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Ballmer alleged to have paid Kawhi Leonard 28m under the table to avoid the salary cap


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Posted
48 minutes ago, Deej said:

Force them to hire Rodney Terry as their head coach?

That violates like .... 4 different Constitutional amendments.  

So I like it

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Posted
2 hours ago, Js1 said:

This is just..... wow. From Harrison Sanford

 

Proud do be a shill.

"What would you say you do here?"

"I take the news from the team/agent and announce it on xitter!"

"Couldn't the team/agent just announce it themselves?"

"Well....no.....teams/agents aren't good at dealing with people...can't you see I'm a people person?? What the hell is wrong with you people!!"

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Posted
6 hours ago, Captainant said:

James Franco Reaction GIF

 

There's a legal paper trail over this from the last five years too

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/41984045/ex-clippers-staffer-sues-says-was-fired-kawhi-concerns (published Oct'24)

And the clippers were playing games back in 2019 with uncle Dennis

https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/report-raptors-complained-to-league-multiple-times-about-clippers-tampering-with-kawhi-leonard

 

 

But seriously - how do you punish an org that

  1. has no draft picks to take away because they traded them
  2. has no conference or league titles to vacate
  3. has an owner worth more than the league, so you can't fine him enough to matter
  4. can't even suspend their star from playing because he's already injured 3/4th of the year anyways

Take them off tv? Ban them from post season? Kick Kawhi out the league for forever?

Posted
2 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

Reports coming out that the contract may actually be worth 48 million, not the 28 initially reported. 

$28M in cash, plus another $20M in stock. The stock went to zero when the company went bankrupt, but it was a $48M value to Kawhi. And wouldn't you know it, Ballmer had just made a $50M "investment" in the company before the deal was signed!

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Posted

Pablo Torre on Cuban's "Steve isn't that dumb" claim: "If not for that little line item (KL2 Aspire, LLC) in a bankruptcy filing that no one else noticed, this would not have been a problem... They would've gotten away with it, and now I'm gonna quote Scooby-Doo: 'if not for those meddling kids.'"

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Posted
24 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Pablo Torre on Cuban's "Steve isn't that dumb" claim: "If not for that little line item (KL2 Aspire, LLC) in a bankruptcy filing that no one else noticed, this would not have been a problem... They would've gotten away with it, and now I'm gonna quote Scooby-Doo: 'if not for those meddling kids.'"

Good for Pablo. The thought that billionaires can't be stupid  is rich coming from Mark Cuban. The guy who wasted the last half of Dirks career, the first few of Luka's, hired Nico and sold to the Adelsons 

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Posted
28 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

I really don’t think this is that widespread.  This goober is a special breed.  Crazy to be able to ride coat tails (Allen and Gates) to THAT much cash.  Props.  

This is somebody whose net worth went up by almost $1 billion the day he announced he was leaving Microsoft.

Posted

Dont know if Cuban doing this interview helped Balmers case or not.  25-30 min, the only thing I come out of this is billionaires have their heads so far into the clouds when it comes to $$. Cubes openly says he's invested millions(10-15 range) with people he's done no due diligence on. Not 50 million like Balmer did with aspiration. Cubes so far has provided some interesting insider aspects of what life is like as an NBA owner- he has no clue on what some is happening beneath him.  then he kinda reflects that maybe Balmer didn't know.  Where Im at, Cubes kinda starts changing his tone saying if Balmer knew about the deals then hes not as smart as Cubes thought he was and he's basically fucked.

 

im on the uncle Dennis part now. One huge  red flag that really isn't being brought up(i dont think it is at least)  is how freaking often does a teams superstar best player leave after a championship season to go somewhere else? I bet i could go back 25 years with all 4 major sports and you can count on 1 hand how many of a championship teams top players left in FA right after winning a championship. 

Posted

[Murray] Ballmer: “I don’t know why they did what they did. These are guys who committed fraud. They conned me. I made an investment thinking it was on the up and up, and they con me. I have no ability to predict why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi”

YARN | They conned us, and they scored bigtime. | Seinfeld (1993) - S06E07  The Soup | Video gifs by quotes | f72832da | 紗

Posted

Also don't think we all missed Ramona calling Pablo a "podcaster" to discredit his work

He's a journalist.  She's an entertainer, at this point, on the network that  is called Entertainment and Sports Programming Network

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Posted
3 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Dont know if Cuban doing this interview helped Balmers case or not.  25-30 min, the only thing I come out of this is billionaires have their heads so far into the clouds when it comes to $$. Cubes openly says he's invested millions(10-15 range) with people he's done no due diligence on. Not 50 million like Balmer did with aspiration. Cubes so far has provided some interesting insider aspects of what life is like as an NBA owner- he has no clue on what some is happening beneath him.  then he kinda reflects that maybe Balmer didn't know.  Where Im at, Cubes kinda starts changing his tone saying if Balmer knew about the deals then hes not as smart as Cubes thought he was and he's basically fucked.

