Also, to me, minimum contract to then later sign a bigger contract isn’t even that bad, compared to actual side payments outside the cap.

To some extent, the minimum contract thing is already kind of generally accepted to happen informally, it’s not that bad IMO.

The timberwolves basically had a document that said “crimes we committed” available publicly after a lawsuit. the league punished them so hard because they had to. 

The Joe Smith is probably appropriate. 3 FRP (the initial 5 was ultimately reduced), voiding the contract doesn’t really apply here because there is no Bird rights situation and they aren’t even retaining the player.

So 3 FRP, a big fine and ban Ballmer for a year.

Seems like enough to dissuade teams from trying this shit in the future, especially knowing the leverage it would give to the players who they paid that way.

The punishment should be worse for the Clippers, but Silver is much more of a pushover than Stern. I have a sinking feeling it’ll be a slap on the wrist.

No it doesn’t. It should be the same. Or else who draws the line between role player and star. You can’t have different punishments for the same crime based on a subjective stat based on something like PPG?

also, it was small potatoes because while it was dumb for the wolves to write it down, everyone does the wink-wink we’ll extend you later dance

this, is like, a whole different realm, a new way to funnel money to players outside of the cap, not just a handshake we’ll give you another deal, real pay-for-play money outside your salary

Ballmer’s lawyer will settle for forfeiture of 5 first round picks by the Timberwolves, plus nullifying Joe Smith’s contract. 

Edit: the comment above me thinks Stern leaking the undercover investigation to the press when the FBI told him not to is cooperating, a coincidence that bolstered stern’s “one bad apple” narrative.

David stern quite literally stopped cooperating with the FBI during the betting scandal. You guys are genuinely on crack.

It still amazes that Silver is able to stand with no spine

The romanticizing   of David stern is so wild, go look at all the shady shit Sterling was doing under his watch.

The reason the league came down so hard on the Timberwolves is they essentially had a publicly available document called “tampering and how we’re doing it” 

Stern let the clippers move illegally, let Sterling stay an owner after the federal government sued him for racist business practices, the only people he came down hard on was black people for dressing too much like black people and implementing a dress code. 

I have no idea what fantasy version of David Stern some of you have in your heads.

Amare Stoudemire got a bigger penalty for standing up from the bench than Kawhi and Ballmer will get for this

You think Stern wasnt a slimeball crook? Lmao

The problem is the NBA nor the NBAPA is getting any of the money from these under the table deals so how can they be ok with it

Didn’t stern allow the ref with extremely clear mob ties and ties to dirty refs?

Stern covered a lot of shite up too, namely the Tim Donaghy betting scandal.

Jesus you’re a dipshit.

The small market owners are probably pissed because they wouldn’t be able to get away with it like Ballmer will, and the players are probably pissed because they could build superteams while taking no-show under the table deals. This is the worst sports scandal (excluding individual domestic violence cases) since the 2017 Astros and the Flippers deserve the maximum punishment. Unbiasedly, Kawhi’s contract should also be voided

I don’t get why everyone is so certain there won’t be a big punishment.

The rest of the owners employ Adam Silver as much as Ballmer does.

His wealth being so high isn’t really that relevant.

The owners that are not “slap on the wrist” types should be mad.

Some of them are probably scheming though.

100%. The CBA exists first and foremost to limit revenue sharing to players. This would completely undermine that, you might as well just tear it up.

Traffic violation fines should scale with income or wealth

But even without the financial indifference he still runs the risk of getting his license suspended/taken

250k is a rounding error. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It could never happen, but a fair punishment would be lowering the salary cap for the Clippers by like 25% for the next 7 years and use the loss to raise the cap for every other team. Plus 7 years of no draft picks and an ungodly fine.

Give him the full Joe Smith without mercy. Five FRPs without regard for Stepien rule restrictions, void Kawhi’s contract, and every penny of under the table deals tacked on to Clippers salary cap calculations to calculate retroactive repeater tax payments.

Despite it being a relatively small percentage of his net worth, it would almost certainly be the largest fine in pro sports history and would wound his pride almost as much as knowing he’s going to be 80 years old before his NBA team can even begin to rebuild.

you punish Ballmer with shit money can’t buy. Picks for a decade. jk, but picks yes. maybe 3-5 years worth.

