Pablo: “Why do people care about Ballmer being held to account for cap circumvention? It’s bc…I’m hearing from fans who have invested emotionally & financially in this game, only to learn that it is rigged, allegedly, in favor of people for whom rules are a suggestion in real life.”
46 comments
I was wondering when we’re going to get the next Pablo post
This is a bar from Pablo
Anyone who truly wants a competitive league shouldn’t be thrilled at super teams and owners going out of their way to bypass any measure that attempts parity.
To be completely fair, the clippers haven’t exactly been a beacon of success. It’s just more about the fairness of the game overall. I’d be just as upset if it turned out the jazz were giving Jordan Clarkson no-show payments the last few years.
I applaud anyone willing to tell the truth instead of bowing down to billionaires. Especially if it affects my gambling problem!
Ballmer has to go, Kawhi suspended 4 life, Clippers stripped of 5 first round picks.
I can absolutely imagine a bunch of desperate gamblers who lost a ton of money make a hail Mary attempt at suing Ballmer and the Clippers to try and get that money back lol
But also people care about this situation because, even if Ballmer gets away with it and starts an entire trend of players getting back-end deals, he’ll have an advantage 100% of the time because he clears every other owner by the billions.
It becomes a money race, one that every team will lose to Ballmer every single time.
Yep. Basically any situation where a psychotically rich person faces a sliver of consequences is great.
But like… can we also fire Scott Foster?
Adam Silver is an alien wearing a human skin
Prove me wong
The number of fans who are going to abandon the league over this is essentially zero. The reason he needs held to account is that the other owners don’t want to allow someone richer than them to buy titles, and they’ve just gotten lucky so far that the Clippers are a cursed franchise.
People would better understand how important it is if the Clippers had won a championship. Imagine if the Warriors kept their core together through cap circumvention en route to a dynasty.
Pablo is on a generational run rn
There is something really poetic about encouraging fairness by ruthlessly penalizing the Los Angeles Clippers.
And this would have to be penalized ruthlessly. If something like this only costs one first round pick then every team should do it. Imagine the Knicks being able to talk Giannis into forcing his way here with an extra $30M. That’s worth KAT, a first, and a penalty first.
Ballmer definitely needs to be held accountable and I like the guy. But KH needs to feel it as well. He and his uncle are menaces and have flat out done shady shit since he was in San Antonio. Neither one will ever get in front of a camera and address any of this stuff
Tbf it sucks to know Ballmer did this on a team that didn’t win any rings while the Celtics have to break down their roster just to get out of the second apron. I’d like to see Horford retire as a C.
Yes , mavericks giving lakers a generational superstar for peanuts and then receiving the #1 pick when they had a 1% chance is not rigged right?
That’s not even questionable
Pablo 2028
Protect this man at all cost
This pisses me off as a long-time fan of one of the losing/small market teams getting screwed by the draft lottery.
But pretty obvious at this point Silver and company don’t care about me. The “A Ha!” moment was the All Star travesty last season.
Pablo makes a great point. I am a huge NBA fan and this story and if true obv ruins the product for me. Leading to care less about the NBA and the time I invest in it. But funny enough speaking to family and friends who are less invested or care about the NBA even they said this would stop them from watching. Obviously not reflective of everyone but interesting that even in my small circle it taints the product for us all.
The fact that anyone is even asking why these people should be held accountable is absurd to me. Yeah I know this is all about a ball game at the end of the day, but sports are a big part of our culture, and everyone should want to see a culture that values integrity. If accountability doesn’t matter here, then when does it matter?
While the billionaire angle is important to continue hammering on, I feel particularly invested as the fan of a small market team. The salary cap is a huge aspect of what allows Milwaukee and OKC to be competitive.
We are less attractive locations compared to LA or NYC precisely because we have less opportunity for making money outside of NBA salaries. Local marketing sponsorships are going to offer lower compensation by comparison, and there are fewer sponsorship opportunities on the first place. You could also argue that a Nike Sponsorship for a star in a smaller market wont offer as much compensation because that player won’t have the same visibility.
I love soccer, but not because of its parity. What Ballmer is trying to do is exactly what the UAE did with Manchester City. The similarities are kind of eerie, both 2nd teams in the 2nd largest market.
