Yahoo Sports contributing NBA writer Tom Haberstroh and NBA writer Dan Devine discuss commissioner Adam Silver’s most recent comments about the reported investment by the Los Angeles Clippers into the company and what it means for the league’s investigation into potential salary cap circumvention involving Kawhi Leonard’s contract. Hear the full conversation on “The Big Number” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Adam Silver was arguing that he had never even heard of Aspiration, which is kind of confusing.
Because the deal was for over $300 million, Dan.
Don’t you think that Adam Silver in the front office, he comes from NBA Entertainment under David Stern, would hold this up and be like, we got a $300 million non-naming rights sponsorship for a team that has never won a championship or even been to the NBA Finals and they signed up with a $300 million sponsorship deal.
And I’d imagine this went across his desk and that he had seen this because Steve Ballmer is very close with Adam Silver, of course, and then Pato reporting, hey, these all have to be signed, audited and vetted by the NBA and the NBA had to have done that in order for this to go through.
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It looks to us, or to lay people, and especially to general fans like this can’t possibly all be a coincidence, and as a result of this, something really, something really untoward has happened here.
It feels like you guys are just trying to put one over on us, continuing to say like, you don’t really understand the deal’s the deal.
You here and the interviewer Daniel Roberts, who used to work for us at Yahoo Finance, said, I think that should it like does it need to go through the league office on that level?
And Adam Silver said, I think that’s a fair question and maybe at a certain level they do.
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I think we’ll have a better sense, a better sense when we understand what happened here.
It’s like the fan is looking at this and saying, how can it be possible that you guys don’t know what all is happening here?
And someone like Cuban, someone like Ballmer, someone like Silver are looking at it and saying, well, we can’t possibly keep track of all of this stuff.
Like there’s so much money here, there’s so many deals going on here.
How do you expect Just to be able to catch all of this.
And I think the fan looks at that and says, that’s how fraud happens.
Like, if no one’s looking, then that’s how if you guys can’t possibly catch all of it, then maybe you should do less of it.
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The overarching thing I take away from all this is like, the more everybody tells me as a layperson, you just don’t understand why this, why this should be this way.
The more I think maybe it shouldn’t be that way.