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

I’m gonna give you an example. Remember Power Balance in 2011???

the wrist bands.

they were paying Shaquille O’Neal and Lamar Odom to use their name in promoting the wristbands.

well the company turned out to be b******* and went bankrupt. One guy said he thought it was a scam.

the point I’m trying to make there are fraudulent companies who pay players.

 

did the buss family invest large amounts of money in power balance?

did shaq or odom do anything for power balance?

did power balance pay other celebrities a much, much lower rate to do more work for their brand?

 

Kawaii got paid because he’s Kawaii.

He should’ve f***ing did something. All I’m saying is do something. But some players won’t do s***. Kawaii is one of those guys.

Now if it’s Austin Reaves completely different he’s doing something.

I’m just saying players are usually good about showing up places. Players always showed up at my events.

you look at a guy like Kobe biggest star in the world. If he had something he was there. Sponsors always on it.

Kawaii complete opposite.

I could see Ballmer putting money in just so Kawaii wouldn’t be pissed that he’s not being paid when the co CEO wasn’t paying him.

Steve has no idea what obligations Kawaii didn’t make.

 

Lol.. well say Luka, signs a deal here for less than his max, and gets an endorsement deal with some company, that Walther invests in. That's supposed to be viewed as violating the spirit of the cap? That doesn't make any sense man. If that was the case, it would be explicitly prohibited by the League. I take pleasure in any problems that befall the Hyena or the Flippers..this situation tho, I'm just not seeing it in the same fashion. It doesn't matter what teams did it, including ours. Now you are drifting into, why didn't so and so, get paid like Leonard? So what, that's that company's prerogative. They aren't obligated, to pay everyone the same, based off of thier perceived level of celebrity! He's a NBA superstar!

Now the league is supposed to monitor every endorsement deal, and determine if a player is getting paid , according to the League's view of his value, in relation to other celebrities with endorsement deals with that company?That's ridiculous.

 

Are you kidding me???? Power Balance was one of the biggest sponsors in the league. They had an arena named off of them. After them.

 

Yes other celebrities were paid by Power Balance including Robert Deniro. It was a very similar deal to aspire.

 

What’s actually funny is Leo DiCaprio and Gerard Butler were celebrities endorsing Power Balance to and David Beckham. These celebs get all kinds of deals like this.

 

Honestly, that is not your decision to make, do you own this forum? Are you even a mod? He doesn't need to prove himself to all of us, but the owner and mods should get to know. IMHO

 

I'm not getting your drift. This is an open forum, of course that's my decision to make, it's my opinion. The mods can speak for themselves, that doesn't have anything to do, with me posting my opinion.

 

Speaking for myself, It's the same as you guys making an assumption, without any facts to prove anything. It's all, well it looks funny. Silver isn't going to make a decision on how it looks. He's already said as much, this is a serious allegation, and should be treated as such. Fans have the luxury, to think whatever they want, based off of gut feelings or whatever, he doesn't, he's the commissioner of the League.

 

Damn..Rui might be heading out, I really like Yasuke, I don't think it could done without his salary?

 

Well The Heyena was free to sign wherever he wanted, regardless of how Toronto felt. I understand the concern with shady actions concerning his uncle. He sounds like a scumbag, I agree, look at how those clowns acted with us. However that's not Ballmer's fault either, and if everything associated with Leonard, has to be scrutinized because of his uncle, that applies to every contract he's ever signed then. Again I haven't seen any explicit league directive, that says his endorsement deal was illegal. That would be between him and the sponsor anyway, not Ballmer. He invested 60M not 28M, and he got scammed along with everyone else. The CEO pleaded guilty, to defrauding investors, out of over 248M dollars!

 

According to some, this will be the only thing that will change their minds.

 

I’m not giving away Rui, Dalton, AND a first for Wiggins. He’s decent, but he’s not the type of player who will catapult us into the same tier as OKC.
I would keep the pick and Rui for someone more impactful, possibly later in the season.

 

Rui/Kleber/protected 1st for Wiggins seems like the cleanest version. I’m sure we’d like to include Dalton instead of a 1st, but it complicates the money a bit. Miami gets a $28 million off their books so they can do their star chasing thing along with a protected pick, we get a better player and fit than Rui. Included Kleber instead of Gabe because I think Kleber is washed and Gabe can at least be a regular season innings eater.

Reaves / Gabe
Wiggins / Smart
Luka / LaRavia
LeBron / Vando
Ayton / Hayes

Looks pretty good to me. Wiggins has always guarded Luka pretty well, I wonder if Luka might be driving some of the renewed interest in him. If this is at all real, and not just late reporting of stuff that happened a month or two ago.

 

lol, non-nba fans have no idea who kawhi leonard is. most people in the world know who leonardo dicaprio is. your tree planting company gets a much bigger return on value from the more famous endorser.

anyway, my hot dog stand chose to give all the proceeds of the 50 million dollars worth of dogs i bought from them to a player on the basketball team i own. stay out of my business! i don't know why they suck at managing the hot dog stand! not my problem!

you answered precisely zero of my questions.

still not answering my questions. how much less money did robert deniro get than lamar odom? was it a factor of 20? which of the busses invested more than the amount of odom and shaq's endorsement deals in power balance?

sounds like a) they endorsed the product and b) it wasn't brokered by their team owner who also invested in the business. and also that actors don't have team owners or salary cap issues to worry about (maybe beckham did).

yeah, again getting the jerami grant vibe. not sure how many times we want to get burned by miami, either, tbh. they want off this guy. that should tell you something. it's not like after they trade him, they won't be looking for a two-way wing. what does it mean that they will trade him for not that?

they're the ones that need to sweeten the deal if rui is going out, imo.