It’s insane. The inaction boils down to billionaires vs Balmer, a man so wealthy he could own every team if he wanted to. If he’d just swallowed his pride and took a punishment last year, no one would care now.

the difference in this case is the billionaires set these rules for themselves, so there is a reasonable chance that they get enforced.

I agree. I’m thinking there hasn’t been as many players coming out and saying something because this is happening across the league. Players don’t want to fuck something up for their teammates or themselves.

Pretty sure some gms said that already anonymously that there were some under the table stuff but usually under a mil so hard to prove and relatively small. Nothing close to this in scale though.

  I’ve always had a suspicion players get on the low deals to help either salary cap or to convince them to come. Wherever there’s money there’s corruption

Agreed, there is no way there aren’t minor kickbacks and perks, but the difference here is Kawhi and the Clippers did it on a completely different level. In the tens of millions of dollars range

Crazy that 50 mill a year isnt enough for people. Literally generational money to put the ball in a hoop and these guys will either gamble or do corrupt shit like this.

Sure, but it’s not in the owners’ interests to normalize deals of this scale. The last thing they want is an off the books arms race.

Fans think of the cap as being about fairness. It’s not. It’s about keeping costs down for the owners.

Convincing someone to come is fine. It’s not illegal to use your location or connections as a tool for players to get legit sponsorships or whatever.

It’s when it’s just blatantly to skirt the cap that there’s a problem. Honestly, the players don’t care because it’s not on them to know and follow the cap rules. It’s the fact that 29 other owners don’t seem to be upset that tells me things like this have been happening for a long time. Ballmer just got brazen about it.

I’m sure dodgy sponsorships have always been a thing and is part of the pitch too. Come to LA where we can introduce you to all these sponsors and connections! 

GSW had players prominently in the VC/PE world for a while, I’m sure their owner helped open doors.

Aspiration is bad because Ballmer has a money trail with them and Kawhi did literally nothing for the firm. It’s blatant and also mindnumbingly stupid to set up a deal like that.

Clippers have been signing quality role players for cheap since they got Kawhi, the league needs to investigate those deals as well.

I think the crazy part is that most people assume this has been happening a lot behind the scenes for awhile; but not this stupid…not this blatantly corrupt right out in the open.

I forget if it was demar or kyle but one of that raptors squad talked about how the rich teammates would routinely buy shit for the poor teammates. Not exactly the same but it’s interesting from that point of view, what’s legal and isn’t. I think the old salary cap rules and the apron restrictions don’t mix well and one or the other needs significant changes

It’s late stage capitalism, integrity is praised in words but priced below profit, character matters only until money enters the room. America just happens to be more capitalistic.

Kinda of a joke how the league punishes players so harshly when it comes to gambling scandals while I get bombarded with gambling ads every time I try to watch a game

This particular clip makes Windhorst sound like he’s being critical but overall Windhorst still spent way more time in this podcast giving the Clippers the benefit of the doubt. Said that if he were on a jury, he’d still have trouble convicting, for basically no other reason other than that Clippers people he’s talked to have looked him in the eye and passionately denied the allegations to his face.

At one point his co-host even asks if these people ever provide any evidence to support their innocence. Windhorst had to admit no and could only say that he goes to a lot of Clipper games.

Tbh think they need to force Balmer to sell the team and ban Kawhi for life.

Absolutely cannot softball the punishments here.

> This should’ve been dealt with like last year.

Why? If they had handed out a punishment at the very start of the investgation, before they could find details like the Daktronics stuff (and probably more!!!) that just makes it more likely the punishment would not be severe enough. Gathering all evidence possible before making a decision is a good thing. Imagine if the police began an investigation on a drug lord, and before they can build an actual case to put him behind bars for life, they only go after a small charge that will get him out in a few years. That would be bad process.

I think part of the issue is they are trying to get their arms around EVERY violation before making their punishment, and the more layers they peel back the more there is.