Maximum allowable fine is like \(1m on a player iirc (or something in that neighborhood, it’s low). But! They can also force him to disgorge any earnings from contracts that were illegal under the CBA and void his contract, which is a max right now and he couldn’t get on the open market. That’s a loss of like \)40m plus.

The way he left the Spurs already did that, this just adding onto it now.

I’d say that it started out as more of a “it’s totally understandable for him to accept more money,” but has quickly turned into a “he actually tried to extort these franchises for as much money as possible.”

It’s left a bad taste in my mouth and has completely unmasked the whole “humble” perception he’s built up over the last 10+ years. You could maybe blame Uncle Dennis for a lot of the crap that went down in San Antonio, but it has become abundantly clear that Kawhi isn’t/wasn’t some innocent bystander.

He used to be just the quiet guy who wanted a quiet life now he is just a giant money grubbing asshole. Dude has made 375 MILLION dollars. Speed running being the bad guy

This. It’s entirely in the owner(s!) and league’s interest to let Kawhi take the blame and we’re buying right into it.

Dude gave back too. $3.2 million to MSU which built the new Strength and Conditioning Center across from the Breslin. He may be controversial (putting it very mildly), but he put his money where his mouth was and gave back to the school and program that got him to the draft after making (sadly losing) a championship. Without his run at MSU he may not make it to Golden State and the dynasty doesn’t happen. Dude ain’t dumb (he just does dumb shit in game 🤣).

He IS a smart dude, his defensive IQ is amazing and im a lebron fan so i have seen how he can just shutdown team’s offense.

the problem with him is more often than not, his emotions override his brain.

He knows the public, media, and moneymaking aspects of the nba.

He’s going to be well suited for his retirement more than more athletes not named Shaq. Who also famously has “it” 

They were purchased by Saudi $ when Walter bought the team, too

Also Qatari foundation bought some Washington Wizards shares.

I think it was 2-3 years ago.

this is completely backwards lol. Owners fight tooth and nail to limit revenue sharing in the CBA. They absolutely do not want to be paying hundreds of millions off the books in addition to the salaries on the books.

If this were to be normalized, there’s no way they can compete with Ballmer’s war chest. HE is the reason why the apron rules exist. Now you can’t throw unlimited money at your roster, or you’ll get hit with competitive restrictions.

If owners collectively wanted to be paying the players that much money, the CBA would be completely different. More like MLB with no salary cap, and no Max contracts.

Bro could buy every other team in the league at their current valuation, and just his non NBA assets would still be larger than all but two or three of those hypothetical former owners, flush with even more billions.

I think this saga demonstrates why billionaires don’t retire and its never enough. Because even when you’re a two digit billionaire, you can still just be picked up and set down against your will to wherever the three digit billionaires desire.

Fines don’t mean anything to a guy like Steve Ballmer, it’s not like they’re going to fine him $10 billion or some number that would actually sting. And you can’t really ban him from basketball operations, sure you can keep him from the facility and take his official communications away but the man knows how to buy a burner phone or discretely meet him GM for lunch

He cheated in an attempt to buy unearned success for the team. Sucks for the fans, but the penalty has to include something that’s gonna hurt on the court because that’s what he cares about, not money obviously

Wolves lost 3 - nba deemed 5 too many

this. it’s silly the league even had to publicly clarify that trading for a player currently under investigation means that his new team may be impacted by the findings of that investigation lmao

Draymond is obviously very problematic as a player but he has great insight and I enjoy listening to him. This sub is prone to groupthink just like any other sub and it’ll take a long time for the general narrative around Draymond to shift

He just got invited back to the Raptors building

I mean its just a safe assumption that billionaires would do this. Most of these billionaires have done shady things in their regular businesses. Like Sixers owner is literally on the Epstein list and Mavericks owner directly funds genocide. Am I suppose to believe they would never do under the table dealings? The only reason they would not do it is because they are cheap and value profitability over winning. Which I’m sure alot of owners do like in Portland.

Dirk for Sure.

they do with plausible deniability. like all you have do is show up for a single social media post

Well the Raptors and Lakers said no to Kawhi.