeeease?
(rest) (rest) (rest) (rest) can’t see the forest for the trees

ASPIRATION!

(pose, out)

?

Isn’t it because OP is implying Ballmer’s ownership of Microsoft means he could tell Silver and the lawyers not to use a Microsoft product? Though idk what you are saying with your sentence of promoting an otherwise ubiquitous software, so maybe I am misunderstanding your question.

not if the punishment doesn’t include picks. or even just 2026 picks. it’s a bit late anyway to take picks from a team the day of a draft. is probably something you’d do in advance just to keep things steady. like if theyre planning a big fine or voiding khawis contract oe making the owner sell the team the draft is irrelevant.

honestly they made the zu trade fair and square and they shouldn’t lose a top 5 guy that could be there for a decade over this. I think the team itself still deserves to have something of a future while punishing the actual ownership and perpetrators for this.

But it’s the billionaires own rules, and they’re playing against each other. Dudes like cheating so much they’ll cheat each other to their faces. Buncha dorks. 

And this Aspiration scandal is the most severe case of cheating in league history.

The rest of this post is unhinged to the point of parody but god almighty I am begging you to learn some context

Go back to glazing a tiny desk concert no one gives a shit about.

I like it!