Looks like no penalty at all for the Clippers & Kawhi
Hilarious. Draymond said it last week why shouldn’t every team do this?
They’re not all owned by the 5th richest dude in the world
I’m sure they can shell out an extra 28 mil to a top 10 player if they’re lucky enough to get one on their team
I did not realize Balmer paid for the entire stadium with his own money
Ballmer , for context, is worth between 150-180 billion. Every other owner combined in the league is somewhere north of 200 billion but less than 300. We’ll say 250 billion more.So every other owners wealth combined is only maybe 50-75 billion. Miriam Adelson(Mavs) is worth 40 billion, Dan Gilbert (Cavs) 29 billion, and Stan Kroenke(Nuggets) is worth 24 billion. Those are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th richest owners. Worth about 93 billion. Ballmer is worth a little less than twice what they are combined.
This dude makes multi billionaires look middle class. There’s levels to this shit. Truly obscene wealth. And he earns about a billion a year just from his MS stock, let alone any other endeavors. This is what Mark Cuban meant when he calls himself a “middle class billionaire”.
I think other players have been getting deal like that for a while Brunson when he took a paycut for example (Dolan can just give his dad raise or get him tons of lucrative commercials ) LeBron now with the Sixers etc etc . They all get some money on the side
They all get money on the side for doing actual promo work or use of their NIL.
Kawhi had shadow no show deals
Similar deals that the Lakers and Raptors both denied his uncle.
I think you’re right to an extent, but I really don’t think anything is comparable to the Kawhi stuff unless or until anyone provides further evidence of that. Kawhi got $50 million in value just from Aspirations, and there’s been recent reporting that he has side deals with other companies as well.
Brunson’s dad getting a ~$200,000 raise would still be worth looking into, but it pales in comparison
Yeah prob true Kawhi and his uncle went massive greed so nothing can compare to it .. and still no punishment . I recall when Nets players talked about how team is renting ( or maybe even giving ) luxury houses for their “ extended family ” and girlfriends …. During KD era when they went all in .
Just one of many bonuses
Brunson’s situation is very different.
He didn’t take a pay cut at all. He signed for the maximum amount of money possible.
In 2024 he signed a max 4-year contract worth 156.5m. If he’d waited a year, he would have been a free agent and eligible for a 5-year contract worth 269.1m. He could have waited for that opportunity. However, if he got hurt that season, he would have been left with nothing.
Plus, it also comes down to the stupid way we talk about contracts. We’re comparing a 4-year max vs a 5-year max and pretending they’re the same. 61m of that 113m he supposedly “gave up” is just in the final year.
He’s still giving up a significant amount of money, but it’s more like 52m, and it works out to 13m/y. In return he’s getting guaranteed money and not having to worry about injuries.
He’s a 29-year-old undersized guard. When you look at other undersized guards, you really do have to take the money while it’s there. A lot of guys in his situation have dropped off very suddenly and without warning. Isaiah Thomas, Bradley Beal and Kemba Walker were pretty much all finished within 24 months of having a career-best year.
Brunson and the Knicks keep talking about him sacrificing for the team because it’s a great sales angle. Brunson gets to be the local hero, and the Knicks can use this situation to leverage other players in their contract deals.
Similar to Wemby. He just signed early when he could have held out for a bigger deal.
Brunson didn’t take a pay cut. He took the most money that was possible for him at the time
what you mean , https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/jalen-brunson-reveals-why-took-141102458.html he said it himself
Brunson discussed why he accepted a reported $113 million pay cut, saying the move helped the Knicks remain competitive while giving him peace of mind.
Every agent would advise their player to wait and get full money
He did it for team to stay competitive but ofc if Dolan wanted it he could have easily made up some of those loses to him on side not full 113 million ofc but bit by bit every owner can do it to avoid salary cap now
This is technically correct only because he signed an early extension. If he waited to become a FA, which was expected, he could have signed a new deal for a lot more money.
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This sub is not the place to talk about politics.
I’m willing to bet they do. Clippers are just the first ones dumb enough to get caught. Or just the first to do it at such a large scale they couldn’t not get caught.
