Balmer claimed that Aspiration defrauded him. What about Daktronics, did Balmer get scammed by them too?
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48563412/in-letter-attorney-says-clippers-owner-steve-ballmer-lost-entire-60-million-investment-aspiration
Balmer’s defense of Aspiration completely falls apart with the same scheme being run with Daktronics. How is Balmer going to defend this scheme?
Ballmer did not have over the table contractual relations with that company
It depends on what your definition of is is
underrated piece of history right here
I think about that maybe once a month. Still can’t figure out what he meant
He was claiming that when he said in testimony that, “there is nothing going on between us” in regards to Monica Lewinsky, it was true (and not perjury) because there was nothing going on between them in the present. So there “was” but not “is.” He was arguing that he was referring to the present not the past and so it is a question of whether you interpret “is” to refer to only the present tense or any relationship. Whether that holds water is debated, but that’s the argument he put forward.
Out of context it is a very strange and odd line.
If Pablo hasn’t found the smoking gun, I think he’s found the stained blue dress
Just want to highlight that when Paul George left the clippers, his justification was that “they didn’t give me what they gave to Kawhi”, even though the clippers eventually gave in and offered what he was initially asking for.
Everybody assumed it had to do with the specifics of the contract extension. But something worth considering.
If this is about not wanting to pay him off the books, that’s hilarious
I mean, the Clippers offered him 3/$150. He wanted a NTC or a 4th year - the Clips gave him neither.
Philly immediately offered 4/$212.
He made the only call he could make.
Why didn’t the Clippers offer 3⁄150 plus 100 under the table?
Why would PG get what Kawhi got? He’s not half the player Kawhi is.
At the time, PG has arguably done more for the org than Kawhi(who was mostly unavailable as usual). I mean, PG missed his share of games too of course but he still did “more”.
- Steve Ballmer Clinton
Bro be Davidoffing Kawhi with that money under the table lmaoooo
I did bagoogity her bashmoogity, and I am sorry.
Why can I imagine Ballmer actually saying something like this
Developers
“Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?”
With Daktronics? He paid the $100m to build the jumbotron in his arena…
You’re not an American over 35 are ya
Close, just misread it a bit and then it went right over my head.
Not under your desk?
It’s a Monica Lewinsky joke
Woosh, did not get it.
This one hurts, fellas
Seriously! That was a few years ago.
Goddamn whipper snappers.
Even as someone who is familiar with the famous quote and story it’s referencing, I didn’t clock it as a Lewinsky joke immediately either. Too many words substituted, including 4 for 1 in one part of the sentence. I think the joke also sort of says “over the table” when the thing that would make sense to deny is “under the table”. Also maybe still could have gotten there if it was phrased in first person like the original quote, i.e.
Ballmer: “I did not have under-the-table relations with that company”
Your analysis is not far off. It’s not meant to be a 1:1 quote, I took the classic Clinton denial cadence and injected “over the table” as an ironic double entendre. The joke is using lawyerly phrasing that technically admits to under-the-table deals while pretending to offer a defense.
It is also imperfect. But the thing with reddit, it’s about speed. Getting top comments is about getting it out there. If I spent more time crafting the perfect line, such as the one you wrote, it may be buried lower and less people would enjoy it. Instead my imperfect joke is getting a ton of upvotes.
You’re definitely right about the incentive to post early if you want people to see the comment. And I think the majority of people got the joke so that’s more important than the small ways it can maybe be improved or clearer.
I will say that this is another piece of evidence for me that the average age of people on this sub is way older than commonly believed or asserted. I always see users accusing others in arguments of being too young but references like these are actually made and understood all the time.
