Pablo Torre’s story is already out there. The Clippers are guilty. They’re just not going to be held accountable. Welcome to America, it sucks ass here.

They are trying to soft launch a slap on the wrist and gauge the fall out. I live in Scotland and will not be watching the upcoming season if it this corrupt. Get to fuck Silver, this will back fire in the long run.

There’s something weird going on because ESPN is more like an NBA subsidiary than any kind of independent entity. The media coverage of this has been extremely disappointing. Even Pablo has avoided talking about it.

Huh?? ESPN is the one covering here. The NBA is mad cuz ESPN preempted their rug sweep with an even bigger rug sweep. The NBA probably wanted to release a report saying Ballmer acted inappropriately and may have circumvented the cap but they couldn’t find direct proof of cap circumvention so they can’t punish him. When ESPN found this out they saw an opportunity to do some billionaire boot licking and released a front page article saying they did an investigation of the NBAs investigation and found it had found zero evidence of cap circumvention. This is highly unlikely as the NBA would never leak details of an ongoing investigation and it’s unlikely a credible leaker would ever use the words “zero evidence”. Even if their reporting is all well sourced, they’re undermining their own journalism by releasing the article before the NBA released its report. Say the NBA actually did have zero evidence and was going to release a report saying so. By releasing this article before the NBA released the report, the NBA can now simply change the wording of their report so it can refute ESPNs “zero evidence” claim. Absolutely nothing was accomplished by ESPN releasing their article before the NBA released its report. Unless the NBAs findings match the ESPN article exactly, we’ll never know what the original findings were. Such a stupid and pointless article.

Pablo has already connected this shit to at least one governor. He’s getting REAL CLOSE to the money. The rich hate that. Makes me shocked espn is standing by him. Figured they’d put out some bullshit “we’ll have a talk with Pablo about what he has said about poor Mr. Balmer”

It honestly wouldn’t shock me if Pablo gets murdered over this reporting

The hell are you talking about???

How is the NBA being contradicted? This is the Clippers running cover with the ESPN article.

You are assuming most other owners want to spend more money.

The other owners have a salary cap because they don’t want to spend money and don’t want other owners to spend money.

If other owners weren’t doing this, this would’ve been dealt with quickly and harshly. Everything about this is damage control.

The owners don’t WANT this to become the norm. It will cost them tens of millions. The problem is that they also don’t want a protracted legal battle with the Clippers. They desperately need Balmer to agree to a deal that squashes it from happening again while also hurting the team as little as they can stomach.

Literally, no one read it. Nothing about the article exonerates the clippers or suggests that’s the case.

This is like how conservatives all celebrated that the Mueller report exonerated Trump just because he said it did.

I really think there are tons of people who just want the drama and don’t actually care what reality is.

Yep the article is actually kind of low key damning for the Clippers being actually innocent. It confirms employees were involved, we get new info about Boingo wireless, and there’s a little throwaway line about Uncle Dennis receiving “travel and lodging” which I assume will come out as cars and houses (and may explain why Kawhi is no longer represented by him and Mitch Frankel). The denial itself is also only a denial of specific parts of what has overall been claimed. There’s also no explanation of why these companies never had Lawhi do anything.

Then it’s completely bullshit.

The league can’t comment on the ongoing investigation by an independent firm. Shelburne/ESPN knows that.

So, asking for comment any further, then standing behind their attempts in this article, is fucking sloppy journalism and such a cop-out.

They have to live and die by being right/wrong in this case.

Translation

Billionaires don’t like being held accountable and he is not going to accept being held accountable…of anything

This is why there’s been talk of the NBA separating the Kawhi and Clippers punishment. There’s a sorta deadline for the former, not for the latter.

The article clearly indicates that there’s still a potential that the Clippers are dinged for circumvention for improperly facilitating a (read: three per the report) sponsorship deal(s). This idea that the investigation exonerates Ballmer and the Clippers isn’t supported at all. They would not be trying to negotiate a plea deal to avoid having to take this arbitration if that were the case.

I think there are reasons in the article to be frustrated. The implication is that the league will only state that the Clippers acted improperly by introducing Kawhi to a sponser and that is some kind of indirect cap circumvention. It implies the league will state that there is no evidence suggesting direct circumvention via funneling money to Kawhi.