 

im on the uncle Dennis part now. One huge  red flag that really isn't being brought up(i dont think it is at least)  is how freaking often does a teams superstar best player leave after a championship season to go somewhere else? I bet i could go back 25 years with all 4 major sports and you can count on 1 hand how many of a championship teams top players left in FA right after winning a championship. 

To be fair 50 million to Balmer is like $50 to most of us.....10-15 for Cuban is like 100-150

Posted

Silver has to come down hard or every owner is going to (try to) sign a star player for 7/8/9 million per year less than max, and do a sham endorsement deal to make up the difference, to get around the luxury tax and have more cap flexibility.

Or just get rid of the cap like baseball and say fuck it, ain’t no rules anymore. 

Posted
4 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Where Im at, Cubes kinda starts changing his tone saying if Balmer knew about the deals then hes not as smart as Cubes thought he was and he's basically fucked.

Cuban: Ballmer is too smart to do something so stupid

Ballmer: I actually am stupid and wholly unaware of the actions that happen around me, please pity me 

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Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

One huge  red flag that really isn't being brought up(i dont think it is at least)  is how freaking often does a teams superstar best player leave after a championship season to go somewhere else? I bet i could go back 25 years with all 4 major sports and you can count on 1 hand how many of a championship teams top players left in FA right after winning a championship. 

Durant kind of did it with the Ws but that was a fairly unique situation - and they didn't technically win in '19.

You're right in that there's almost always a gap season or a couple seasons. Shaq to Miami, LeBron to Cleveland. Kawhi leaving TOR after one year was bizarre even if he did get traded there. 

I think in baseball it's fairly (or at least more) common but transactionally that sport and league are wildly different. Freddie Freeman left the Braves after they won. 

Edited by ztejas
Posted
4 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

One huge  red flag that really isn't being brought up(i dont think it is at least)  is how freaking often does a teams superstar best player leave after a championship season to go somewhere else? I bet i could go back 25 years with all 4 major sports and you can count on 1 hand how many of a championship teams top players left in FA right after winning a championship. 

Kawhi isn't like any other superstar. He was going home to play in LA no matter what, Toronto knew he was a one year rental and that's one of the reasons they got him so relatively cheap in the trade. He was never about winning. If he was, he would have never left San Antonio. They were 61-21 the last year he actually played for them and were a Zaza Pachulia foot slide away from who knows what in the playoffs. 

Also, there's nothing more on brand for Kawhi Leonard to get an endorsement deal (legal or otherwise) where he doesn't have to even show up to work to get paid. Even Ben Simmons was jealous of that deal. 

 

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Posted
Kawhi isn't like any other superstar. He was going home to play in LA no matter what, Toronto knew he was a one year rental and that's one of the reasons they got him so relatively cheap in the trade. He was never about winning. If he was, he would have never left San Antonio. They were 61-21 the last year he actually played for them and were a Zaza Pachulia foot slide away from who knows what in the playoffs. 
Also, there's nothing more on brand for Kawhi Leonard to get an endorsement deal (legal or otherwise) where he doesn't have to even show up to work to get paid. Even Ben Simmons was jealous of that deal. 
 

Yea I remember he was getting to La through hell or high water. Still odd considering the timing. Could’ve had KL2 LLC lined up already and the “going home” excuse was easier to sell

I thought of KD to Brooklyn but I think they were coming off a finals loss.
Posted
2 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I guess the issue is since they never went public, were those shares even worth anything?

Shares? Kawhi and Dennis were cashing checks, homie.

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Posted

Ballmer might not be stupid, but he was certainly desperate to land KL. He probably secretly said yes to every dumbfuck illegal Uncle Dennis demand, and then had to figure out a way to deliver.  I imagine there are dumber, sloppier ways to circumvent the cap.

Posted
On 9/4/2025 at 3:15 PM, Js1 said:

Pablo Torre on Cuban's "Steve isn't that dumb" claim: "If not for that little line item (KL2 Aspire, LLC) in a bankruptcy filing that no one else noticed, this would not have been a problem... They would've gotten away with it, and now I'm gonna quote Scooby-Doo: 'if not for those meddling kids.'"

