Did Steve Balmer pay Kawhi Leonard under the table?

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Natebishop3 said:
This argument doesn't work in a court of law. The "I didn't know what my underlings were doing" excuse doesn't play. They need to know. That's on them. He's the boss. I also don't buy it anyway, but regardless..... I don't believe that Kawhi was in the dark here. Especially because he was asking the Raptors for the same kind of deal.
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Yes I've said the whole time Kawhi is responsible for what his reps did regardless if he knew or not.

He should face any penalty from the NBA.

Everything Beagle said:
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, legally.
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None of these violations are breaking any criminal or court law. They are only NBA rules that only have NBA actions. Its perfectly legal for Kawhi and his reps to get a no show job from any company or individual.
 
The mailing address on Kawhi KL2 Aspire LLC legal entity is 1220 Westerly Trail in Moreno Valley. House was purchased for $350k in Oct 2019. Didn't Kawhi sign with the Clippers in summer 2019? So might be someone from his group.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Plenty of wealthy people trust their wife or family or such to manage their money. Does Kawhi have his uncle Dennis do that? I have no idea.

Kawhi has $426 million of NBA earnings - not counting this $28 million or other endorsements. So yes $28 million is a ton - but maybe its just over in a big bucket of other investments that Dennis or others closely manage and Kawhi doesn't closely follo
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Its possible and his uncle as his financial advisor with the big bucket scenario makes since.
 
Kind of interesting that the Articles of Organization when creating the entity with legal zoom in 2021 never listed any member by name. So seems it was anonymous at that time who the owner was at least in publicly available filings.

Then an agent in June & August of this year, Eric Feuerstein, files those updates of mailing address & agent to his office in NY but list Kawhi as a member by his individual name.

Then a couple months later this massive bombshell story by Pablo Torre breaks. Did those filings give Pablo or others a heads up to start digging into this story?

If I was working with Kawhi on this I would've had a different anonymous LLC as an intermediary listed in those Jun+Aug filings so it couldn't have been traced back so easily to Kawhi personally just from public records.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Hadn't heard of the idea before that Kawhi salary stays on the clippers cap but he gets removed from the roster. That's an interesting punishment.
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Whatever happens I don't think we see any sort of discipline for Kawhi. Players don't have to abide by the cap rules, it's up to the team to make sure that is happening. Joe Smith didn't get any kind of discipline but the league did void the remainder of his contract. I could see that happening to Kawhi before I could see them doing something like him getting out of his contract and the contract staying on the books for the Clippers.

I think Balmer will get suspended for a season or more, the other stake holder who facilitated this will get suspened for a season or more or be forced to sell his stake.

I think ultimately we already have precedence for this stuff in the Joe Smith TWolves infraction. So my prediction is that the Clippers will be fined millions of dollars and a some draft picks, Kawhi's contract will be voided and he won't be able to re-sign with the Clippers.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
The NBA can't void his contract if he isn't a Clipper.

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That would be smart of us and the Clippers. I would assume that since all trades have to be approved by the league that if that trade was submitted that it would be put on hold until the investigation wss complete but who knows. It would be a very shrewd move by both teams.
 
blazerkor said:
That would be smart of us and the Clippers. I would assume that since all trades have to be approved by the league that if that trade was submitted that it would be put on hold until the investigation wss complete but who knows. It would be a very shrewd move by both teams.
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And I'd be fine letting Kawhi no-show until Dame comes back.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Plenty of wealthy people trust their wife or family or such to manage their money. Does Kawhi have his uncle Dennis do that? I have no idea.

Kawhi has $426 million of NBA earnings - not counting this $28 million or other endorsements. So yes $28 million is a ton - but maybe its just over in a big bucket of other investments that Dennis or others closely manage and Kawhi doesn't closely follow.
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And people everywhere lose their livelihoods or homes etc because the person they trusted screwed up.

That's the choice that Kawhi made. He's come off like a shady dealer to me for years.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
The NBA can't void his contract if he isn't a Clipper.

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I'm not sure that's true. If there is any evidence that he signed that deal with knowledge of the no-show 28M deal, the NBA could void the contract regardless

besides that, the trade would need to be approved by the NBA and if they had Kawhi, Ballmer, & the Clippers under investigation, the league would veto that trade PDQ
 
Is Adam Silver full of crap too? (cued to 1:28)

"It was news to me. Frankly, I had never heard of the company Aspiration before."

Backtracking on his comments about the NBA being a highlight league, and his not knowing about the Aspiration deal.

"Just to be clear, I'm not sure if, if I said I never heard of it, it was in the context of the accusations here."


 
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blazerfan11 said:
Is Adam Silver full of crap too? (cued to 1:28)

"It was news to me. Frankly, I had never heard of the company Aspiration before."

Backtracking on his comments about the NBA being a highlight league, and his not know about the Aspiration deal.

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@THE HCP the commissioner is trying fuck up your big raise. You better get your boy Adam Silver back in line.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
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generally, I can barely tolerate 10 minute videos, let alone one like this over an hour long...but....

I gave this a couple of minutes; then I gave it a couple more; then I pretty much watched the entire video/podcast. To start with, when this story broke I had never heard of Pablo Torre. The bones of the initial reporting was certainly interesting. But watching this it sure seems to me Torre is very credible. More than that is he's articulate and entertaining. It was a good show, and he's certainly constructed a very believable outline of a scandal

the circumstantial evidence presented in this podcast is compelling. More than that, the money trail timelines have way too many coincidences to actually be coincidences.

I'm cynical. It's always been a case in this country that the wealthy, connected, and powerful could usually dodge accountability for violating ethics, standards, rules and the law. But in MAGA world, there has never been a time when wealth and power have been less accountable. That has been super-charged so I'm expecting nothing but wrist-slaps for Ballmer, the Clippers, and Kawhi
 
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