Just adding that I think the older-than-expected analysis may apply to a lot of other subs too…my headcanon is that it would make sense that the people who grew up with relatively anonymous discussion boards as their main sources of online communities (Millennial-ish) eventually gravitated to Reddit.
to be fair once you state “I did not have contractual relations” that pretty much locks in what is about to happen
Does “ under the table contractual relations” count as a contract? Some people might say no
Torre found the blue clipboard with Steve Ballmers ink stains all over it
You’re totally right. I was referring to this instance, but you are correct sir, as he did have the jumbotron deal
My bad, I missed the joke.
They’re alleging that the jumbotron deal might somehow be inflated to include Kawhi’s cut or that the reason they were chosen for the contract in the first place was their willingness(due to desperation) to participate in cap circumvention. Hard to prove of course because despite them being near bankruptcy at the time, they were still a leader in their field. It’s also hard to prove the halo jumbotron contract as inflated with it being the first of its kind and thus the lack of a comp in the market.
Yet, it will be hard to simply explain away a secret kawhi leonard sponsorship contract worth multimillions by a company that historically never engaged in them to an athlete who seemed to never need to publicly work for any of it given the timing if it existed.
The CBA states that deals involving players may lead to an assumption of cap circumvention when they cannot be rationally explained. This deal cannot be rationally explained if it does exist.
I’m really sorry to Clippers fans. But imagine going this hard in the paint to cheat and your end results were the last couple Clippers seasons…
If they won it all they’d get the Astros treatment but it’s so funny they couldn’t even get close to a title with all these shenanigans.
Yeah. All this just to flirt with the fringes of relevancy.
Did everything they could last year round keep the Thunder from getting top 4 pick. Thats kind of a win, right?
Pfft. I doubt Clippers fans care about a hunk of metal.
The Astros got nothing. Sure, opposing fans will boo Altuve when he gets up to bat but that’s about it.
Nobody has any respect for them. That will eat away at them for the rest of their lives.
They care as much as Kawhi cares about this.
The Clippers cheated so hard yet failed so miserably.
Like Michigan football had a spy operation that won a national championship. Now it lead to basically most coaches leaving before they could get punished and then the guy that took over having an affair with a staffer and then having an Olympic gold medal worthy crash out.
Then of course there’s the gold standard of cheating, the Patriot way. Deflated footballs, spying, rub and tugs, and a ton of Lombardi Trophies.
The Clippers cheating just seems sad and uninspired.
How is a rub and tug cheating?
It’s cheating on your right hand
He brought up deflategate so you already know he’s an idiot
I don’t like Boston sports teams at all but the number of people that so matter-of-factly cite DeflateGate as cheating shows how the NFL (and Colts) won the propaganda war on that one.
Most people didn’t not study that part of physics , or didn’t pay attention during high school.
The best part about it all is… they never would have traded 5 first round picks and future MVP away to get PG next to Kawaii if they kept did not cheat and let Kawaii go elsewhere. LOL. Kawaii has poisoned the Clippers.
Idk if you’re doing it in purpose but it’s Kawhi
But kawhy?
Ballmer: Kawhy not? I’m ungodly rich, rules don’t apply to me.
Ungodly right is right. The amount in controversy right now in this scandal (\(100 million from Daktronics, \)48 million from Aspiration) totals \(148 million, literally only \)1 million less than his 3-year Clippers contract ($149 million).
But that’s not as cute.
Ballmer poisoned the clippers.
This is just flatly wrong?
All this stuff Pablo talks about is post him signing w the clippers.
We may never know what kind of ridiculous products he got paid to not endorse for the original Clipper deal
We also don’t know what they agreed to hold off on knowing they’d be under less scrutiny at extension time
Dawg, he asked for illegal things from both the raptors and the lakers, to the point they both independently reported him for it to the league in the summer of 2019. He then went to the Clippers, who we now all know paid him (tens of) millions off the books.
If you don’t think they also gave him shit to come in the first place, idk what to tell you.
All the provable stuff.
At the time of him signing with the clippers, they were investigated for the same stuff. In part because Kawhi’s side was reportedly asking for this exact kind of thing from the team in your flair.
