ATL - Wemby dominates, Billups arrested in gambling probe

[paulpressey25]

Seeing another Ballmer defense idea online (not mine). The company owners needed some way to blackmail Ballmer for more cash investment. So they set up the Kawhi deal without Ballmer’s knowledge. Then could hold it over his head to blackmail him to invest more money.

That whole theory is ludicrous for a lot of reasons. But it’s out there.

[skbucks1985]

I would hope that the general public isn't gonna buy the amount of gaslighting that we're about to see from all the league/owner affiliated media mouthpieces ("nothing to see here", "if you come down hard it's a slippery slope", etc.), but who am I kidding? The league is gonna slow walk this for months over the course of the entire season because they know most people are gonna eventually forget about it. Silver's the same guy who couldn't say yes fast enough to that Saudi/UAE blood money.

Like, the optics are so horrendous, but Ballmer has the get-out-of-jail free card by nature of being the richest owner in the most glamorous market in the sport. I'll be absolutely stunned if this isn't swept under the rug and conveniently "explained away" that Ballmer was somehow not dumb enough to be this blatant, but just dumb enough to get conned by a fake company that just so happened to defraud everyone expect the actual player that they paid under the table (lol).

Agreed. It seems like weird timing to release this the day before the NFL season begins. Football is getting all the attention and will continue to do so. Releasing this a month ago (if the research was done) would have gained more traction. Maybe. Probably not though. Beyond the hard core fans like us it won't make a difference. It should. But it won't.

The timing of it was almost certainly just as soon as they had all of the reporting down. And if anything it probably happened sooner than they expected because the podcast recently joined The Athletic which probably sped up some of the vetting.

But yeah, I think you guys are absolutely right. The only way I think a hammer really comes down on Ballmer is if the other owners really have pitchforks out to get him and if this is a really anomalous practice among NBA owners. Otherwise I can't see Ballmer doing much to his richest boss.

[emunney]

Seeing another Ballmer defense idea online (not mine). The company owners needed some way to blackmail Ballmer for more cash investment. So they set up the Kawhi deal without Ballmer’s knowledge. Then could hold it over his head to blackmail him to invest more money.

That whole theory is ludicrous for a lot of reasons. But it’s out there.

Yeah that's idiotic. Nobody sane would offer that as a defense because it's not a defense at all. It's an admission of guilt. Also, even *if* it was somehow exculpatory, the theory itself is **** wack -- they gave Kawhi 50m and then blackmailed Ballmer for 50m? What is motivating that?

[MoreTrife]

The termination clause of him no longer playing for the Clippers has to be the biggest smoking gun of them all! The fact that this is even being talked about like it's questionable or may not be true, shows the sad state of affairs in the world. On the episode, ALL the other celebrities (like RDJ, Leo, etc, BIG names) COMBINED did not equal a quarter of what KL got (and I think that calculus was before stock options uncovered). Leo and RDL are bigger stars than KL. So uncharismatic, no work done KL got paid a boatload more than those guys, without work, and it fits what Ballmer put in plus a little $2 million fee on top...it's irrefutable. **** these ****.

[Badgerlander]

Read on Twitter

Medical redshirt freshman 3 years in a row for the Thunder

[ReasonablySober]

Read on Twitter

[Plossum]

Aspiration raised $800m+ according to a quick google search. The idea this company was created to circumvent the NBA cap seems insane. Where did all the money go and how did every other investor get duped so easily by a Ponzi scheme to defraud the nba salary cap?

It doesn’t make sense. To me it looks like Ballmer was one of many investors who got defrauded by some dodgy business ppl. Ballmer no doubt introduced Kawhi to Aspiration but the question is how much, if any, direction he gave them to sponsor Kawhi as a way to circumvent the cap. Or did the Aspiration guys sponsor Kawhi as a tactic to get in good with Ballmer so he’d kick in more investment $$ to the Ponzi? It all stinks a lot and Kawhi and Ballmer need to answer a lot of questions. But this is not a lay down case of rorting the cap as it currently stands.

[Plossum]

Sorry I should add: it seems the notion is not that aspiration was created to circumvent the cap but that Ballmer’s investment in the company was purely a way of him funnelling money to Kawhi outside of his contract with the Clippers.

[midranger]

Sorry I should add: it seems the notion is not that aspiration was created to circumvent the cap but that Ballmer’s investment in the company was purely a way of him funnelling money to Kawhi outside of his contract with the Clippers.

I think there’s company started as a sustainable hedge fund and likely needed to add investors to pay returns to the early institutional guys. So they pivoted to the tree thing with celebrity hype men.

Ballmer bought in 2021 (same year as Leonard’s extension) for nearly the exact amount promised to Leonard (+2 million transaction fee to the company).

You would need to be completely delusional to think this went down some other way.

[drew881]

Ballmer’s got one defense here. Did Uncle Dennis go to the company and tell them Ballmer wants this deal (without Ballmer knowing about the ask). And did the company then do the deal thinking they’d get more money from Ballmer. Uncle Dennis might say “you can’t call Steve, otherwise he’s complicit, but he wants this done in order for him to put more equity in”

This is where if I’m the league and if I actually wanted to find out what happened, I’d threaten Kawhi and Uncle Dennis with voiding his contract and suspending him. Get those two to go on record. My guess is they’d sing against Ballmer.