Is it too late to ask Jaylen to play for us for the vet min, but the private equity that owns our team happens to invest $100 million a year into his local Boston businesses?
Brad has got to be pissed. He made a plan with the assumption that the cap actually matters.
The good news is that this sets up Tatum’s next contract where he takes a “paycut” to stay with the franchise.
except when the celtics do it they will get caught and everyone will go to jail
Okay, but do we get a championship out of it? Cause like, don’t take that idea off the table is all
Don’t forget Brady suspended for 4 games
The Patriots actually pulled off this scheme with Brady though.
The cheating investigation really didn’t show anything except multiple teams balls were deflated and the entire investigation in and of itself was carried out by people who had ulterior motives to accuse the Patriots of cheating
He made a plan with the assumption that the cap actually matters.
Even without this Kawhi situation, that logic is really dicey.
The current CBA has a 2028 opt-out clause if the NBPA or NBA are unhappy with the deal, and a lot of people have been talking about creating a clause that will help teams retain homegrown talent.
Brown’s extension won’t kick in until 2029, and it’s possible that by then there will be a rule that says a drafted player’s supermax will count for less against the cap/tax calculations.
This is gotta be the new way every team has to handle the cap and apron going forward
Ummmmm all the evidence is in the reporting Pablo Torre has been doing. Billionaires just continue to do whatever the fuck they want to do. And other billionaires continue to let them do it.
America in 2026, home of the scammers. Wonderful example we’re setting for the kids.
So the Celtics just traded away a home grown star to stay under a salary cap that no longer exist. Too bad they couldn’t have announced this sooner.
Brad was trying to trade Jaylen since we lost the Finals and he traded him for a guy who makes almost the same amount of money. The salary cap was just cover for Brad doesn’t think Jaylen is very good. It’s crazy that you guys don’t understand this.
It is kinda funny how everyone is doing mental gymnastics when I think it’s pretty much that simple. Also, I think the return (and, for example, the package the Bucks took for Giannis and the younger players the Blazers reportedly said were off the table in a trade for Jaylen) is validation that a lot of other GMs basically feel the same way.
It’s as simple as, “Would you rather have Jaylen or Paul George for one less year and a couple first round picks” and he took George and the picks. Of course financials come into play, but only in the context of how much money a team wants to allocate to a guy they don’t think is very good. It’s pretty well known that the salary cap max contracts artifically suppress the contracts of the best players, so that max contract players from the tier below the top 10 would make more than a max contract in an open market.
It’s funny how the guy you replied to got -5 votes and you got 4. I agree with both of you for the record. Just funny haha
I took the blunt route and didn’t expand further would be my guess, but yes Reddit never makes any sense.
It’s probably more “it’s crazy you don’t understand this” lol. Maybe read as condescending but I understood your point. I also understand your point because I’ve agreed with the trade since day 1 haha. You watch enough games where he doesn’t pass the ball and goes into madman drive mode and the decision is easy to make. He pretty much lost the last 4 games for us this year single-handedly and outside of that, maybe the guy who has been in trade rumors every year for the last four years, has said favorite year of his career was the one where his running mate had a torn Achilles, and has clear issues being a 1b is not a good candidate for a 70 million dollars extension. I can really only think of one playoff series I liked brown in and it’s not 2024. To this day, I think Tatum was robbed
Also his analytics are not that good and Paul’s are elite. Which is a thing people don’t understand. And we have the most analytically aggressive FO and coaching staff. People think we got nothing on the return. They’ll find out soon enough.
What’s crazy is he *just* whooped our ass, so I’m shocked people think he’s over the hill.
But yeah I’m broadly condescending so that’s probably true as well lol
Yup. Turning a blind eye to this will be like baseball ignoring steroids and the NFL ignoring concussions. It’ll be something they spend the next 30 years trying to recover from once they actually try to prevent it
I hear you, but, no leagues are getting destroyed. Here we are not that long after learning about steroids in baseball and concussions in football, and both leagues are doing great. Franchise values never went down, and now they are rising like crazy.
No problem from within a league can stop any of these leagues. The only thing that can stop them is enough societal instability that the games cannot viably be staged.
It’s almost like Silver WANTS that to happen at this point he’s so spineless and incompetent. Stern must be rolling in his grave.