The Wolves also didn’t get any positive end results for the Joe Smith debacle, seems like the basketball gods show no mercy
Ball don’t lie
To be fair, THIS is the good life for Clippers fans.
The 2020 season where they chocked a 3-1 lead against the Nuggets, only to blame the Bubble for the choke.
The really fucked up thing that this is still either the best or second best era of Clippers basketball in franchise history
Imagine going this hard to cheat for a guy who’s best known for not playing.
Like, if it got you a top 5 guy, I get it. But Kawhi is the face of load management. He’s the only guy more injured than AD.
I doubt there are any Clippers fans after this. The organization is a joke.
Before this bomb dropped, the clips sub was basically all in against Pablo. They’ll be back on the hate train in a week.
it’s prolly worth keeping in mind that the billionaires in the room also have a buncha bots/bad-faith actors pushing a lot of the weird Pablo discourse
dudes kinda just been doing normal good journalism about an increasingly insidious thing
And it’s got all the billionaires scared as shit. I can guarantee you there are paper trails that can be discovered about them being involved in illegal shit, whether it’s white collar crime or fucking kids on an island. Good journalists are a defence against tyranny, and Pablo is one of the few good ones actively taking the fight to the elite.
I remember back when the first PTFO first came out, one person made a post saying that the Raptors should also be investigated since they almost signed Kawhi. Everyone was just like “wtf? He didn’t sign with the Raptors”
They should be happy they have a rich owner whos willing to spend a shit ton of his money on their team.
You think the pelicans owner would ever bother trying to circumvent the cap?
They were probably circumventing the daily per diem for meals with Zion the first couple of years.
No, they should just stop being fans until Ballmer sells
nah we don’t care. thats what makes us Clippers fans, if we cared about what other people think, we’d be laker fans. fuck the haters esp Laker fans
Billionaire trying to play victim lmao
Gavin Belson: [On a talk show] I counsel any young founder today to pursue your dream not for profit or valuation or material wealth, but for the good of humanity. Kara: Which is easy for you to say, being a billionaire. Gavin Belson: don’t care for your tone, Kara. I’m getting a little tired of this bias against the leaders of our industry. I’m continually creating jobs and helping people, and I’m tired of getting slapped for it. I didn’t steal the money I have, and I resent being treated like I did. You know, there is a climate in this country that is very dangerous. Kara: It’s dangerous out there for billionaires? Gavin Belson: There’s that attitude again, Kara. Billionaires are people, too. We are leaders in technology, in industry, in finance. Look at history. Do you know who else vilified a tiny minority of financiers and progressive thinkers called the Jews? Kara: Wait a minute. Did you just compare the treatment of billionaires in America today to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany? Gavin Belson: Absolutely. One could argue that billionaires are actually treated worse. And we didn’t even do anything wrong. We’re an even smaller minority. There’s a lot more of them
What’s hilarious is that this excerpt is based on a true story. Look up Tom Perkins, one of the most famous and successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley history. This was an actual an opinion of his he went public with
A lot of that show was based on deep interviews with SV veterans. There was a lot of “based on a true story” going on beyond Perkins’ letter becoming a Belsen speech
I remember when at the convention in the first season there were online complaints about the demographics of it.
The stock footage was from a real tech convention. It was that male and white/asian dominated.
No fucking way, man. Sadly, it has come to billionaires against everyone else, but we are still believing in fake democracies and freedom. Just give us our soma and get on with it.
Having to pay a higher tax rate as a billionaire is worse than the holocaust -Gavin Belson, probably
Also super relevant after the Anthropic CEO this week had a whole stupid speech about how he is worried employees are working for a paycheck rather than the company’s mission. Amazing how out of touch some rich people are
Silicon Valley was such a good show bro
The compression algo would ironically help with the ssd market
The show as a little too prescient.
Erratic billionaires, rogue AIs and tip to tip ratios with inclination angles.