But what they want to avoid is issuing the punishment, and then having more stories continue to roll out

Bro told like 2-3 funny stories and suddenly he’s got a podcast and looking for a mcafee/rogan bag

Same with many many player pundits. Just such shit takes from ex players who are out of touch with anything a normal person goes through.

the players should care because if not all teams do it, youre creating a competitive advantage for the orgs that dont abide by the CBA, that the players union agreed to. But that would require them to think more than 1 season ahead, and for future players that aren’t in the NBA yet.

just seems odd to let an owner break the rules, and then try to downplay how that impacts the league.

Just like back in thier college days

Because if the expectation becomes players taking less than market value and being made whole in shady backrooms, eventually someone is gonna get fucked, and there will be no recourse. It’ll be the bottom 99% of the league that is forced to take it on the chin, too. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face irl.

Finally, an intelligent take on r/nba

Remember us when you’re on top brother

As long as you can spot me some

Hey can I borrow a small amount? Just like 10 million. I have a plan. It’s not all cocaine. 

100% and you should be forced to give it to me and I should be forced to keep.

I think 10% should go to me.

Randy Marsh has more tegridy than either Ballmer or Silver

Wdym?!? A 250k fine and loss of a 2nd Rounder is more than enough to dissuade Ballmer from doing this a 4 th time and absolutely won’t open the floodgates to more blatant cap circumvention

Or like with the Sterling case, we have to hope that the public is so adamant that the correct business move is to force Ballmer to sell.

considering that some teams go heavily into the tax to create competitive rosters, i heavily doubt all the owners are okay with this. but they are being forced to adapt to the world around them.

if ballmer is not punished, then they have to try their best to pay their players under the table, or they neuter their competitiveness on the court and in the account books due to the luxury tax.

There is absolutely no chance they force him to sell the team. I don’t think this is worse than being a racist but even if it was Sterling wasn’t liked by anyone. It was really easy for the other owners to be okay with pushing for that sale.

As much as people hate the lakers they at least had the integrity to inform kawhi they had zero intention of breaking the CBA.

Yep this kind of stuff plus teams trading away actual assets to get under different aprons and tax lines makes me think not everyone is doing this.

I have no doubt owners were using connections or local businesses to help stars get better endorsement deals but the whole no show thing is well beyond that.

They just flat out paid kawhi under the table the exact amount of tax money he saved them to help them put together a better team

Well, maybe he would have gotten away with it the second time, because he seemingly was caught the first (that we know of).

He would have gotten away with it if Aspiration didn’t go under and leave in court records that this happened. If not for that there’d be no investigation in the first place this would have just all gone unnoticed.

Iirc stern didn’t want Ballmer to buy a team because he was so much richer than the other owners at the time he feared it would cause an imbalance. Silver said fuck it we want the money

Stern was good at doling out punishment to players, not necessarily the owners who pay him. The only owner to get seriously punished during Stern’s tenure was Glen Taylor and that is because he (or his staff) literally wrote down the terms of the back-room deal that they made for Joe Smith and that document was uncovered

Yeah, not having a severe penalty basically just lays out the blueprint for what other teams can get away with, and they can then point to Ballmer’s slap on the wrist as precedent for why they should be treated similarly.

I think you’d be surprised how many people bootlick billionaires for free

That circus over there is literally closer to reality tv than a sports league

A common take about the NBA on many other sports forums

Goodell has at least stepped in and put players on Commissioner’s Exempt lists when he’s needed to. Not in every circumstance, and even when he “should” have, but sheesh the man at least did SOMETHING. Burying evidence or changing the narrative around CTE is pretty damning though, then again, that’s a whole shield problem not just the commissioner.

Overall, Goodell is pretty basic, but he’s way better than Cathy/Adam, and that’s just a low bar.

This narrative needs to die.

3 teams talked to Kawhi and 2 of them said “nope” to the shady stuff. Clippers need to own that they were the only ones to make an offer that broke the rules.

Yeah, that was tough to listen to. Like I get he’s an access journalist like most “sports reporters” these days, but it’s disappointing to hear people bury their head in the sand for something that especially at this point is pretty obvious.

Kawhi didn’t need under the table endorsement deals either. He’s an NBA All Star with a championship on his resume. He had a legit endorsement with New Balance. College basketball players you’ve never heard of have legit endorsements. It’s not that hard.

But everyone can be shady or greedy and decide to push for more.