If Ballmer/Kawhi/the Clippers get a slap on the wrist, that opens the door to loose or no rules on spending. That works in soccer because of relegation, but in a closed system like the NBA, the bad/poor teams would just get left behind so quickly.
It took Manchester City a while to get going, partly because they didn’t have the prestige to attract the best players from the very beginning, but they’ve been basically unstoppable this decade.
The NBA is trying so hard to bury this story. Postponing the investigation findings until after the All Star game at the Toilet Bowl is a clear sign that the NBA intends to do little to nothing and is praying to somehow spin the narrative so that the public will accept Ballmer getting away with a slap on the wrist.
This feels like one of the times that public opinion can actually take down a mega rich person.
People screaming for the Epstein Files goes nowhere.
People cancelling their NBA tv subscription will affect change.
To me it’s more how much the cap has fucked up teams keeping players and players getting paid. If the NBA doesn’t believe in the cap then be done with it.
One of the reasons why I’m not in love with MLB as a league is because of the no cap, richest teams therefore are usually winning the most games and therefore winning the most titles. If this is allowed in the NBA, bypassing the cap limit and therefore making it a no ca league, then we have money and not natural competitiveness being a main driver in the league. Huge huge turn off for me. Right now, however, I dont believe the NBA is that. Please don’t make the NBA a no cap league.
Billionaires need to be held accountable when they break the laws that governs this game. Billionaires are godly greedy, godly stingy, and absolutely murders.
Same situation as George Floyd and any person in jail. DoJ are not kind to the poor and middle class, so too should be applied to billionaires. 💯
Send Kawhi to the Dubs for a vet min as a punishment.
Ballmer is getting a lot of attention and he should get his punishment. As a fan, I’m more annoyed by Kawhi being a little bitch and sitting out games because he didn’t get his dessert money. That locker room has to be a mess. Guys like PG3 were carrying the team for an official paycheck while Kawhi was in “load management.”
Just look at what billionaires have done to European soccer. That’s a nightmare that a league like the NBA should want to avoid.
It’s also why the clippers are going to get hammered. The absolute last thing most NBA owners want is for people even wealthier than them like Ballmer to sink tons of money into a vanity project they don’t expect any actual financial return from. The salary cap exists to control costs, if it functionally doesn’t exist the value of an NBA franchise goes down quite a bit.
Silver needs to resign and Balmer needs to sell the team. It’s the only outcome people will accept. A fine, even a massive one will do nothing to deter
No fan talks like that LOL!!
And who the FUCK thinks the league is rigged for….the Clippers?
I get the larger point, kinda, except “rigged” is not the correct verb at all.
James Harden would still be on my team and the hell of the last year wouldn’t have occurred if it was so obviously apparent you could just funnel money to a player through a team sponsorship
It’s a microcosm of a bigger picture. Billionaires flaunting their wealth and power in front of us. They are in the news constantly. Act like they know what’s best for everyone else yet only do things that benefit themselves. And then face no real world
Consequences for breaking rules that would destroy us regular people.
With sports betting being broadly legal now I would think that the folks losing money would care a whole lot.
The reason i dont watch baseball is because there is no salary cap.. larger market teams will always win.. even if a small market team drafts a Gem they will only keep them for their rookie contract.
Well, that’s literally how every sport works now. That’s the natural conclusion when you have billionaire owners.
WWE is more trusty than the NBA.
The NBA is an escape for people. It all falls apart if a rich guy can just buy wins by breaking the rules.
America has decided to put wealth and attention ahead of any other values in things to admire and strive for.
Rich people must have done something good or be really smart to be rich (NO THEY DO NOT)
Famous people must deserve that attention (HAVE WE NOT DISPROVEN THIS ENOUGH YET?)
Trump is, of course, the worst poster child for the two combined. Hasn’t run a business without killing it, everything was a hand out and attention on him is because of what a POS he is.
This enables corruption by those same people and the death of oversight, punishment and regulation of the rich and their companies.
This is just more of the same. It’s EVERYWHERE and until the mentality changes America will decline faster and faster.
I haven’t seen a single normal person defend Balmer. What kind of strawman is this? If he’s talking about players themselves, I’d be annoyed with him if I was a player too.
Only people who’d be asking why Balmer should be held accountable is clippers fans. BTW F the Clippers