Did Steve Balmer pay Kawhi Leonard under the table?

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UncleCliffy'sDaddy said:
Not that Kawhi Leonard hasn't been entirely overrated from the moment he joined the league. He just picked up that protective coating of Spurs/Pops dust that couldn't last forever........stumbling into a ring with Toronto only prolonged the delusion. A physically and emotionally fragile guy who could never deliver on what his obvious talent promised. I can't say that I am the least bit surprised......
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And his sister murdered an old lady in a casino bathroom. Google it Chuck!
 
THE HCP said:
All he had to do was make a couple appearances or posts and couldn’t even do that.
My peeps in Toronto told me all this shit they did for him that he required if they expected him to re-sign. Hired his brother and cousin to simply travel with him on the team plane and hang with him. When no other non team personal could. Whole bunch of other shit too.
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And his uncle, and Jeremy Castleberry, and Phil Handy-- we made a lot of accommodations for Leonard.

I guess we didn't get him because we didn't cheat hard enough.
 
This could be really good for us!
Clippers get their 1st round taken away from them.
Blazers tank and get the 1st pick in the draft.
But, since there are only 29 picks in the first round, our first pick in the 2nd round would really be the last pick in the first round.

BY TANKING, WE GET TWO FIRST ROUND PICKS!

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Looking at some of these reports I wonder if this is just Aspiration or former employees trying to extort Balmer or something.

Aspiration was founded in 2013. Kawhi signed with the Clippers in 2019. In 2021 Aspiration was going to go public in a 2.3 billion merger. Around then Balmer committed an additional 315 million to Aspiration. Aspiration founder was arrested for fraud 6 months ago in March 2025.

None of that sounds like a "shell" company created by Balmer solely to give Kawhi extra $7 million cash outside the cap per year.

Perhaps Balmer did nothing wrong. Perhaps he did. I really have no idea. But I'm pretty sure that now this will be very thoroughly investigated.
 
Actually I opened an Aspiration checking account for me and my wife at some point. Forgot about that. They had some promotion and paid couple hundred bucks to do it.

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I think I had one year I made $5k in profit just from checking account bonus'. Its a ton of work to move money around so haven't done it in years but its a good source of income if you have the time to track everything and move money around for it.
 
$ fine is irrelevant. Forfeiture of one pick is significant - especially if the take away the next unprotected pick. But only one pick lost is way less than the Twolves violation - that was FIVE picks lost.

Would be hilarious if they void Kawhi contract.
 
Remember the Blazers had an accusation of salary cap violation when signing Chris Dudley. Dudley signed for only 700k one offseason then had a huge $12 million raise the following summer which was accused of being a Joe Smith type of violation. TWolves had it in writing which the NBA got a hold of. The NBA was never able to get enough evidence to prove the Blazers violation so there was no penalty.
 
I just assume this is like pre-NIL days, where just about every team has some sort of shady deal going on with at least one of their players. The NBA has to levy some sort of punishment on the Clippers, just to keep a strong hand or this will turn into a very slippery slope.
 
bigbailes said:
I just assume this is like pre-NIL days, where just about every team has some sort of shady deal going on with at least one of their players. The NBA has to levy some sort of punishment on the Clippers, just to keep a strong hand or this will turn into a very slippery slope.
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I don't think this is the case. Owners are super competitive and would love to penalize another team for violating it. If a deal went south or player-team relationship broke down the player/agent/group would leak it or blackmail the team or such.

Not to say it hasn't happened but I don't think this is common at all. NBA players are paid so high it would have to be massive dollars which is much harder than some college deal moving 50-100k.

Think its important for everyone to realize none of this is illegal (preNIL or Kawhi rumored deal or such). Perfectly legal and contracts would be enforceable. Its yes a violation of NBA rules or NCAA rules but those have nothing to do with criminal laws.
 
I don't think anyone saying illegal is implying there should be criminal charges. I believe illegal is more in the illegal in the CBA.

