Happened on the forbidden app.

Source: https://imgur.com/a/GgLEjQJ

After the 9/10 NBA owners meeting, Adam Silver said: “I’d frankly never heard of the company Aspiration before. And I’d never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawhi, or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers. So it was all new to me.”

But @pablofindsout just obtained a copy of Aspiration’s $300M+ “Founding Sponsorship Agreement” — which “must be submitted prior to its execution for NBA’s approval and shall not be effective or enforceable until it is expressly approved by the NBA.”

Two immediate questions:

1) Why did Steve Ballmer’s $300M+ Aspiration partnership not reach Adam Silver's office before it was "expressly approved"?

2) Did no one inform Silver that Bloomberg reported on 1/18/24 that Aspiration was being investigated by the federal government?

Over the first two seasons of their sponsorship (21-22 + 22-23), Aspiration had to put $7.5M/yr into the Clippers.

Meanwhile: Steve Ballmer and the Clippers kept putting millions into Aspiration — which owed Kawhi Leonard $7M/yr in a secret deal nobody ever spoke publicly about.

Fraudsters running companies like Aspiration or FTX keep sportswashing for a reason: hugely visible deals with pro sports teams and leagues create the public impression of trust and credibility. As if such deals must have been vetted by the teams and leagues. But apparently not?

What are the chances Silver truly forgot about this deal cause it hit his desk once for 2 hours in 2021 after being screened by deputy Mark Tatum and an army of lawyers before being approved by him?

25 comments

  4. From the jump, I wondered why Adam Silver voluntarily said that, even if he genuinely didn’t recall the company in the moment?

    That’s such an easy thing to go back and debunk, given how big the sponsor was.

    I don’t think it’s this giant “gotcha” headline, but it feels like an unforced error from a lawyer-by-trade that you’d think would be more buttoned up about this info before walking into a presser where he knows he’d be asked about it.

  5. I think Silver probably had heard of Aspiration, but this isn’t really a “gotcha.”

    Silver isn’t the only person in the NBA’s front office, and he won’t be the one personally reviewing everything that needs the league’s approval.

  7. Can’t Silver just say that someone below him is in charge of approving this stuff? Does he specifically have to sign off on these contracts?

    Obviously different fields and magnitudes, but my supervisor’s boss generally has no idea what we’re doing day to day.

  9. As per usual when these controversies happen, you find out that everyone along the way who should have done some due diligence didn’t because the money was too good to ask questions. They want to plead innocence because the people they get into bed with without checking shit turn out to be shitty scammers.

  10. Approved by NBA does not mean Adam Silver personally reads every single thing lmfao

    It’s still embarrassing and the investigation since then is damning and Silver should have definitely been informed at that point

  11. It’s possible that Silver just delegated the review and approval of such team sponsorship deals to his staff. Or Silver could’ve approved it and forgot about that company. There’s no apparent red flags with the aspiration/Clippers deal.

    But most importantly, I’m not sure whether Silver’s knowledge of Aspiration is indicative of any guilt or innocence of the Clippers.

  12. I once said to my wife that her sister isn’t as pretty as she is. Then Pablo Torre found a five hour 4K video proving other wise. I didn’t even know there were cameras there.

  14. *insert Spider-Man pointing meme

    Seriously though they are all complicit and the other wonder’s silence is deafening.

  15. “First I’m hearing of it…”, “never met the guy”, “the other guy did it” is an excuse system that seems to work well.

  18. For all of you saying that Silver may not have known even though this requires league approval, you are absolutely on one.

    I work in venture capital law. If a portfolio company wants to spend even $200,000 in most cases, it requires the affirmative (usually written, unanimous) consent of the board of directors. If a VC firm sits on the board, the issue of whether to give that approval typically goes pretty high up in the org.

    Point is, there is no way a league that took in about $1.5 billion in sponsorships last year is rubber stamping $300 million deals into one of its biggest markets. This is just unthinkable.

    The only two possibilities that I can come up with are: (1) the NBA’s corporate controls are worse than my local donut shop, or (2) Adam Silver is either lying or forgot.

    In any event, he should know as a lawyer not to answer questions that nobody asked.

  20. Tomorrow’s drop, Aspiration made a 10 million dollar donation to Adam Silver’s 2nd cousin once removed in 2023

  21. Silver: Hey . . . wait a minute. You are an actual serious investigative journalist not like all the other people who do NBA media. Oh shit you have the receipts too.

  23. Once this guy is done he will need to have a team named after him. 

    The Mexico City Pablos

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