The fact that it wasn’t dealt with during the season says no.

The Wolves situation didn’t even rely on circumstantial evidence, there was an actual written agreement (lmao)

Should it be? Yes. Will it be? No fucking way.

If “cap circumvention is cardinal sin” then yes.

I believe a lot of us are so jaded by the rule of law and how it applies to the 1% we tell ourselves that it’s not a big deal and other teams must do this. The problem is there was absolutely no effort by the clippers or KL2 to pretend it was legit endorsement. These are the 1%.

I sometimes wonder how genuine some of these responses are and if it’s team Ballmer.

no

Adam silver is a bitch so no

Adam Silver is a coward. He won’t do anything

Silver is not Stern. He’s an appeaser who wants things to go away. He doesn’t really view the direction or integrity of the game as under his purview like David Stern did. He’s just a middle man who wants to be frictionless

No. The Wolves were stupid and put it in writing so there was a smoking gun. The fact that this investigation has gone on this long means there probably isn’t nearly that level of proof. 

That depends. Are the LA clippers the Minnesota timberwolves?

There will be no penalty because their owner has $100B

People with 100B do whatever they want

The Clippers punishment should be similar to this.

No if all 30 teams did the exact same thing nothing would reach how much the nba would punish the Wolves

Penalties? You think you’re going to see penalties?

A few things to keep in mind:

The commissioner of the major sports leagues works for the owners. This is no different for Adam Silver. It was different for David Stern. He worked for the good of the league as a whole and had much more latitude to do so. He also had the power to enforce his decisions pretty much unilaterally.

Today’s owners are way more wealthy in comparison to the owners back then. Steve Ballmer is the wealthiest of them all.

If I were to guess, none of the other owners care about a level playing field or integrity of the game more than they care about maintaining a good relationship with one of the wealthiest men on the planet.

There is no direct evidence linking Steve Balmer to salary cap circumvention.

If the owners collectively care about safeguarding the integrity of the game, they’ll come up with a punishment that makes it appear as if they care but doesn’t piss off Steve. He’ll put on a brave face and say he’s submitting to the punishment for the good of the game.

If they’re not concerned about how fans perceive this case (I get the sense most fans don’t care about salary cap circumvention in the abstract) then I think they will exonerate him, let the media have it’s day with the news, and then move on.

I don’t think players care enough about this either. In fact, salary cap circumvention is a good thing from their perspective but they would never admit it

Doubt it,

David Stern was in a very tough spot, and had too much shit going on so he laid the nuke down as ti have 1 less problem

Silver is soft but if he’s gonna take a soft approach I think he should have done it by now.  Dragging this out leads me to believe he has to either dole out some level of harsh punishment; otherwise, he will look even more incompetent.  That said, if he makes a hard ruling, it still won’t reach a stern-esque level.

If I’m an NBA owner or group owner, we’ve got some side business wanting to endorse players who sign with our team below market value. Maybe all our brothers can start a business.

Maybe they’ll just take the picks the clippers got from the raptors I doubt it’ll be more than that and quite probably less

What they did with Kawhi is x100 worst and will have a fraction of the penalty because Adam Silver is spineless. The more I see what he does, the more it looks like Donald Sterling was a financial move to get a big time owner of a LA team. 

Steve Balmer is what they call a big fish

No, if I had to guess while the punishment won’t be a slap on the wrist it will not be nearly as harsh as this. You are probably looking at docking a first round pick, a big fine for Balmer, a big fine for Kawhi individually, and a 20-30 game suspension for Kawhi. It’s a decent punishment but not crazy either.

It definitely won’t be. Even though the circumvention is much worse, the fact that there was hard documentation of the Wolves circumvention and there seemingly isn’t for the Clippers will be the difference. I think a year ban on Ballmer and Larry Frank, lifetime ban on Uncle Dennis, a $5.5m fine (the max for a second offense), and maybe one pick is probably the most that we can expect. Kawhi probably doesn’t get his contract voided since the league allowed the Raptors to trade for him, but the fact that he got a new agent seems to indicate that they are probably going to take an angle of “he didn’t know he couldn’t do that and this is why he needs an actual professional agent rather than his uncle”.

No because Silver is a pussy compared to Stern

Adam silver is a fucking bum he won’t do anything

Somehow the Raptors will bear the brunt of the punishment lol

One can only hope. Gary Trent is next

4 1sts. Sounds reasonable