Pablo Torre: Kawhi Leonard signed secret endorsement deal funded by Steve Ballmer. UPDATE: Ballmer made donations to Aspiration before Feds came.

[David_TheMan]

Having an entity that your owner donates to pay an another entity named after a player’s initials and jersey number with an agreement listing the player’s uncle as the designated rep is sloppy.

the KL2 is on Kawhi and that is his right, nothing wrong with that.
The only thing that would make it shady is if they can link that the Clippers gave the org money to give to Kawhi.
That is the violation, not how Kawhi gets the money.

 

[EA]

I haven’t watched the entire video yet but is this against league rules? Or is it a loophole?

Joe Smith’s situation was different because he was signing damn near league minimum deals (with the promise of a bigger contract later) to keep the team under the cap. This was common practice but they just happened to get caught.

Kawhi has been signing max deals so I wonder how this works

Kawhi’s extension in November 2021 wasn’t the full max and the payments from Aspiration to Kawhi’s LLC kicked in from April 2022 around the time that Steve Ballmer’s personal LLC became an investor in the company.

 

[Flex Luger]

All that and still couldn’t win a title

 

[Ironman]

 

[David_TheMan]

Kawhi’s extension in November 2021 wasn’t the full max and the payments from Aspiration to Kawhi’s LLC kicked in from April 2022 around the time that Steve Ballmer’s personal LLC became an investor in the company.

the Clippers as a Org looks like they did business with the aspiration company as well. Clippers llc was listed as someone they owed money to.

 

[Flex Luger]

Oldie but goodie

 

[Flex Luger]

 

[Squirrel from Meteor Man]

Cap circumvention.

yes it is explicitly against league rules.
Article 13 of the CBA

You’d have to prove that though. The Joe Smith situation was especially egregious and the agents involved fell out and sued each other, which put all of the illegal paperwork on the table.

Circumstantially it absolute does look like funny, but in practice Balmer giving a company a cash infusion to potentially pay Kawhi seems like common practice. No one thinks that Brunson (for example) really took that deep pay cut for nothing.

Not saying there won’t be (or shouldn’t be) repercussions, but it’s going to open up a can of worms for every team if that’s the case.

 

[Da King]

What a beautiful ending to Hoewhi’s career

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[Th3G3ntleman]

Like the NFLPA shyt was embarrassing and it hurt the players strength as a union.

This shyt right here is a lot closer to effecting the integrity of the game. If the salary cap is make believe in a real sense but actually something that exist for certain owners/teams you fukk with the competitive balance of the league.

Silver might be hoping opening weekend drowns this out. Pablo should of waited for NBA media day to pull out this shotty.

 

[Flight]

Timberwolves like

As much as he likes to mettle in certain franchises business…I’m highly anticipating his reaction.

 

[David_TheMan]

You’d have to prove that though. The Joe Smith situation was especially egregious and the agents involved fell out and sued each other, which put all of the illegal paperwork on the table.

Circumstantially it absolute does look like funny, but in practice Balmer giving a company a cash infusion to potentially pay Kawhi seems like common practice. No one thinks that Brunson (for example) really took that deep pay cut for nothing.

Not saying there won’t be (or shouldn’t be) repercussions, but it’s going to open up a can of worms for every team if that’s the case.

its probably being discussed over how they will handle it optics wise.
Maybe fine balmer as its his first offense and 4.5 mil is nothing, and not take a draft pick.
That said, we know someone told Pablo where to look

Crazy theory.
Clippers hat the contract themselves and to get out of it they told somone to leak the info to Pablo.
they can get out of the contract and only pay a fine and possibly lose draft picks.
Works out for the.m

 

[jwinfield]

the KL2 is on Kawhi and that is his right, nothing wrong with that.
The only thing that would make it shady is if they can link that the Clippers gave the org money to give to Kawhi.
That is the violation, not how Kawhi gets the money.

If just the name of an entity leads you to believe someone is involved in something, and publicly available paperwork proves the individual is directly involved with the entity, and the something is supposed to be secret because it’s against league rules, then it’s sloppy.

 

[Joe Sixpack]

@god shamgod you worthless sack a shyt