Source: https://imgur.com/a/6jKcmGn

Two ZL Shows on Kawhi/Ballmer/Clips — feel like we have hit on every angle as best we can at this early stage:

Would recommend listening to them in tandem to get the full lay of the land/range of reactions

Rival teams remain furious about the optics here regardless of CBA language/what investigation turns up; do not expect this to go away anytime soon. As @kirkgoldsberry said (relating thoughts from a team exec): "The integrity of the league is at stake."

40 comments

  2. Kinda feels like the cat is out of the bag and the damage has already been done to the league from an optics perspective. Fans aren’t going to forget this

  3. I hate that they’ve been floating this idea of nothing (or very little) happening as a result of all this. This should absolutely be a big deal, I hope they don’t let Ballmer/Kawhi off easy, smoking gun or not. It would be such a bad look for the league. And the league already has the stink of Donaghy all over it.

  4. I think of lot of NBA fans are going to be super pissed off if the Clippers don’t get any serious punishment. Everyone knows they did shady stuff and the league will prove itself to be a complete circus if they don’t make it clear that this is not allowed

  5. On that episode, they stated that this is not the court of law. In the court of law, one is innocent until proven guilty. The language of the CBA and the league’s constitution flips it. The Clippers are guilty until proven innocent here.

    This is largely the reason why I don’t fully understand the Clippers’ defense right now. Which boils down to, “hey it’s not a Joe Smith thing. There’s no smoking gun”, “if you want answers, ask Aspiration and Kawhi”.

    In in a perfect world, they would have said, “we performed our due diligence given the optics, here’s our receipts. Aspiration and Kawhi went behind our backs” (and then you realize how ridiculous this sounds).

  6. If it ends very poorly, you can make a case on players may think differently when we get closer to the CBA agreement, how much a difference it makes we will find out

  7. If nothing happens, then the league office is a joke as are any and all rules they have

    Then might as well do whatever you need to do to win

    A slap on the wrist is temporary, a title is forever

  9. Balmer lucky they didn’t win anything. the furor would be much more if Kawhi were actually healthy and they won a lot

  10. Ballmer worth more than every other nba owner combined. If it wasnt a different team at a different price, people wouldn’t be up in arms about it. But if Ballmer gets away with it this time, whats to stop him from quadrupling down and giving a $200m “bonus” to another star?

  11. What integrity lol. The officiating is already horrendous, just embrace it and go full WWE, have silver come swaggering out at half time and drop a promo on all us rubes hes hustling to the “no chance” song.

  12. Zach saying it won’t go away and it’s going to be a slap on the wrist or no penalty. Not sure what’s going on in his head these days.

  13. If the clippers aren’t punished how long will it take to get another KD to the warriors situation when some team decides to just sign someone like Giannis to a vet min and pay them $100mil off the books? Shit, you can even get the best role players by signing them to the MLE then slipping them an extra $5mil endorsement cash.

    If this is allowed then every team should be doing it all the time, if this isn’t allowed it needs to be punished severely as docking a second rounder in a decade isn’t a deterrent.

  15. As a regular person and a square who can’t help but follow rules, I’m so fucking tired of rich people doing whatever they want.

  16. Once the investors of Aspiration go after Kawhi to claw back the $21m, all the truth will be out.

  17. Balmer has denied everything – but I don’t think I’ve seen a statement from Kawhi yet or Uncle Dennis?

  18. The NBA’s final form was always the Premiere League, this is just getting us there faster. As more of the multi billionaires come in the less competitive balance there will be.

  19. Every city should start a GoFundMe called ‘Aiannis Ganteteokoumpo 2027’ and just pool together money to fund a scam company that will totally not offer Giannis a no-show sponsorship when he becomes a FA.. Apparently that’s fine as long as there’s no paperwork

  20. Ballmer should say he was an FBI informant intent on taking Aspiration down, and also it isn’t his signature on the contract, and also it was all a Lakers hoax and Little Pablo from fake sports news woke media is being very nasty. That oughtta hold those SOBs

  21. I say we don’t penalize them. At all.

    We need to feel sorry for billionaire owners because they can’t compete with a multibillionaire?

    This is a systemic societal problem. Appeasing single digit billionaires is not my ideal way of dealing with out of control capitalism.

  25. A slap on the wrist would honestly shock me. Putting aside this frankly weird focus by some of the talking heads on a criminal law standard of proof, and the theory that Ballmer was simply duped (come on), this idea that the owners would protect one of their own doesn’t make any sense. They fought to get the current CBA and salary cap in place, and it particularly benefits the small and mid-market owners. Something like this would just completely undermine their efforts and show that all that was for naught, as owners with deeper pockets could just circumvent the cap at will and then play dumb afterwards. I’m not sitting here saying the Clippers are going to get SMU’d, but if they just emerge from this unscathed then the NBA may as well not have a salary cap at all.

  26. I’m sure they’re pissed, but they made their bed – offering sponsors the opportunity to give players side contracts was always going to make this kind of thing a possibility, but it likely makes team sponsorship more attractive, so they allowed it.

  27. Does anyone actually believe one of the richest guys in the history of the universe is going to suffer the consequences of his actions?

  28. Silver has no spine. If he does very little punishment or a fine than the next years will be the big market teams getting any players they want. Why not cheat if it doesn’t matter. As a warriors fan I bet we would be willing to spend more than almost any other team, BUT I rather everyone play by the same rules.

  30. They will likely negotiate much more severe penalties for owners who do this. The players union will fight it but not to the point of a lock out. Ballmer will get punished in accordance to the current rules, which is only a slap on the wrist.

  31. The league has absolutely zero integrity, lmfao. It’s a good ol boys club. This does have to do with money, though, which is the only value they have.

  32. NBA execs opinions mean nothing. Shit they were crying the same thing 6 months ago with the Luka trade. The go from one outrage to the next

    What do the NBA owners think? That’s the only thing that matters.

  33. Ballmer should honestly be forced to sell the team. He completely ignored league rules and demolished integrity of the game.

  35. Listen, if the league doesn’t come down on LAC as hard as they did on us for the Joe Smith thing, something is up. Either Silver knew about it and let it happen, or Balmer slipped a couple mill into Silver’s bank account, or some other behind-the-scenes fuckery went down.

  38. The integrity of the league is at stake. I think that ship sailed with Mike Donahue. We were supposed to believe he was the only ref doing that?

  40. They’ll get a slap on the wrist for this, or Ballmer will be fined a large amount , but in reality, a 20million dollar fine for Ballmer is absolutely
    Nothing to him.
    They can void Kawhi’s contract , but one thing I’m curious about is can’t he just then turn around and sign for a different team immediately? Just do an MLE for 1 year or something and then re-up.
    The last issue here is that, we still don’t actually know if the clippers did anything wrong. I just have this feeling, the law firm the NBA hired, which is known the be the absolute best of the best, is going to chalk it up as bad business but no wrong doing by NBA

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