It’s so hilarious that all he had to do was just 1 photo op with a couple of trees

Literally could have done the smallest, most low effort event and would have been in the clear lol.

it really is a chef’s kiss moment, was it really that hard to get your picture taken with a shovel and a tree?

I mean you got to admire the pure dedication to laziness here. This man really said no the working for advertisement money give me money underhanded. Or playing much basketball in general lol 

That would mirror his Clippers contract.

Even mobsters will sit at a construction site for hours for their no work jobs

From his perspective they were not paying him to do work they were paying him to be on the Clippers. Because it’s all tied to his basketball worth. So I bet he figured he was already keeping his end of the bargain.

My gut feeling (not a defense) is his uncle pressured him into it and basically said let me take care of this shady stuff, you won’t have to be involved in the dealings or do anything and we’ll both get paid

It’s so crazy, imagine getting paid that much money and still thinking you shouldn’t have to work for any of it. It should just come to you automatically. The absolute entitlement is just unbelievable.

No shit

All they had to do was create some flyers with AI, with Kawhi on it, and I bet no one even looks twice at those deals

Bored man got paid. 🤷

Went from being a quirky recluse to straight up lazy.

If the reports are true that this is blatant across the league, this may be the one wrinkle that is the most damning. Many other superstars get that crazy sponsorship money but are putting in some effort. Kawhi is going to be the one to end that, alienating himself from the other players.  

He’s fleecing the league at this point.

I just don’t get it, it’s not like Kawhi hasn’t been in ads.

It’s almost like he’s taking a religious exemption

Absolutely insane he basically got a no-show job like he’s Paulie Walnuts

If he does work for either of these deals he can no longer claim ignorance if it all goes tits up. This way Uncle Dennis is the fall guy, if Kawhi gets caught he can blame it on Uncle Dennis and his agent.

Makes me think he may have been unaware of the deals to begin with and it was uncle Dennis getting himself paid

And it’s not like he was busy playing the games.

Could have done the photoshoot during one of his rest days

Need to be careful that we’re not using this to absolve the Clippers of being the only ones to actually make this deal.

Everyone else said no.

If someone asks you to commit a crime and you do it, then you are still guilty.

But then that would set a precedent with other companies where he would *have* to do something

And god forbid he does anything at all but play basketball

Bored man gets paid

At the very core of this scandal, since the day it broke, is that it’s absolutely confounding that these companies did not promote Kawhi as their celebrity endorser. Brother, if you’re paying millions of dollars for someone to be associated with you, shouldn’t you be bragging that said celebrity is associating him or herself with you???? Wouldn’t you want that celebrity to be, at the very minimum, Tweeting or posting about your shit. C’mon man lmao

Yeah a photo op wouldn’t have put him in the clear given the size of the contracts and the relationships these companies had with the clippers/their owner

An unfair market value for promo work is still promo work.

I haven’t seen a Kawhi new balance commercial in years, but I saw one, and I don’t question how much he made doing it because I saw him do it. If Ballmer paid them 1.2B and they paid Kawhi 1.1B, it could still be explained away despite public perception being what it’d be.

These emails begging daktronics to get something scheduled and booked suggests LAC knows he needed to do SOMEthing to help them separate themselves from the deal and legitimize the “endorsement”.

The reason they didn’t announce it is likely because the size of the deal is a huge red flag. The deals were not fair market value, and Kawhi making a token appearance wouldn’t have changed that.

Exactly this. It wasn’t secret because Kawhi was lazy. It’s because they were trying to hide the deal from public and league scrutiny. An owner can’t funnel money through another company to a player, whether it’s public or not. That’s the definition of cap circumvention.

Seems like the lie that keeps digging a bigger hole….. you ain’t seriously paying a guy to endorse your stuff and never mentioning it…

It’s obviously a terrible look that the contracts didn’t require Kawhi to do any actual work.

I think this is still understated lol. Doing nothing in return for money isn’t really a contract. Both sides need to give “consideration” as an element of a legal contract. Consideration can be money, promise, whatever, but you need to have some skin in the game–an obligation of some kind–to facilitate a legally binding contract.

