Silver also has to line everything up to take out Ballmer. A miss means Silver will be gone and won’t get a second shot.

I think it’s more likely they have the smoking gun, but are trying to figure out if anyone else (Pablo) has it too. They want this to go away. The law firm is doing its due diligence to make sure they don’t get embarrassed by a Pablo data dump as well. There’s no other reason to extend it this long.

That’s right he just got his college roommate and co-owner to pay Kawhi by injecting the exact amount Kawhi was owed into a company that was clearly failing after a massive fraud and rather than that money being absorbed by debt it was transferred to Kawhi. That’s much smarter than putting it in writing.

It’s in writing.

The uncovered fake deal for no work, is, the writing.

It was uncovered, not already existing in the ether

Dumbledore’s army

they had the equivalent of an actual document that said “CRIMES WE ARE COMMITTING”

Was that wrong? Should they not have done that? Because if anybody had told them that committing crimes was frowned upon, they would have done things different

Don’t let them fool you.

The 48M compensation package for Kawhi for no work is the “crimes we are committing” document.

It’s been uncovered.

I mean we have statements from former Aspiration employees/executives that are more or less them saying “Golly gee whiz, I sure do love committing crimes boy how-diddly-dee!” so I wouldn’t call that false equivalence.

Also, one of the people involved went to jail as part of this? Or are we forgetting that there is a literal criminal in this entire saga?

Does Pablo get a cut as a whistleblower? Lol

Balmer is paying afaik

And a key thing that separates these two from the Joe Smith thing is that these two are going at owners and the latter is going at a GM. It’s obvious why the NBA would be more cautious going after an owner.

Here’s where I disagree. This is the type of case where you absolutely NEED a timely outcome. The Clippers have already selected their next pick. A pick that they most likely don’t deserve. Kawhi is also 35 with one year left on his contract. What if he plays one more season and then retires? There will be no contract to void or player to suspend. What if Balmer sells the team in a few months? How would you suspend him? The timing of the punishment in these matters is incredibly important as they won’t matter if you take too long.

Look at all the Trump investigations that led to indictments but NO trials. Had they been done quicker, that man would be in prison right now. Instead, they took their time to do it right and threw everything out when he won re-election. Sometimes you do have to rush things.

Circumstantial evidence is all that’s needed–its literally written into the CBA under the Cap Circumvention article.

The delay isn’t there–its more to do with the fact that from a technical perspective, what the Clippers allegedly did doesn’t fit the CBA’s definition of “Circumventing the Cap,” which is defined as either a third party paying the player below market value for services while being under a contract below fair market value OR a team offering third party sponsorships to free agents as part of their pitch to induce the player to sign.

Nobody would argue Kawahis contract or Aspiration deal were “below fair market value” so unless there’s evidence that the Clippers offered sponsorships as part of his free agency courtship, they can’t punish Kawahi or the Clippers under the CBA

and the problem is that the circumstantial evidence is lacking as well. The main thing is that some of the employees believed it was cap circumvention and were whispering it internally.  But beyond that, there’s not much to go off. 

Which part? That Minnesota was stupid enough to put the secret deal in writing, or equating physical evidence to heresay?

The penguin exhibit…

You didn’t see that abominable image as part of the recent Aspiration news drop?

EDIT: Here, it’s in this article - https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7434475/2026/07/14/kawhi-leonard-aspiration-nba-investigation-second-sponsorship/

https://static01.nyt.com/athletic/uploads/wp/2026/07/14110156/Image-from-iOS-2.jpg

There’s provisions in the CBA that detail punishment for salary cap circumvention. Fines for the team, loss of draft capital, player fines, suspensions, voiding of the contract, and more are all specifically stated.

There’s also a clause that says, “A violation of these actions (cap circumvention) can be proved by circumstantial evidence”.

They don’t even need emails or written documents–if enough credible people confirm the details, both Kawahi and the Clippers are going to be punished.

The bigger issue for the NBA is that technically the allegations don’t fit the CBAs definitions of “cap circumvention”:

“The following acts are considered actions that circumvent the CBA:

1.) The Team enters into an agreement with a third party that pays the Player for his basketball services (even if it looks like it’s not for basketball services), where (i) the fair market value for his contract is substantially lower and (ii) his Contract with the team is substantially below fair market value;

2.) Having a financial arrangement or offer a financial inducement to a player not under contract.

Nobody would argue that Kawahi’s deal with the Clippers is below fair market value, nor was his Aspiration deal. The Clippers were fined $250k in 2015 when they offered DeAndre Jordan a third party sponsorship deal as part of their free-agent bid,

Unless there’s proof that shows the Clippers pitched 3rd party sponsorships to Kawahi ahead of him signing there, technically, the Aspiration deal happened outside the scope of the definition of circumventing the cap as defined by the CBA.

It’s an oh fuck this is just the tip of the iceberg

Not accounting for inflation. With it, the Clippers should be stripped of something closer to 30 1st round picks in today’s NBA.

This issue is the precedent that owners and players can blatantly ignore parts of the CBA

Which defeats the whole point of collective bargaining in the first place.

You’ll care a lot more when Ballmer offers Scottie $100MM/yr to join the Clippers

So everyone can just start doing this now and it’s cool? Fuck any parity and fuck the small market teams lmao

Punish them or don’t, who cares. I’m sure every team is pampering their star players in some way.

The final tally is going to be north of \(20M. Michigan spent \)11.5M with one firm to investigate their athletic department over 6 months.

It also helps that they were stupid enough to put the secret deal in writing.

The smoking gun made it a slam-dunk case. Comparing Joe Smith to Kawahi isn’t reasonable unless there’s concrete proof of circumventing the cap other than heresay. They need to have texts, emails, or something other than “a source with knowledge of the situation” to prove there was an active conspiracy to circumvent the cap.

Is that true?

When a gun fires a bullet there is usually smoke coming out of the barrel afterwards. Therefore, seeing a gun with smoke coming out of it is considered a strong indication that it was fired.

So, if someone is holding a gun that has smoke coming out of it, that’s your killer.

It’s a euphemism for direct, incontrovertible evidence.

Not clear and conclusive evidence. Aspiration people came out and said Kawhi’s talent agency stole them at the time that he was available for whatever and Aspiration made the excuse that he was too difficult to use because nobody knew him outside of basketball aka they were fraudsters too lazy to do work.

It’s really not that hard to realize and the reason it’s taking this long is because they haven’t found anything concrete showing otherwise else they would have handed out punishment already.

Kawhi gets suspended for a year, and Toronto wont be allowed to acquire him?

NBA finds nothing and nothing happens

What did Zubac know and when did he know it? 🤔