Throw him in the slammer

This. Make an example of them. Suspend Kawhi for 30 games or so, and force Ballmer to sell.

With the 2036 2nd round pick, the Clippers select…. NO ONE BECAUSE I ADAM “THE ALPHA” SILVER HAVE DROPPED THE HAMMER”

~Adam Silver

It sucks in a way because Ballmer has always been a really enthusiastic owner who wants the franchise to win and (obviously) willing to pay for it. As a fan, that’s what you’d like from an owner BUT he needs to be banned. Circumventing the cap like this is awful for the league. I’m imagining how bad things would be for the league if the Clippers won in 2020 or 2021 when they were one of the title favorites.

Ballmer prob thinking the same thing, but in reference to Pablo

Make him watch Big Bang Theory and pretend to enjoy it.

Is this the dagger?

They should at least double the fine to $500k this time!

lol

Silver will drop a fluffy toy hammer

Another post has an exec speculating that this will come down to a punishment Ballmer will accept, so, probably no hammer.

This is not even the first industry he did this in: United States v. Microsoft Corp.

Cock the hammer / it’s time for action

Pablo about to get a Clippy pop up on his laptop saying

”Looks like you’re writing your last post. Want me to help with that?”

I watched several different videos of people that had Pablo on their show yesterday. At the end of this one his last words are “last thing I’ll say is I think there’s a lot more to come.”

I’ve been following the Kawhi shit somewhat closely and I did not expect a second bombshell like his recent video. That combined with how he ended this interview makes me believe he’s got another bombshell that’ll come out soon. This dude is incredible.

Buddy need to be careful and not locked in too close to the sun

Ballmer might lock him off the planet

This is career defining stuff from Pablo, he ain’t ever backing down from this

Might be both lol

Rich fucks usually believe they are above the law

For folks younger than 40ish, they probably don’t remember that Ballmer and Microsoft used dirty tactics and cheated more than Eddie Guerrero to lock in their strangehold on the personal computer industry until they got leveled by the smartphone era.

Back when the US government wasn’t 100% corrupt, they faced massive consequences for their monopolistic behavior. And Ballmer was a huge part of that.

It’s fun that he’s enthusiastic and competitive, but cheating to win is in his blood.

Ballmer is stupid rich, richer than most of the other owners in the league

Ballmer thought he probably wouldn’t get caught. If he did, he thought he could intimidate the reporter and threaten to bury them in lawsuits that would bankrupt them. If that didn’t work, he’d work the media to do PR spin. If that didn’t work, he would dare the NBA to punish him .

There’s plenty of them doing it. The problem is, while most are driving 75 in a 65, he thought he could go 90.

Having more money than the rest of the league combined probably makes you feel pretty good about your chances in any legal situation lol

Water wet

It’s almost like multibillionaires don’t even think rules or laws apply to them.

Let’s hope we never find out

Journalism is currently dying so probably the same thing we’ve been doing since 2016. I still see plenty of comments in NBA discussion and in here that essentially summarize to ‘who cares’ about Ballmer doing this. You’d be surprised how willing people are to have billionaires walk all over them and everything else.

Pretend that billionaires play by the rules…

I hope he targets the Adelsons and devos/prince family next!

We already know what happened. And just like in this case, the problem is not uncovering the dirt, it’s getting any accountability for it.

He actually has done some reporting on it

You say this like we don’t already know the truth.

Needed.

Just give Tom Dundon the Clippers and let him do whatever he wants with them, and sell the Blazers to someone who isn’t a scumbag.

kick him off the tour doug!!!

Burn the duster!

I think this is a bad idea tbh. He’s investing a ton in the league and community and I can’t see how him owning the arena would play out. Much better thing to do would be strip 5 frp and cripple his toy. This is NOT a donald Stirling situation, players love ballmer and he’s good for the league. If he wants to sell the team without draft picks that probably takes half a bil off the price.

He just did again with the daktronics stuff. He called him an amazing asset to the league, but then said NBA should consider banishment.

Get Ballmer out of the sport for good. Permanent ban from ownership and Kawhi loses two full NBA seasons and ability to take any sponsorships while in the league.

Yeah and who is going to fund them? All Ballmer, or Bezos, or Trump, or whoever needs to do is buy out the Athletic and suddenly there’s no more “professional” sports journalism on a level that can handle lawsuits and can pay high level salaries and production. Then it’s all “amateur” sports journalists who can be bought out, bribed, or sponsored with dirty money and the problem goes away.

Yup. First thing I thought about. ESPN goes from ignoring this and defending Ballmer to letting their top guy attack him. It does not happen without it being greenlit from the top.

Yes, ESPN is the major league partner in the offseason. League gets them in step before making a move, they’re business partners.

I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would believe any billionaire is inherently a good person. Those people almost always do something unethical or immoral to gain that much wealth.

A shame too, cause the windows phone operating system was awesome. Still my favorite of the Android/Apple/Iphone options. And those nokia cameras were amazing.

Balmer is only able to do this because he has shit tons of money. Obviously every NBA owner is a billionare, but most of them are worth maybe a couple billion, with most of their money tied up in the NBA team itself. Balmer has over 100 billion to his name, he’s at the level where he can throw around 10s of millions on bullshit like this without blinking an eye, and even more millions to hide it. Allowing owners to do this sets a precedent where all that matters is how much the owner is worth, rich owners can do whatever they want and the smaller owners just have to take it.

When else has this happened? People keep saying stuff like this, it’s not true.

Probably why they’re always trading them, makes it more difficult for Silver to punish the organization. Can’t mix deals, can’t send back picks, can’t punish Ballmer because his money has Silver by the balls… nothing is gonna happen to the clippers, that’s why they’re claiming the investigation is over but they’re “just putting the punishment together”

Yeah it’s a good thing no journalist has been murdered since the 60s……….

He can just call Trump and he’ll send ICE.

In a way Balmer is extremely lucky that Kawhi was a huge bust and the team he cheated to create was a joke.

Way more knives would be out of this was a team like the Nuggets or Thunder.

I’m wouldn’t be shocked if Kawhi ends all of this by retiring, because the appropriate punishment for him is to be banned from the NBA

Hard disagree that the players union doesn’t have an interest here. They always have an interest in punishing owners who break rules since the union exists to oppose owner power. They need the league office to enforce the league bylaws.