Cuban knows he’s made similar deals. I’d wager every “free argent destination” and team that’s able to truly hold onto major stars has done the same.

The thing people don’t understand is that billionaires are the smartest people in the world who dictate the worlds politics to their benefit out of completely earned benevolence and even handedness. Unless that would make them morally or politically culpable for their actions, in which case they’re sort of just little guys.

Mark Cuban has been rich for too long, he’s forgotten that he’s just luckier than all of us not smarter than all of us.

“Ballmer is too smart to do blatant cap circumvention!! But also he was gullible and dumb enough to fall for this con man” 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

I liked Marc Cuban but when i saw that interview I knew billionaires gonna defend billionaire friends.

Wouldn’t surprise me the it was Cuban who gave Pablo the tip since Ballmer did some shady shit to lure DeAndre Jordan away from his team.

He’s dog walking the league, because they cannot finish the investigation (and let some things go unpunished), until they know that he doesn’t know anything else anymore.

This is exactly why journalism is important, it keeps the powers that be more honest.

I think it’s been slow rolled bc it takes a lot of time to gather and verify the info

100%. That interview was embarrassing, can’t believe Cuban did it.

The clippers are about to get an 8 second violation

I oppose the clippers on principle so even if he had nothing I would have been on board.

I thought he was going for an independence day vibe - they knew then! 

GIMMEALLUGOT

GIMMEALLUGOT

Won’t someone think of the billionaires?

It’s not exculpatory, it’s damning. Teams don’t get involved in that type of stuff because all of it is outside of the organization. Unless it’s not. They wanted Kawhi to do something because if he did for Daktronics or Aspiration, that would’ve provided the cover that it was a legitimate business deal

The Wolves were stripped of five first round picks - I think in the end they were only fined three first round picks. But their owner (and GM?) were suspended for a whole year and not allowed team contact or at the arena.

The Clippers cheating scandal is orders of magnitude worse than what the Wolves did.

If we are taking as proportional what a punishment for the Clippers should be it would be about 15 first round picks and 5 year suspension for Ballmer. This clearly will not happen.

But I wish the 29 other owners would get to together and vote Ballmer out of the NBA. They have the power to do this.

Ballmer is wealthier than all of the other 29 owners combined.

So fining Ballmer and the Clippers will make no difference - he will earn any fine back in a matter of hours. Even if you fined Ballmer a billion dollars which clearly would never happen he would still not even feel it because it isn’t even 1% of his wealth.

How are they pretending nothing is happening, they’re investigating it lol

The difference here is Ballmer is worth more than basically all the other owners except the Dumonts combined. 

He has a giant money dick he can slap them with and that seems to be what is happening here.

You have to remember that the Wolves actually had it in writing. That’s why it happened so fast. Here the law firm is putting together all the evidence it can get. The other thing is that Smith took a minimum to allow the team to use their cap for other things while all but guaranteeing him a bigger pay day later. Kawhi was already on a max and was getting paid above what the NBA allows. Both are bad but the latter isn’t exactly a competitive advantage on the court.

They didn’t have a choice with the timberwolves considering they had undeniable proof, no way out of it basically

It has been very good for Pablo’s career - and his doggedness has earned him his recognition and Pulitzer but its also given him a platform for other whistleblowers or leakers to come to him now with other stories.

Pablo is a highly intelligent guy, a hard worker and a very good journalist.

Do we know what the investigation has uncovered?

Exactly. And why should Pablo help the NBA when they dragged their feet so much at the beginning and most NBA media were like “it’s really not that big of a deal and who knows if Pablo’s even got the facts right”.

Ballmer won’t accept the findings and will just lawyer up. Even after he was found guilty of circumventing the salary cap in 2015.

The fact Ballmer won’t accept punishment is exactly why I want the other 29 team owners to take the nuclear option which is to boot Ballmer from the league. They have the power to do that.

You have to have rules otherwise the richest of the richest will do as they please just like they do elsewhere in society.

Nope, it definitely won’t. Ballmer is too rich. Dude has more money than like most of the other owners combined.

They want him around despite his shenanigans.

The thing is Pablo might not have had the hammer early on but its totally conceivable that since the investigation has started that more and more people have provided Pablo with documents and information - which is absolutely checking for veracity over many many months.

And Ballmer playing the fool the day after the story broke “They conned me!” Then the second shoe drops and Pablo drops another episode. This one is a centipede. It’s gonna run a long time.

Yes, thank you for the correction. I did indeed mean centi-billionaire.

It is mind boggling to imagine humans accumulating this much money as individuals. You couldn’t even spend this much money if you lived 50,000 normal human lives.

This is why giving Ballmer and the Clippers a fine is the most risible punishment. You know what every basketball fan wants except Clipper fans something that will cause great discomfort for Ballmer and the Clippers.

Outside of Ballmer getting booted out of the league which to me is the correct course of action - 29 other owners can do this - Ballmer needs to be suspended for 5 years with no contact with Clippers management or team and no access to the Clippers arena.

Instead Ballmer will lawyer up and take on the NBA because he’s not used to not getting his way or ever being cast as the villain.

Oh yeah, because Ballmer definitely provided, checks notes, 1 million times more value/labor to Microsoft than the average Microsoft employee.