As for pre-NIL, I imagine a lot of that money spent was done illegally, in relation to taxes.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Remember the Blazers had an accusation of salary cap violation when signing Chris Dudley. Dudley signed for only 700k one offseason then had a huge $12 million raise the following summer which was accused of being a Joe Smith type of violation. TWolves had it in writing which the NBA got a hold of. The NBA was never able to get enough evidence to prove the Blazers violation so there was no penalty.
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Portland took advantage of a CBA loophole. NBA went to court over the use of the loophole and lost:

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just reviewing that I went in assuming that was all Whitsitt in his slippery glory. But that was before Whitsitt. That Dudley maneuver came when Geoff Petrie was GM
 

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SharpesTriumph said:
I don't think this is the case. Owners are super competitive and would love to penalize another team for violating it. If a deal went south or player-team relationship broke down the player/agent/group would leak it or blackmail the team or such.

Not to say it hasn't happened but I don't think this is common at all. NBA players are paid so high it would have to be massive dollars which is much harder than some college deal moving 50-100k.

Think its important for everyone to realize none of this is illegal (preNIL or Kawhi rumored deal or such). Perfectly legal and contracts would be enforceable. Its yes a violation of NBA rules or NCAA rules but those have nothing to do with criminal laws.
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Maybe ... maybe not ... I think anyone willing to spend millions of their own money is very competitive, whether at pro or college level and would love to turn in another team/group but they don't because of the 'honor amongst thieves' mantra ... or maybe I'm a little too cynical for my own good.
 
RR7 said:
I don't think anyone saying illegal is implying there should be criminal charges. I believe illegal is more in the illegal in the CBA.

As for pre-NIL, I imagine a lot of that money spent was done illegally, in relation to taxes.
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When my book comes out, there will be a chapter solely about Mike Rice. He told me some shit that they did when he was the coach at Duquesne back in the day that will have you cracking up!
 
Mannnnnn Plenty of people get paid under the table. Let bro get his bread! :biglaugh:
 
Zach Lowe with a good podcast on this.

Kawhi had an LLC named KLM LLC or something that all the money went to. This story only became public now because Aspiration went bankrupt and the court case listed KLM LLC as a creditor so people started researching.

Also NBA rules don't require proof for Silver to enforce penalties. Silver has broad powers in NBA constitution and CBA. He can do penalties purely on circumstantial evidence. Many believe there's enough of that circumstantial evidence right now for penalties.
 
dviss1 said:
Mannnnnn Plenty of people get paid under the table. Let bro get his bread! :biglaugh:
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Some guy getting paid to dig ditches and Kawhi earning $450 million in his career might be just a tad different.
 
Also interesting that Kawhi is paid the max. It isn't like he signed with the Clippers for the vet minimum or took a discount.

I always thought the Andre Kirilenko contract the Nets signed was super fishy and assumed he got some benefit back in Russia.
 
owners lining up team sponsors or friends of the program to sponsor a player specifically sounds like the gray area that needs to be investigated and regulated at this point.

do teams do this stuff? yea. do big markets do it more often? hell yeah. is it per se cap circumvention if there are actual services rendered?

???

silver seems like the type to dodge and wiggle his way out of weighing in on it.
 
Samuel said:
owners lining up team sponsors or friends of the program to sponsor a player specifically sounds like the gray area that needs to be investigated and regulated at this point.

do teams do this stuff? yea. do big markets do it more often? hell yeah. is it per se cap circumvention if there are actual services rendered?

???

silver seems like the type to dodge and wiggle his way out of weighing in on it.
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The problem in this case is that allegedly Kawhi did absolutely nothing, and there was a clause in the contract that pretty much said he didn't need to to anything if he didn't want to.
 
blazerfan11 said:
It gets worse.


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also from the same video

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It appears Kawhi Leonard did nothing for the $28 million. Fair market value would seem to be Zero dollars.

In January 2024, Leonard signed a team-friendly three-year, $153 million contract extension, which was considered to be "less money" than he could have earned on a max deal. (Maybe not substantially?)
 

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