Lowe’s take was basically that Silver has pretty broad unilateral power to wield here virtually on a whim.
Now he doesn’t WANT to do it on a whim, but if he has 25 po’d owners, that may be sufficient. There’s obviously levels of punishment he’s not going to broach without incontravertible proof.
He had said, in 2019 when circumvention was raised as an issue (amusingly, with Uncle Dennis and Steve Ballmer!!!) that he was willing to hire lawyers and have them subpoena phone and email records to track it down if he got a whiff of this.
as we all know, given how often the NCAA has had to resort to the “lack of institutional control” charge to get some allegations over the line, “knowingly” is the easy weasel-your-way-out word here. Personally, I think a more reasonable threshold here isn’t “did you know” but “should you have known”.
I thought the arbitrator thing was only if it reached a certain level. I think Silver can strip draft picks pretty much with wonton disregard.
You have to be an idiot or ballmer/clippers homer not to think the clippers played a major role in that kawhi aspiration deal. Can it be proven without a doubt in the court of law? Doubtful but I mean come on it’s clear as day they played a role.
FTR court of law isn’t relevant here. The NBA has its own internal standards laid out in the CBA. Like, see the clause above. All that’s relevant is if it happened. The Clippers didn’t have to have played a role or not to be punished.
The issue tho is that (ii) does not seem to me to be met.
Yeah, at the very least, someone needs to sort of explain why Aspiration gave Leonard $48 mil to do nothing, without the Clippers saying a word, when Drake and Robert Downey Jr. were getting like 3% of that sum and appearing in ads!
Civil court and criminal court also carries two different burdens of proof. Civil cases (I’m not a lawyer, sorry lawyers) is “the preponderance of evidence”.
To me, that’s not a standard that helps Ballmer here.
Of course, he has endless money and the best attorneys so he could make it a massive pain if he wanted to.
It’s like a um fans saying stallions did not orchestrate a sign stealing ring, yeah in court you’d probably get it thrown out but I mean come on it’s clear as day um was orchestrating a sign stealing ring.
Section 3. Penalties. (a) Upon a finding of a violation of Section 1 above by the System Arbitrator, but only following the conclusion of any appeal to the Appeals Panel, the Commissioner shall be authorized to (i) impose a fine of up to $4,500,000 (fifty percent (50%) of which shall be payable to the NBA, and fifty percent (50%) of which shall be payable to the NBPA-Selected Charitable Organization (as defined in Article VI, Section 6(a))) on any Team found to have committed such violation for the first time; ii) impose a fine of up to $5,500,000 (fifty percent (50%) of which shall be payable to the NBA, and fifty percent (50%) of which shall be payable to the NBPA-Selected Charitable Organization) on any Team found to have committed such violation for at least the second time; (iii) direct the forfeiture of one First Round Draft Pick; (iv) void any Player Contract, or any Renegotiation, Extension, or amendment of a Player Contract, between any player and any Team when both the player (or any person or entity acting with authority on behalf of such player) and the Team (or Team Affiliate) are found to have committed such violation; and/or (v) void any other transaction or agreement found to have violated Section 1 above.
My extremely non-expert reading is you have to have violated both the excess value and under market contract clauses to be subject to penalty under Section 1.
I think rn the NBA is finding out exactly what its powers are bc people who typically know the ins and outs of all this stuff are reading it on air for the first time.
If the CBA really doesn’t have any teeth here and the NBA is left trying to push its discretionary powers, I guess you’re right? But I can imagine that not being very appealing to Ballmer unless he can actually demonstrate his innocence. Bc there’s a lot of unfun stuff that becomes public record in these kinds of proceedings. And if he can demonstrate his innocence, he’ll just do that for the NBA, not a court.
Not how I read it, otherwise signing a guy to a max contract (which definitionally is not under marker) would then be license to pay him anything you want under the table. It’s gotta be an “or” not an “and”.
The word in the CBA is literally “and”! I remain not a lawyer but that seems clear to me and why I’m saying the NBA seems a bit caught w its pants down here. Can imagine some kind of Ballmer Rule ending up in the next CBA if this reading is correct.
Between that and the Ballmer Peak, you REALLY gotta respect Steve as an innovator.
I guess you guys are right but it’s nuts to me, then, that one could say “Well, I paid Shai a max deal so now I can go get my buddy’s oil company to pay him another $30 million a year and its fine.”
We are in complete agreement there. Which is why I keep coming back to the fact that people who could tell you exactly what a 2nd Round Exception guy can get max paid in 2028 don’t seem to know the relevant language here. Which IMHO means the NBA isn’t back channeling their execs the answer. Which is a bad sign for the NBA’s prepardness on this.
Or maybe everybody really was on vacation and John wasn’t bullspitting on that.