Sounds a lot like the problems we see today
You should check out Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy.
I have
It is spot on especially with all the rednecks reproducing and all the educated people not having children lmao
I eat the fish
Wtf? Ballmer is completely innocent in all this. He would never circumvent the cap ever…after getting caught doing it with Jordan. If he did, it’s only because he was swindled by Aspiration. But he’s simultaneously too smart to do that and too stupid to know he’s doing that. And if it happened again beyond Aspiration, well you just have to trust he’s a good and innocent dude. If you don’t just trust he’s a good honest billionaire with integrity….HOW DARE YOU?!??!?!
He’s an innocent victim in all of this, obviously. Who hasn’t accidentally invested multiple millions of dollars in corporations that have paid their employees for him under the table? He’s just like us!
And the Aspiration guy is a scammer who cheated Ballmer out of millions only to then give all the stolen money away to a professional athlete for no reason
There’s a life lesson. If you’re going to do shady shit, make sure you do it with somebody shadier than you so your shady shit with them makes you a victim, not a perp.
Boy these scammers are getting crazier with every day. No rhyme or reason. They’re just doing it for the love of the chaos.
These poor billionaires. I hope he can recover all that lost money
Who works for the guy you scammed.
Did you know Intuit Dome has the most toilets of any arena so we can get back to making shady under the table deals even faster?
THIS COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ANY OF US!!!
Im imagining a still from the latest PTFO of Balmer with his arms outstretched on the Halo board sitting next to an image of Tim Robinson in the hotdog suit with his arms out.
Let he who has never invested multiple millions in a shady corporation throw the first stone
Ballmer is a victim to Nigerian prince scams too, and car warranty scams
Poor guy
I don’t even want to know how many times he’s had to buy gift cards to pay the nice gentlemen to remove the virus on his computer
You know what, brnccnt7? When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly asking for help, you help. His father ran the freaking country, okay?
Being scammed constantly is how he became a billionaire!
Fuck me, I’m about to start billing him millions for random shit in the hopes that he pushes it through to create the illusion he just randomly gives a way millions for nothing.
Just make sure you title “Kawhi” somewhere in your fake business
He will probably approve it without looking
Ballmer can fund all the scammers in the world and still have billions.
Dude paid $100m a season for a dude who barley played and won exactly zero championships. Holy fuck
thats gotta be why Balmer is trying to bury the story. He comes out looking like an idiot that got ripped off. why even give the ESPN interview when he knew there were more skeletons. Those types of things eventually always come out. Either come out clean upfront. Or don’t say anything at all.
Anyone who knows Ballmer from his Microsoft days knows that this is his M.O. He made countless terrible acquisitions and exec hirings for absurd amounts. One exec hire was so ridiculously bad, his contract terms made it so that if Microsoft were to fire him, they’d need to pay him an absurd amount of money and stock.
The Nokia acquisition was a complete sham as well. Financial books completely cooked. Why do you think Satya Nadella wrote it off and dissolved the business as soon as he became CEO?
Ballmer is just as corrupt as any other billionaire. But he’s not very competent or smart, he just lucked out by knowing Bill Gates and has a ton more money to burn through for all his stupid decisions and corrupt deals.
Ballmer also said the iPhone would fail, didn’t think it would do anything lol.
Despite his financial success, he may just be an idiot who got ripped off lol
won exactly zero championships
Just 3 series wins in 7 years. And they were in the first 2 years.
At least***
Scammer got scammed…
People arguing that Ballmer wasn’t defrauded by Aspiration are losing the plot.
Ballmer likely was defrauded. His salary cap evasion scheme wasn’t based on Aspiration being a fraud. In fact, Aspiration being a fraud and going bankrupt was the whole reason the scheme was exposed.