Amazing. Torre went through the bankruptcy filing and then checked the ownership of the random LLC that was the largest recipient of Aspire's funds. The story could have died right there but Uncle whatever listed his name as the owner of the LLC instead of figuring out how to do it anonymously.

Posted
11 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Amazing. Torre went through the bankruptcy filing and then checked the ownership of the random LLC that was the largest recipient of Aspire's funds. The story could have died right there but Uncle whatever listed his name as the owner of the LLC instead of figuring out how to do it anonymously.

Kawhi was listed as the manager of the LLC on the SOS filing. Uncle dumbfuck was listed as Kawhi's representative in the endorsement contract with Aspiration.

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Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

Kawhi was listed as the manager of the LLC on the SOS filing. Uncle dumbfuck was listed as Kawhi's representative in the endorsement contract with Aspiration.

Ha I forgot. Even dumber of them!

NYT https://archive.ph/bq3zk

Wachtell Lipton hired by NBA to investigate. They were the lead investigator in two previous investigations of NBA owners: Donald Sterling and Ronald Sarver.

Per Section 3 of Article XIII, which details the “Penalties” within the section that covers salary cap circumvention, any team that violates league rules for a second time, as well as the player, could face the following outcomes (after their case goes to an appeals panel):
  • A fine of up to $7.5 million.
  • The “direct forfeiture of draft picks.”
  • The voiding of the player’s contract, “or any Renegotiation, Extension, or amendment of a Player Contract, between such player and such Team.”
  • A fine of up to $350,000 for the player.
  • A suspension for up to one year for “any Team personnel found to have willfully engaged in such violation.”
  • The voiding of any transaction or agreement found to have violated league rules, and the forced forfeiture of funds received in the deal, “unless the player establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that he was unaware of the violation.”
Edited by Chopper
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Posted
6 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Ha I forgot. Even dumber of them!

NYT https://archive.ph/bq3zk

Wachtell Lipton hired by NBA to investigate. They were the lead investigator in two previous investigations of NBA owners: Donald Sterling and Ronald Sarver.

Per Section 3 of Article XIII, which details the “Penalties” within the section that covers salary cap circumvention, any team that violates league rules for a second time, as well as the player, could face the following outcomes (after their case goes to an appeals panel):
  • A fine of up to $7.5 million.
  • The “direct forfeiture of draft picks.”
  • The voiding of the player’s contract, “or any Renegotiation, Extension, or amendment of a Player Contract, between such player and such Team.”
  • A fine of up to $350,000 for the player.
  • A suspension for up to one year for “any Team personnel found to have willfully engaged in such violation.”
  • The voiding of any transaction or agreement found to have violated league rules, and the forced forfeiture of funds received in the deal, “unless the player establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that he was unaware of the violation.”

Yeah they're fucked. 

@Kermit being wrong is nice sometimes. 

Posted
19 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Ha I forgot. Even dumber of them!

NYT https://archive.ph/bq3zk

Wachtell Lipton hired by NBA to investigate. They were the lead investigator in two previous investigations of NBA owners: Donald Sterling and Ronald Sarver.

Per Section 3 of Article XIII, which details the “Penalties” within the section that covers salary cap circumvention, any team that violates league rules for a second time, as well as the player, could face the following outcomes (after their case goes to an appeals panel):
  • A fine of up to $7.5 million.
  • The “direct forfeiture of draft picks.”
  • The voiding of the player’s contract, “or any Renegotiation, Extension, or amendment of a Player Contract, between such player and such Team.”
  • A fine of up to $350,000 for the player.
  • A suspension for up to one year for “any Team personnel found to have willfully engaged in such violation.”
  • The voiding of any transaction or agreement found to have violated league rules, and the forced forfeiture of funds received in the deal, “unless the player establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that he was unaware of the violation.”


Those punishments don’t seem to fit the crime. $50mn fraud and the max penalty for Ballsack is $7.5mn and $350k for Kawhi? 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:


Those punishments don’t seem to fit the crime. $50mn fraud and the max penalty for Ballsack is $7.5mn and $350k for Kawhi? 

I think MN lost 5 1st round picks for their Joe Smith scam, which is a precedent/comparison. Plus the Kawhi contract could be voided imo.

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Posted
43 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Yeah they're fucked. 

@Kermit being wrong is nice sometimes. 