This seems to accept the Clippers argument that the sponsorship deals were independent and seems be to appease Ballmer by falling short of saying there was direct cap circumvention. It might allow lighter penalties to be used than in prior cases, since the language they use is “failure to supervise employees”. It goes on to say it is the opinion from certain legal representatives that such an assertion (introduction to a sponser = cap circumvention) would be dead on arrival so there is the spectre that by compromising the Clippers may escape all penalty.

At the very least the article does imply the league intends to go softly with what seems to be a pretty flagrant violation. At the worst, some might say the NBA wants to set up a situation where Ballmer and the Clippers get 0 punishment. Which could be argued is why Toronto pulled out.

Exactly, the ESPN report is corroborating all of the findings from Pablo Torre / The Athletic.

The only fresh news here is that the league’s investigation considers Ballmer not guilty in this, aka they cannot prove the team owner had a direct hand in these deals.

But that does not seem to extend to the team itself or the player and their representatives.

I definitely expect more to come. Seems very likely the team will get hit with a punishment and Kawhi may too.

do you expect reddditors to read articles instead of just headlines

Somehow, we’ve reached the point where people think of evidence as either establishing something with 100% certainty or ¯\ (ツ)/¯. Which is great news for people with the resources to muddy the waters.

I want one single person in the Clippers sub reddit to explain this. Or anyone calling Pablo a grfiter, etc. Anyone on the opposite side please explain. Because the side that shows the Clippers circumventing the cap has been extensively laid out.

Daktronics, which does not use celebrity endorsers, just decides they want to give millions of dollars to Kawhi, one of the least marketable superstars ever. At the same time as Aspiration and Boingo. After Kawhi and his agent were caught trying to solicit exactly this.

There’s simply no way to explain it in a benign way. Heads are going to roll one way or the other, no matter how spineless Adam Silver is.

It’s so blatantly obvious. But Silver has no spine.

They’re not even going to debate anything Pablo has revealed, they’re just gonna say “nope, nothing to see here” lol do they need a picture of ballmer handing the CEO of one of his contractors a check that says “Kawhi Salary Cap Circumvension Money”?

They either need to expose Pablo as a fraud or hammer the clippers for what is honestly maybe the biggest cheating scandal in American sports that I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Pablos been putting that question into the Kawhi episodes for months now. Basically daring anyone to either give a reason why these companies would pay Kawhi with zero return that isn’t cap circumvention OR point to another similar deal with another player where there is zero work put in, not a social media post, not an appearance, nothing.

8 times more than RDJ and Leo… who did work. 

Both ESPN and the NBA are shitbags and I wouldn’t doubt either one of them doing jackass things. So now I’m not sure which jackass shitbag to believe lol

They are praying that the Disney lawyers will bail them out

The league doesn’t want this anywhere near the actual legal system because more stuff will come out about what other owners are doing.

whether it’s espns or silvers

Ehh… espn isn’t gonna fuck themselves over for the fucking clippers lol

The fun thing is that it’s also wire fraud and RICO violations. Like federal prison fun for all these dorks. Wait no, I’m being told pardons are for sale.

I stopped subscribing in 2005. With the exception of live games, ESPN is a completey unnecessary product. They’re empty calories.

Pretty much 🤣 gotta love the self snitching

You mean the Clippers?

They had credibility?

Hahahaha, I just remember him finishing the sentences and said I’m uploading now. Cut to the drake celebration and right before they leave the house, he said what are you listening to crodie?? Diabolical 😆

“No one returned our calls so they did not deny what we are now going to publish. “

The “report” is based upon “leaks”. Only “leaks” who would say this would be people being investigated.

I don’t really understand how you’re going to get an accurate framing of the NBA’s findings based entirely on sources (who obviously seem to be on the Clippers side of the negotiations) with knowledge of what the NBA has presented to the Clippers of their initial findings. If you read the article, it seems basically like the Clippers trying to gain leverage in the court of public opinion because the NBA isn’t going to comment publicly on the investigation. 

Come on, we can come up with a better one than that

I’m not sure if it is happening more or ppl actually have the tools and electronic paper trail to catch them? In college basketball, the whole fixer/program booster scheme, game fixing by athletes, etc seems to have always happened. More seem to be getting caught more because less of a cash society and more paper trail from unexplained exchanged funds.

No