As Pablo Torre, himself, has tweeted:
The two things that can be true in this story, which we’ve been reporting from the very start of our series: (1) Steve Ballmer was, in fact, defrauded by Joe Sanberg… (2) …the same guy Ballmer had trusted to help his Clippers deceive the NBA
The two things that can be true in this story, which we’ve been reporting from the very start of our series:
(1) Steve Ballmer was, in fact, defrauded by Joe Sanberg…
(2) …the same guy Ballmer had trusted to help his Clippers deceive the NBA
You’re being way too literal in this.
Ppl aren’t buying his defense that he was defrauded and thus couldn’t have committed cap circumvention.
It’s not relevant whether Ballmer was scammed or not in his cap circumvention schemes.
Most accept that yes he and Kawhi both did get scammed by Aspiration and thus were owed money that was supposed to be funneled to Kawhi.
It’s not relevant whether Ballmer was scammed or not in his cap circumvention scheme.
Correct.
But a lot of people waste a lot of energy arguing that he wasn’t defrauded.
And I’m saying they’re not actually saying that they don’t think he was scammed at all.
They just mean that they don’t believe Ballmer’s clear lies and incomplete and misleading statements.
I’ve seen many, many people say this.
Ppl just aren’t being super precise.
Chill out
So the 3rd richest person in the world was defrauded twice, or maybe 3 times?
You’re seemingly misunderstanding what (most) people are contending.
Ballmer is claiming he was defrauded as his sole defense against the aspiration charges. He’s essentially saying “I wasn’t trying to circumvent the cap by sending suspicious funds to Aspiration. I was defrauded.” Whether he was defrauded on some level (he likely was) doesn’t matter: he clearly was trying to circumvent the cap.
People are now asking if he is going to use the defense of “I was defrauded” for additional suspicious activity centered around circumventing the cap.
I don’t have the mental capacity to try and figure this out, but I wonder if the timeline supports this thesis: Aspiration was supposed to funnel money to Kawhi, because they were both scammers and going under that largely didn’t happen. Therefore, Ballmer using Daktronics to try and fulfill whatever agreement he or Aspiration had with Kawhi.
The facts might not line up, but I’d be curious about that.
The thing is, nobody really cares, nor should care, if Ballmer was defrauded. It’s the fact he’s using it as a defense for his own shady shit. As one of the richest on the planet, it should come as no surprise that if you partner with someone to do shady shit, that’s highly unlikely to be the only shady shit they’re doing. Not only that, but you make yourself a likely target, because what are you going to do? Rat on them and risk exposing your own shady shit?
[deleted]
Redemption rights or put options are common for investors in startups.
They provide no protection if the company becomes insolvent, which is what happened here.
Just put the fries in the bag
Now I’m dying to know how much Kawhi got paid to be a Clipper. He had the contract we knew about but also getting paid under the table with “sponsorship deals”
What’s funny is when investors started to realize that Aspiration was full of shit and were pulling out of the business, Balmer and his people were the only ones still “investing” money. You’re telling me one of the richest men in the world didn’t have the intel and the knowledge to know he was getting scammed but everyone else did? Cmon lol
Ballmer: “Uh… I didn’t do it!”
Yo Steve if you reading this you give me 10 million and I will give Darius Garland 9.5 million. Once the funds have transferred to my account I will delete this post and we can’t get caught.
Yes
Sorry I mean no
I forget which is it? Billionaires are super smart super competent guys who deserve their money, or their poor victims of all these scam gods.
According to Mark Cuban, YES!
Clearly Ballmer is not smart. He traded all that for PG when all he needed was his 7th best player.
leave ballmer alone. he is just a poor billionaire who gets scammed left and right. nothing he can do about it
Adam Silver should just double the Clippers’ salary cap so Ballmer can properly overpay his stars without being scammed by outside forces.
Oops! All scams
NBA going to have to deal with Ballmer and Dundon. Talk about two opposite ends of the spectrum for bank-rolling a team. Wild. Silver about to get pushed out soon.
