Per TPTMNBN owners and commissioner have a lot of discretion here, actually, and this podcast is plausibly enough for them to act.
Havenât listened to all the podcasts and such but has anyone on the record said this person at the Clippers set it up? Or is there some sort of proof of someone being involved?
There is no smoking gun but thatâs not the standard of evidence.
I follow enough sports teams accused of things they pretty obviously did to recognize the extent of the smoking gun (and its admissibility) is probably going to matter eventually â at least to some extent. 
If thereâs only circumstantial evidence, you would expect that the league is going to be worried about over stepping IMO.
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in my experience getting the commissioner to comment on it immediately is a very important step for the plaintiffs 
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My bet is that, given it took 9 hours for another reporter to find another $20 million they were going to pay him, we donât have all the evidence today that we will. Two days ago, the number of journalists crawling on this was 1, today itâs probably over 50.
Torre suggests the Clippers arenât the only team heâs looking at.
I think legal standard isnât relevant, the standard is âhow cheesed off are the plurality of ownersâ
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The NBA and Euro soccer leagues are obviously very different when it comes to this stuff.
NBA bylaws, CAS, NCAA IARP, EPL 115 charges âŚ
Only one team is undefeated in all of these: lawyers and billable hours.
Commissionerâs goal is obviously to levy a penalty that seems to satisfy everyone and keep it moving. But fine line to walk.
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Punishment in these cases is almost always draft picks, maybe the suspension of some team employees designated as fall guys, voiding kawhiâs contract, etc.
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How does it make any sense to argue Kawhi helped with the valuation? If they didnât have any endorsement deal with him, the only thing that would be different is that the company would have had $21 million more dollars to pay off other debts. Kawhi would need to actually endorse the company publicly to have any impact. Then of course, they already have endorsement deals with much bigger stars than Kawhi, who actually publicly endorsed the company, and paid him more than 4X the rest of them combined. Kawhi ainât that big of a star, and heâs still just a Clipper lol. So that arguments out the window, that explanation does not create any reasonable doubt at all.
Heâs really out here suggesting a CEO who was out there committing massive fraud was doing so just to give Kawhi Leonard $48 mill and getting absolutely nothing in return?
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The argument is that the Clippersâ sponsorship is more valuable if they are a 50 win team and not a 30 win team and have stars people want to watch 1 boosting national TV exposure and that many more people seeing your company logo.
That said I donât believe that Kawhi himself making $50 million to âprotectâ their purchase of $300 million sponsorship is proportional in a way that makes sense.
In the end, my response to Cubanâs retort is verbatim what Torreâs was: âWhen do we start treating Ballmer like an intelligent man, and not like Mr. Magoo?â
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That argument also makes no sense. Kawhi was already under contract with the Clippers for four years and the deal ran for four years, how does the deal do anything to ensure he stays on the Clippers?
If they wanted to protect their sponsorship value they wouldnât give any money to Kawhi, and would give it to induce other players.
Because with 1 year left on his deal he signed a 3 year extension
So the four year endorsement deal covers the final year of his existing Clippers deal and the three year extension.
Note though that Aspiration at this time had, public knowledge, been getting investigated by the Feds by this point.
So Cubanâs story is that, basically, Ballmer invested $50 million in a business that was publicly being investigated for wire fraud
But the endorsement deal was like 6 months after he signed the extension, so that argument makes no sense at all. Also, they kept Kawhi even after their sponsorship deal with the Clippers fell through.
I didnât listen to Torreâs podcast, but Zach Lowe ran through a summary of the show and said there was a stipulation in the contract that Kawhi had to be a Clipper for the sponsorship deal to be fulfilled. Zach Lowe cited that this is common in most athleteâs sponsorship deals with local companies (ex: Dame and Biofreeze).
Regardless of when Kawhiâs deal was signed with the Clippers, this would be an additional $7M inducement to stay with the team and not seek a trade out. If the deal was signed 6 months after the extension, then there was likely a handshake deal in place anyways.
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Listened to Zach Lowe on the Kawhi thing, he had Kirk Goldsberry, an old Spurs front office exec on the show. Goldsberry did lend some background to the long-standing shadiness of Uncle Dennis but not much on what did or didnât happen.
What I think is revelant is that Lowe (very well connected to executives) and Goldsberry (connected with some!) both guaged the current stance of league ownership as âextremely angryâ about this and that the posture at this stage is not that they need to establish Ballmerâs guilt but that Ballmer must provide a plausible argument beyond deniability that this did not happen the way it seems. Lowe and Goldsberry agreed that the league would need to prove something if they wanted to get extreme in punushment (stripping the franchise, etc) but the threshold to just levy fines and take draft picks is extremely broad and would meet with little to no pushback if they deem it the correct way to go.
Goldsberry had a league exec tell him âits not too far to say the integrity of CBA is on the line hereâ.
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Listened to TPTMNBN w/ Hollinger and Nate seemed like he had not changed his opinion of what happened but was considerably less confident the league would take immediate action. He mentioned speaking to some execs as well. Hollinger said specifically that this stuff is not going on elsewhere in the league and was extremely confident. Neither could even name another player historically where rumors like this existed. Hollinger also said the rest of the league would be pissed but hadnât really talked to anybody yet, everybody is just coming back from vacay.
Most important, Nate actually read the clauses in the CBA (lol, think maybe we shouldâve started thereâŚ) and I think the standard is fairly high? It sounds like you have to demonstrate a below market deal existed that was then compensated via circumvention. This is the relevant section:
(b) It shall constitute a violation of Section 1(a) above for a Team (or Team Affiliate) to enter into an agreement or understanding with any sponsor or business partner or third party under which such sponsor, business partner, or third party pays or agrees to pay compensation for basketball services (even if such compensation is ostensibly designated as being for non-basketball services) to a player under Contract to the Team. Such an agreement with a sponsor or business partner or third party may be inferred where: (i) such compensation from the sponsor or business partner or third party is substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player for such sponsor or business partner or third party; and (ii) the Compensation in the Player Contract between the player and the Team is substantially below the fair market value of such Contract.
(i) seems clearly in effect while (ii) seems clearly not. will be interesting to see how the league manages this if the other 29 are truly this pissed.
oh, thatâs pretty fascinating. i get the same reading. because it doesnât feel like kawhi signed a below-market deal?
Interesting most other people Iâve heard make it seem like theyâll have to find a serious smoking gun, like one of the founders of aspiration saying it happened. They also think and rightfully so ballmer will go nuclear if they try to punish them without a smoking gun.