So let’s just pay all our guys under the table then and make a super team, right?
Oh wait, we’re not in LA
Should have kept Jaylen and gave him a teaching gig on MIT/Harvard under the table.
Jayson Tatum about to sign an extension for $1,000,000 and then Dunkin Donuts will endorse him for 300 mil
Patriots lose 2 first round draft picks somehow.
YO BILL! DID YOU HEAR? WE CAN NOW ACTIVELY SET UP SHELL COMPANIES TO STACK CHAMPIONSHIPS.
LET’S GET TO IT!
But let us even sniff an apron and we gotta detonate everything lmao
Bad precedent being set here, for what it’s worth.
Just opened up a real “well they did it” situation with a lot of teams trying to get an edge in the future
NBA didn’t find anything. Pablo Torre, on the other hand….
Shocker the NBA doesn’t want to punish a billionaire who has shown he’s willing to spend like a drunk when it comes to team building
LMAOOO there’s no salary cap.
I realize you all are realists, but do you feel no outrage at the sham of this disgraceful finding? The issue isn’t that players are getting paid on the side, or even that this practice harms the competitive balance of the league…
The issue is that the Clippers are so profoundly sh*t that even with the wealthiest owner in the league - actively cheating and getting away with it - they still can’t win.
Clearly the punishment for Balmer should not be banishment. It should be requiring him to own the Clippers forever.
And maybe requiring him and Kawhi (clearly, the funnest guy ever!) to become roommates. Don’t put them in prison. Just make them play golf together at the club. Balmer (Blamer?) will eventually claw his own eyes out.
Justice.
In other news, Kawhi Leonard richer than ever, somehow.
Live footage of Silver rn:
silver is ruining the league
Least surprising news that the league and Silver will do nothing. If only Brad and Wyc had gone to Amica Insurance and Vista Print for some lucrative sponsorship deals for a certain NBA championship team
Money won. Not a title. But it gives teams an edge to have a super rich guy with that amount of power.
We blew up our championship team for no reason and now have 0 hope of getting back unless we stack high lottery picks again lmao
Time to start cheating
I’m excited for 5 years from now when this becomes the next deferred money in the MLB thing, where every team with money just does this to retain players.
Adam Silver is submitting to the owners.
“We’ve fully investigated ourselves and found we’ve done nothing wrong.”
Any guilty verdict ruins the integrity of the league and therefore hurts the NBA. Of course they’re going to say everything was legitimate.
this hurts the integrity far more for the people that actually pay attention.
to the general public you are sadly correct
Cap is not real as of now.
League is corrupt to the core and has been for a while match fixing and this is nothing new. I mean look at Trump whos taking bribe after bribe right infront of the public they know peasants cant stop billionaires
Balmer has Silver by the balls - if silver prosecutes him on this, Steve will/is gonna unleash the secrets of the NBA - so much grifting and money laundering
Maybe next time we draft 2 generational players back to back, we could offer them the minimum an a couple no show sponsorships.
no era penal :(
This is likely to save face for Ballmer. They only specify that there was no evidence for Ballmer making payments. The team can still get punished and I imagine they still hit Clippers hard but not Ballmer specifically
That’s a green light.
Bill Chisholm somewhere cackling like a supervillain
Go to the clippers sub and look how delusional they are lol
This league is fucking cooked.
Email sent from clippers to raptors: we want him back.
I definitely wouldn’t say ‘no penalty at all’, not sure where you got that from. I’d expect the firm will find things that the Clippers and/or Kawhi at least did procedurally wrong. There’s not going to be a mammoth penalty no, but wouldn’t be surprised if they lose picks.
NBA already refuted this. More to come
Adam Silver is a joke. An empty suit. So damn weak
Seems like they are placing the blame on team sponsors and claiming Balmer had no idea of the under the table money to get Kawhi.
This is not what any of that means. It means no penalty for the OWNER. Not the team or player.
I’m sure the Patriots will be docked a draft pick and suspended for 4 games
I can see the ad now: I’m Jaylen Brown and I always use the Fung Wah bus to travel to Knicks games. You might die but you’ll arrive on time!
No need to look at Jalen Brunson now