I hope so, man. But…you know. I’ve seen those who were dead to rights get away with it too many times to start sucking my own dick. But, I hope they nail Kawhi to the Tree of Woe. That would be nice.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Kermit said:

I hope so, man. But…you know. I’ve seen those who were dead to rights get away with it too many times to start sucking my own dick. But, I hope they nail Kawhi to the Tree of Woe. That would be nice.

Don't get me wrong - I like your anti-jinx approach. I'm just confident enough in how out of left-field and necessitating punishment that this is to not worry about it with regards to my own takes on the situation. That they just hired a "fuck you" law firm reinforces that for me. 

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Posted
Just now, ztejas said:

Don't get me wrong - I like your anti-jinx approach. I'm just confident enough in how out of left-field and necessitating punishment that this is to not worry about it with regards to my own takes on the situation. That they just hired a "fuck you" law firm reinforces that for me. 

And dammit, I love the journalism here.  Torre came with fucking receipts when he broke this shit, not just a hunch. I'm sure Silver will look for a way, but I don't see how he can sweep this shit under the rug.  There's just too much there and everyone knows it at this point.

But I'm also with @Kermit. I've been on this ride before and I don't like it one bit.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

I've been on this ride before and I don't like it one bit.

 The precedent for this firm getting hired under Silver is owners being forced to sell their teams. 

I'm not saying that is what happens - I don't think that is what happens - but that is where the bar is.  

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Posted
1 minute ago, ztejas said:

 The precedent for this firm getting hired under Silver is owners being forced to sell their teams. 

I'm not saying that is what happens - I don't think that is what happens - but that is where the bar is.  

If Ballmer is found to have done this (and at this point I don't know how to come to any other conclusion), I think forcing a sale is perfectly appropriate. Like you, I don't think it will happen, but I'd love to see it.

Posted

The NBA is funny. Sterling said some vile racist things, but committed no crimes. Broke no league rules. Forced to sell the team. 

Ballmer likely committed fraud and broke numerous league rules. Probably keeps the team after paying a fine, shipping Kawhi out, and surrendering draft picks. 

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Posted

The thing that sucks about all of this is that Steve really was an awesome owner on the surface level. He’s created an awesome environment, built a stadium with his own money, and competes. His mistake is tying his franchise to the greatest malingerer in the history of professional sports, who is also Uncle Scrooge-esque in his pursuit of the dollar and agreeing to be a dumbass to facilitate this greedy assholes arrival and continued employment.

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Posted
On 9/4/2025 at 8:37 AM, immamac said:

Its sad that there's just no accountability at all for anything if you have enough money or if it's enough money to be hard to deal with. 

That is the America we live in these days and it’s incredibly frustrating. It will ultimately be the demise of this great experiment. 

On 9/4/2025 at 8:41 AM, aggie08 said:

Has there ever been an America where that isn't the case? 

He who has the best lawyers makes the rules.

Yes there was. At the turn of the century in the early 1900’s the public got so fed up with the cheating, lying, illegal, and immoral behavior of the super rich that they elected as president Teddy Roosevelt, who reined in the super rich, at least as much is possible, by breaking up monopolies and implementing other policies. 

He was successful because he had a well informed public that valued integrity behind him. Today, even people with the right integrity can’t make a dent in the corruption because the public is stupid, and doesn’t care. 

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Posted

The funny thing is, Kawhi probably wants to get his contract voided so he and Uncle Dennis can get paid again. He is 100% going to lawyer up if the league comes after his Aspiration money. 
 

Equally funny, Kawhi and Uncle Dennis having to testify in a bankruptcy trial. 

Posted (edited)
12 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

That is the America we live in these days and it’s incredibly frustrating. It will ultimately be the demise of this great experiment. 

Yes there was. At the turn of the century in the early 1900’s the public got so fed up with the cheating, lying, illegal, and immoral behavior of the super rich that they elected as president Teddy Roosevelt, who reined in the super rich, at least as much is possible, by breaking up monopolies and implementing other policies. 

He was successful because he had a well informed public that valued integrity behind him. Today, even people with the right integrity can’t make a dent in the corruption because the public is stupid, and doesn’t care. 

 

5 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

(redacted)

Let's not drag this shit off topic. Especially because y'all are probably about to see an example of a mega billionaire being punished for his hubris. The NBA is a private organization collectively owned by 30 management groups. A healthy majority of that 30 is pissed and wants to stick it to these clowns. 

Edited by ztejas

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