A question asked in complete ignorance , who determines fair market value/appropriate compensation?

For example , if whatever company said “our internal metrics show that past a certain point celebrity endorsement has a negative affect. So to maximize our ROI we only wanted to show him off a little bit. Unfortunately he wouldn’t give a pro rated discount so it was that amount for the little we want or  we don’t get him. And our nerds in the basement assured me despite the small exposure , it would be worth the money , especially if they won a title which our other set of nerds assured was very likely.”

Also, supporting a company planting tree is an easy good PR work to be announce. 

Very well articulated. +1

I wonder how many other players are getting deals like this?

Huh? Companies don’t announce how much they’re paying their endorsers when announcing the deal. The entire point of laundering the money through sponsorship deals was to make illegitimate money look legitimate. If Kawhi doesn’t do his part to pretend it’s a real deal by doing token sponsorship activities, they might as well just pay him under the table from Ballmer’s personal account and not introduce a bunch of new randos into their conspiracy.

I wonder how much plausible deniability Kawhi has. I can imagine a scenario where Uncle Dennis is doing all these side deals and just has Kawhi sign things to open the accounts but that’s why they’re so adamant that they’re no-show deals? But then again, at some point Kawhi has to ask ‘why do I have to do all this to get paid?’

The companies were sponsoring Kawhi lol. Seems pretty straightforward to me. 

Because that’s how the contract was written

What? Lmao bro wasn’t working long hours for scraps, he refused to do jack for millions. Every quiet quitters main opp

This makes no sense

Matter of fact, send someone to cut down these trees in my backyard. Fuck foliage. 

Privilege fucks with your head

They were trying not to draw attention to the deals in the first place

I’m going to go with selfish. This largely isn’t his problem to solve and I imagine that’s his mindset with it.

It may cost him his bird rights, but it looks like he made out with about half a billion these last 7-8 years. & that’s just what’s been uncovered with phony endorsements and his nba salary. He may be sitting on a billion, all streams considered.

thats bc he knows sliver not gonna do shit

Isn’t that everyone’s dream?

Sounds like a great team to me.

Year after year I’m more and more glad he’s not a Spur. Dude is such a POS.

Uncle Dennis finessed the league.

I wouldve done the same

That’s Ben Simmons

That subs still a thing? Good lord

Saint Leonard the Bag Grabber

What’s the phrase? “Don’t meet your heroes.”

The raptors didn’t want the deal with a threat of a voided contract or suspension hanging over it. They will definitely still do the deal once they know he’s not being suspended or his contract voided.

This isn’t a moral stance from the raptors.

By all accounts on the Raptors side they still fully expect the deal to go through and for Kawhi to be on the roster to start the season. The local Raptors beat reporter has dug through the CBA, and there isn’t actually a mechanism to suspend Kawhi from playing in the league. They can void his clippers contract and ban him from signing again (with the clippers), but they arn’t going to do that if it the Raptors want the trade to go through and still get his bird rights.

These revelations put the Tahoe thing in a new light for me lol. Maybe it’s less about being frugal, and more about being paranoid to spend money while getting these under-the-table payments.

Spurs deserved it. They fucked over the teams that legitimately deserved to land Duncan and Wembanyama by pretending to be bad for a season. Their entire franchise is built on cheating. They tried to rush Kawhi back from injury, then traded him to Toronto out of spite, and got decent value back. Kawhi owed the Raptors no allegiance, he had every right to become a free agent.

Would require working to teach that class though

If you paid Kawhi to teach that, he’d require a no-work clause to never actually do it though

We need to stop calling these deals endorsements because they weren’t. They were just player salary that violated the NBA’s CBA.

What if he was never injured, lol.

Waiting for Cuban to tell us why this is a nothing burger

You would make a good lawyer or consultant🤣

AI Kawhi is under load management sir.

A plywood would make a better endorser… At least it’ll stand still for a photoshoot.