You do not become that wealthy without cheating others out of their fair share. Don’t have to be communist to want people’s labor to be compensated based on the value of what they contribute.

Microsoft totally abused their market position, they had a monopoly and they crushed software competitors and Microsoft used their dominant position and power to protect their market status.

Also Ballmer might have worked hard (like hundreds of millions of other people in the world) but there are so many examples of Ballmer looking like a complete fool in business. The MacBook Air which he said was a terrible product and has gone on to become the highest selling laptop in the world and set standards for its excellence. Under Ballmer Microsoft acquired Nokia and totally destroying one of the big European tech firms.

It’s his hobby, his toy. Probably one of the only few things in life that still excites or makes him happy among all the other things he already has. He probably feels like he needs this more than a few billion more when he already has more than a hundred billion. If he was simply on tom dundon’s level of rich… then perhaps but the gap between tom dundon and us is closer than the gap between him and ballmer.

Ballmer sits courtside at like MOST of the home games.

Most owners DO NOT do that. Ballmer is 100% annoyed by all this. He doesnt care about the \(10 billion he could make. He’s worth like \)150 billion.

On one hand, you’re probably right. Certainly he’s not getting as stressed out about it as many of us would be.

But billionaires have massive ego, and this is still a public humiliation. And while it is highly unlikely, he would be forced to sell the team public pressure can be a hell of a thing.

Ballmer is really into the Clippers as we see on camera attending the games. It’s not about the $ for him, it’s trying to win (which is why that not having happened is so funny).

IMO worst case for him would be forcing him to sell the team, although Silver would never do that.

Ballmer has never been calm or relaxed about anything in his entire life. Probably has 3 heart attacks by lunch

Clearly it’s not about the money for Balmer

Yeh obviously,

But had he got off his ass then the Clippers would be covered and Kawhi wouldn’t be at risk of having his contract voided or being suspended

I don’t think they are saying the deal would have been legit, they are saying it wouldn’t be as clear if he was showing up. There would have been less digging into it.

You are correct, but then it would be much easier to argue that the companies were doing a favor for Ballmer instead of funneling money from Ballmer. People are overpaid all of the time in life. People almost never get paid to do nothing. 

Exactly. Only reason we know what Kawhi got paid was due to that.

And honestly even if they still went bankrupt, but Kawhi did actual deals for them, he’s in a much better position. I can picture it now. People are being “conspiracy theorists” claiming Kawhi was being overpaid by Aspiration as part of a cap circumvention deal, and the #1 most upvoted reply is:

You think the company that went bankrupt may have made poor decisions with how they spent their money? Wow, tell me more.

Would have been pretty cleanly swept under the rug because at the end of the day you could easily explain it away with that statement. People would still have known what the actual reason was but you can’t prove a bankrupt company wasn’t just stupid with their money and overpaying him.

Exactly. Which is also why he wanted to do “no show” deals. The less eyes on this the better. He wasn’t lazy, he was trying to be discreet.

Lol

I mean, yeah, thats fine. Just take our rings and be done with it 😢

David Stern would be building gallows or talking vaguely to sketchy Italians over this shit

Do the owners keep Silver around because he’s a pushover or something?

I literally can’t stand even looking at him. I know that’s shallow. He is bad at his job on top of behaving physically like an extraterrestrial

Funny, as far as billionaires go today, this Ballmer cap circumvention scandal is mostly only important for basketball reasons, not moral ones.

Look at kushner with the Lakers, adelsons with mavs, devos’ with magic, or Pablo’s reporting on Parra with the grizzlies for true moral bankruptcy from the billionaire class. 

Not to mention scummy business people like Ishbia or Dundon, plus the Leonsis types with Epstein files associations; I think Ballmer giving away free money looks pretty mild. 

The Aspiration scandal is directly related to on-court basketball, so we care very much here; but we should remember all the ways billionaires are ruining the world beyond sports.

Yeah, that’s the point of my joke. They could have done that to cover their tracks but they clearly just don’t care because they know they’ll get a slap on the wrist.

DaRon Holmes III plays for Denver. Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, the investigative work Pablo Torre is doing? I thought it wasn’t too much of a reach

I 100% agree.

But why would they do that? This is all before any reports of impropriety. Why would they do the opposite (force sponsorship activities) plan without any reason?

I disagree. How were the Clippers (supposedly) “trying to pretend (Daktronics) was a legitimate sponsor?

They hid the existence of it and probably thought that no one would ever learn that it happened.

Really feels like the former to me based on the language of the emails, rather than some PR speak for “do this event or we’re all going to break the law”

Why didn’t the Clippers make any of these efforts for Aspiration then?

So emails from the Clippers to Daktronics using “activation” and the respondent saying “thanks for the reminder Go Clippers” aren’t direct evidence, according to you?

Actually, they are.

I really don’t get it. People are just downvoting me like crazy. I’m not trolling, I just asked honest questions after watching the video.

I hate to be this way but it really is mob mentality, the actual reporting hasn’t mattered for a while. Look at every comment under this post and any Pablo post. Nobody is discussing the actual reporting and evidence it’s just a jerk circle.

It really does bother me too how Pablo reports everything with the same intensity of certainty, when there are undoubtably variations between the individual accusations he’s made and the evidence he has to support them.