Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/13/sports/sunday-basketball-notes-clippers-kawhi-leonard/
The case is embarrassing for the league, and also questions whether Silver and the NBA have full control over their billionaire governors, who perhaps have the financial and business acumen to funnel money to free agents as a means of long-term contractual commitments. There have been reports that Leonard asked the Raptors for ownership pieces of the NHL’s Maple Leafs if he were to re-sign.
Was the Aspiration endorsement a way for the Clippers to keep Leonard from pursuing free agency? It’s difficult to believe one of the league’s most mercurial and unemotional personalities could garner a $48 million endorsement deal.
30 comments
Kahwi with the craziest offseason with a twist😭😅
Take 3 firsts from the Clippers, suspend Kawhi for 2 seasons and be done with it … ffs
Steve Ballmer could gift 250,000 dollars to 600,000 families and still be a billionnaire 10 times over. I think he should do this to make amends for anything.
The headline phrases “the NBA” as a party separate from the billionaire governors. It’s not. The commissioner works for the owners/governors. The league office works for the commissioner. The “league” is the group of employees that executes the will of the owners.
It’s fair to question whether the owners, as a heterogenous group, want to condone what Ballmer seems to have done. The internal politics are the most complicated element of this controversy. But it’s about how the entity of the collective league/owners chooses to handle it, not a conflict between them.
“difficult to believe”
how about impossible plus all the other circumstantial evidence
Silver is going to get ass-blasted in the ass.
Kawhi is done. He can barely play anyway.
Ballmer is too rich to care unless Bezos and Ellison decide to give a shit. Please give a shit
Make Balmer sell the team and force them to relocate to another city. Enough of this bullshit. Period.
Lakers dodged a bullet with Kawhi and Uncle Dennis.
I’m def not paying to watch any NBA games if this isnt remedied to my satisfaction before the season
Adam silver is Milk Toast he won’t do anything
Prediction: Bezos will eventually own the Clippers
Damn they even got in a personal jab at Kawhi lol
Unfortunately, we might never get the “smoking gun” that proves Ballmer orchestrated the deal. But when this amount of circumstantial evidence piles up, it gets to the point where the onus is on the Clippers and Kawhi to explain what the fuck is going on.
* The player and his reps have demanded cap circumventing deals from multiple other teams.
* Clippers ownership is personally invested in the company.
* The company bypassed its investment protocols and the advice of its management team to hand the least marketable star in the league a massive endorsement deal, well in excess of anything they paid the movie stars who had publicly repped their brand.
* They can quibble about whether it was a “no show” deal but the fact is they never bothered to announce it publicly and the player provided no services to the company.
OKC so happy right now. Kawhi contract cancellation while still counting against the cap, if that happens, will doom the Clippers playoff chances in the west this year.
Best punishment is to cut their salary cap number by 20 million for the next 5 years.
$48 mill endorsement deal is not the difficult to believe part, it is the secret endorsement part
This isn’t the point of the story at all, but“mercurial and unemotional” … ?
Gotta really squint your ears on that one.
For me it calls into question every time a player leaves a smaller market for a big one. For instance in place like the Bay Area or Miami it is going to be easier to hide this kind of stuff and I wonder if LeBron or kd’s move while clearly heavily factored by competition were influenced by side deals from owners
I’m one of those sports fans who actually appreciates an overwrought “sports are a metaphor for life” narrative, but “billionaires are more powerful than the people ostensibly in control” is a bit too obvious.
People have been jumping onto the league and the press a lot. I wonder how the players are responding. The players almost have an unspoken agreement to not talk about each other’s money or shady deal.
I haven’t done a search but I think we can tell a lot from players’ responses or the lack thereof.
I bet KL would have preferred to do the minimum in that contract by now
nobody has full control over their subordinates. that’s why there are enforcement measures and the media
This has been noted elsewhere, but his deal was worth more per year than his SHOE DEAL with New Balance.
At least he actually does commercials and stuff for NB…he literally didn’t have to do anything for Aspiration and they never even announced the deal so no idea how that counts as “endorsement”
They should actually just void KL’s contract and ban him from the league in addition to whatever they don’t the Clippers.
The fact that no one is talking about how Kawhi and Uncle Dennis seem to be the extortioners here is kinda weird.
If this isnt resolved, what is stopping other teams from just saying, fuck it, and just create deals under the table for their star players?
This sub needs to be renamed to “Kawhi Endorsement Circlejerk”
crazy to think. if this is going on… what other types of multi million dollar transactions are taking place under the table?
>governors
Still stupid. But I guess it’s worth it since we solved racism!
“Difficult to believe (one of the league’s most mercurial and unemotional personalities could garner a $48 million endorsement deal”) is an understatement.
Guys, I think we should let him keep bouncing the ball and letting ballmer give him money. He’s made hundreds of millions of dollars and is willing to break rules for a little more…..if he goes out in the world, he’ll just be another corporate psychopath laying people off for a few cents bump on his stocks and lobbying the dickheads in congress so his business can have child labor or extinguish the sun or some shit.