I’m beginning to think these Microsoft guys are problematic
Balmer just gets scammed by everyone
Anybody have his number, I got an investment idea for him
its a real shame how billionaires get taken advantage of so often
poor little guy
Of course!! Little old billionaire balmer got scammed again, idk how he holds onto all his money when hes just a good philanthropist thats just getting scammed left and right
He is the smartest business man in the world one day and the stupidest the next day. Got it.
BANISH THE CLIPPERS TO THE SHADOW REALM
F Ballmer
He became a billionaire by being scammed by everyone that he did business with 🤣🤣
Clippers will never win anything. Ever!!!!!
To be fair we don’t know the details so it could be notably different than Aspiration. I say that from the standpoint of believing this was likely part of either financial fraud and/or cap circumvention mind you. I just don’t think we can say it’s the same as Aspiration. In fact in some respects it might be worse if it’s more straightforward from a at the time reputable company.
Throw the entire franchise in the garbage
I guess if you have to admit between incompetence and fraud…
Ballmer didn’t use the fraud as a defense to the salary cap avoidance, he just pushed the idea that he got defrauded in his investment in the tree dudes. It was a weak defense, but not relevant to the scoreboard folks.
He must have let his Norton Anti Virus License Expire.
He doesn’t have to defend it because Silver isn’t gonna do anything. He’s gonna delay, delay, delay and then maybe deduct a 2nd and give a fine.
Fool me once
All this to never get anywhere is so funny
Balmer’s rap name is Poor Lil’ Billionaire
Still the most stable Clippers owner.
It constantly showed the wrong scores of the game clippers lost
Pretty much anything this guy says now will be him character
Everybody betray me, I fed up with this world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxWkfJ4uvV0
Nah that one’s on me dawg
-Steve Balmer
It’s a wonder that old Steve has any money left with all these people defrauding him.
Oh wow this super intelligent powerful billionaire who made his money being smarter than everyone just …keeps… getting… SCAMMED! Can you believe!?!?
Bro they found this shit out when we had their pick
We really should’ve had a top 5 pick last year that’s fucked
All that cheating just to get a C+ in the class.
If I’m the players association, I’m asking why there’s a salary cap when there’s an owner willing to go out of his way to circumvent it.
How long has Pablo Torre been sitting on this? The crisis PR firm Daktronics is using seems to have only thrown fuel on the fire, too. When did the NBA become such a cesspool?
I wanna see another Cuban interview defending Ballmer on this one.
So many companies out there are trying their best to destroy Steve Balmer ffs
It’s like when A Rod’s cousin got busted for roids, everything works to protect the money
Am Steve. Yes.
Aspiration was set up with Balmer funding for the sole purpose of cap circumvention. Unfortunately, he did it because the rest of the league does it with minimal effort. Kawhi just happens to be the laziest superstar ever.
He is a fucking disgrace
Uncle Dennis is the epstein of the NBA
Im so glad kawhi is getting kicked out after what he did to the spurs
logically claiming superiority over clearly corrupt acts won’t do anything but make you seem like it’s your first time interacting with late stage capitalism. make a stand or get involved or haul ass to a protest man.
Aspiration took his charitable donation to lower carbon footprint. They pocketed the money so thats how ballmer got cooked out of 60 million.
Daktronics is different. Im assuming he paid for the intuit dome halo board? he got what he wanted, its not defected, so no defrauding between balmer and daktronics. Unless im missing something.
This is all ignoring the kawhi situation and strictly focusing on daktronics.
Does anybody actually watch this soap opera anymore?
You do or else you wouldn’t be here
Well, no, I just ran across this story in an aggregate feed.
I haven’t watched a basketball game since the 90s, or the 00s, whenever James Harden was playing his last season at ASU.
Posts like this are laughable. Y’all are getting worked up over someone else’s negotiating skills.
Ballmer is a hundred times worse than Sterling
absolute scumbag
Clown take jfc