2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

The perfect punishment would be to send Flop City to Seattle and bring back those cool 90's era SuperSonics uniforms.

 

This is blowing up pretty big on the internet today .... great it will be harder for weanie Silver to make it disappear. Is it true they have records of Snake's payment checks being sent to his uncle? Shouldn't be hard to prove he never showed up anywhere to promote anything if the bogus organization can't show records and photos he did to warrant that kind of money.

 

Side note - the cope from Raptors fans that Kawhi would have re-signed if not for this shady stuff by Balmer is funny. He was never staying in Toronto.

Don't really know how I feel about this. It's not good, obviously. But is Kawhi and Ballmer doing this really any substantively different than KD signing with the Warriors and immediately getting hooked up with VC guys (I wonder who introduced them), or anyone signing with Florida or Texas teams in part because of the lesser state taxes, or anyone signing with us or the Knicks knowing it will likely lead to more opportunities to be in commercials, advertise brands, etc.

Maybe the fact that here there is literally a piece of paper that says Kawhi gets $28 million dollars and doesn't have to do anything if he doesn't want to, but only if plays for the Clippers, makes all the difference in the world compared to those other examples. But I'm having a hard time getting too worked up about it because everyone knows that they aren't just talking about offensive and defensive scheme in these free agent meetings. They're talking about financial opportunity.

I do wonder if other owners have known about this for a while, and this partly drove the push for the new CBA.

 

Balmer and Snake doing some shady business, money under the table stuff, no way
Kawhi and "his team" were always greedy, sleezy and stupid. I hope they get what they deserve...

 

i think this is it. i fully believe pat riley has been paying guys in illegal ways, but he always made sure there wasn't a clear paper trail (and I'm pretty sure it wasn't 30 million dollars).

the new cba wouldn't fix this at all, though, so i don't see any connection there. this circumvents what that cba was supposed to be doing.

as for your general argument, the cba has been fairly clear about separating off-court stuff from what the team is paying. yes, playing in a big market means other opportunities, etc., but you can't do anything about that. you can do something about writing it down as part of a contract.

why does it matter? because without the contract, it's based on trust. if kawhi doesn't get that in writing, does he not sign with the clippers? isn't that...kind of a huge deal?

i also get why people might say "eh so what, lakers got a ring and clippers didn't", but if i watch the league do nothing about this, you can bet your a** i'm copying it. not good.

 

If Athletic reports it it's a problem
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/65...letic_breaking_targeted_email&userId=14254432

 

Wonder is there will be collective GM outrage over this?
Or, did Balz pay them off as well?

 

Honestly, who didn't know this would happen? I bet if you look into it, Kawhi's family and friends are probably working at Microsoft as well as "consultants" just getting paid.

Balmer has always been a very slimy businessperson.

This is probably one of those situations where I think you'd have to suspend Kawhi for the entire season, he has to pay that money back, and take the Clippers draft picks.

It's a pretty egregious violation of the salary cap considering Kawhi would likely have been a Lakers if this move wasn't made.

I remember there were reports that the Lakers refused Kawhi's uncle making *illegal* demands back in that summer.


Balmer is too rich to even care about a fine but those picks will hurt their franchise. Suspending Kawhi would 100% hurt their franchise. And at the end of the day, it's an egregious offense because what if there are MORE situations like this done by the Clippers?


Here is the report that the Lakers refused Leonard's demands. I remember the private plane and house part. To ask for equity of a team on top of getting max salary is insane.

https://thesportsrush.com/nba-news-...-private-jet-and-ownership-stake-from-lakers/


Knowing how slimy this situation is right now, I would not be surprised if the NBA hired private investigators to dig through Kawhi's financial info. $29 million is probably only a portion of what he's getting from other sources.

I think it's also worth mentioning that this is 100x worse than what the Wolves did with joe Smith. I think every team does what Joe Smith does to some extent but they were still playing within the rules of the salary cap. They were just dumb enough to have it in writing as proof.

What Kawhi is doing is basically getting more money than the cap. If the Wolves were fined $3.5 million and had 1st round picks taken away, this should be a far more severe punishment.

 

“Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary-cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false: The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago, during the 2022-23 season, when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations. Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can.”

LOL … probably the only types of writing these days that Lee Jenkins does any more … assisting the lawyers.

 

I'm glad the Lakers didn't sign Kawhi. In retrospect, not only because of his injury history but because Kawhi's uncle seems to be running the show here.

Let's assume the Clippers did win titles with Kawhi. Are we 100% positive the league wouldn't strip them of those titles? I would.

Look at what the Clippers had to give up to get Kawhi... Shai Gilgeous, a haul of picks, max salary, and even off-court salary? Meanwhile, Shai is now a top 5 player in the league... Great job, Clips!

 

ballmer's going to make sure this story gets buried ASAP. the league will slap the clips on the wrist, and that'll be it

 

of course cuban's on his billionaire buddy's side. he was doing the same thing with dirk all those years

 

It begins

 

Yeah dude, exactly. If its provable that Ballmer's money ended up in Kawhi's pocket through this arrangement . . . YIIIIIIIIIIIKES

 

With the Micah Parsons deal, everyone rehasing the Herschel Walker deal.

The real comparison to that deal ironically has turned into the George/OKC deal. Two trades that led to the team who was giving up the big name player actually not only get the better player but a HOF one and a bunch of assets to create a dynasty on top of that.

I guess if you're a Clips fan you console yourself was that trade really has to include kawhii as one of the assets as he wouldn't have signed without the deal but man that is some cold solace.