Players union won’t have that

[emunney]

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Thought Rose and Katz was dead.

[tydett]

Read on Twitter

Thought Rose and Katz was dead.

Has some wishing that, instead of Commish Silver, the Gilded Stern were still around.

[paulpressey25]

Watched Pablo v. Cuban. All 90 minutes of it.

The TL:DW version.

Cuban believes Ballmer would never be so stupid as to do this.And said Ballmer wouldn’t care about the details of a $50 million investment in Aspiration since such a small part of his net worth.

As the show went on, Cuban started to develop a theory that Uncle Dennis went direct to Aspiration and said “Hey, your naming rights deal for Intuit is nothing without Kawhi playing there. Give Kawhi a big endorsement deal and I will make sure he stays with the Clippers”

It presumes the top guy at Aspiration wasn’t sane, especially since he gave up some of his stock to Kawhi also. But since he was a fraudster, maybe he wasn’t sane.

Pablo’s counter was all the stuff you’ve heard already, with a focus that Ballmer got sanctioned by the league in 2015 for trying to offer Deandre Jordan extra stuff to get him to walk away from the Mavericks deal he verbally agreed to. And thus Ballmer is irrationally nuts about his team and would do anything to win.

[midranger]

If you believe anything but cap circumvention, you are either willfully moronic or completely disingenuous in a self serving manner.

It’s very clear what happened. Everyone knows. The question is, does anyone care?

[Licensed to Il]

Stuff like this bums me out when I think about the possibility that Giannis' loyalty might be from more than just loyalty. Still would shock me as that's not the type of person we've come to love but Cuban instantly coming out in Ballmer's defense when so few of the facts had come out makes me believe this might be pretty much commonplace.

Whatever we may have given Giannis under the table (and I'm not saying we did),he could have got from any other team.

Giannis' loyalty can't be questioned. He's about to begin his 13th year.

The whole loyalty thing with Giannis is kind of weird. Yes, it is the same fan base but what is he loyal to? He isn't from here, he didn't ask to come here, the owners have completely changed, the management has completely turned over, the coaching staff has changed over several times, he is the only guy remaining from his rookie season, the practice center has changed, the stadium has changed, even 95% if the people in the stadium have changed over. I'm kind of over him needing to be loyal, just as long as he doesn't go the AD route or **** on the city on the way out.

You raise some fair points. And we romanticize this stuff, unquestionably.

But we do form attachments to the regions we live in, and the places we have been. Its human.

Giannis made a home here, for whatever reasons and factors played a part. And its endearing to many who have spent time in Milwaukee and been fond of that time.

Sure he can leave at any time and it could be quite logical for him to do so. We are kind of attached to his attachment to the city. Many of us share that with him. Its weird, but it makes sense.

[Perishable517]

Stuff like this bums me out when I think about the possibility that Giannis' loyalty might be from more than just loyalty. Still would shock me as that's not the type of person we've come to love but Cuban instantly coming out in Ballmer's defense when so few of the facts had come out makes me believe this might be pretty much commonplace.

Not worried. Sure, this stuff goes on everywhere. But it’s at an immaterial level and documented well.

Ballmer, Kawhi and Uncle Dennis were pigs. And big pigs that stay at the trough get slaughtered.

Wow. Dark man.



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[sidney lanier]

Do billionaires sometimes get conned?
Does a cesspool resemble a pond?
If corrupt Aspiration
Gives Kawhi mitigation
How will poor Adam Silver respond?

The setting for this drama is so corrupt that I think Silver is going to latch onto that to slap Ballmer and Kawhi on the wrist. We'll see.

According to the documents, Sanberg also defrauded other lenders and investors with fraudulent materials describing Aspiration’s financial condition, including a fabricated letter from Aspiration’s audit committee that falsely stated that Aspiration had $250 million in available cash and equivalents at a time that Aspiration had less than $1 million in available cash. Sanberg used these fraudulent financial materials to obtain millions of dollars in additional loans and investments in Aspiration securities. Sanberg’s victims sustained more than $248 million in losses.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/aspiration-partners-co-founder-charged-and-agrees-plead-guilty-248m-scheme-defraud-investors

[slappyg]

Cuban defending him probably because Dallas has done the same thing. The Brunson deal smells similar. There are most likely others. The more widespread this kind of stuff is the lesser the penalty for the Clippers. If they get hit hard you can be sure they'll want everyone to be hit hard. I think Silver would rather sweep this under.

I always thought in the past that Dallas had to be doing something on the side for Dirk, could explain Cuban defending Ballmer.

Dirk Nowitzki repeatedly took significant pay cuts, or "hometown discounts," to help the Dallas Mavericks maintain salary-cap flexibility. The most extreme example came in 2014, when he signed a three-year, $25 million contract after turning down maximum contract offers worth nearly $100 million.

[paulpressey25]

Cuban defending him probably because Dallas has done the same thing. The Brunson deal smells similar. There are most likely others. The more widespread this kind of stuff is the lesser the penalty for the Clippers. If they get hit hard you can be sure they'll want everyone to be hit hard. I think Silver would rather sweep this under.

I always thought in the past that Dallas had to be doing something on the side for Dirk, could explain Cuban defending Ballmer.

Dirk Nowitzki repeatedly took significant pay cuts, or "hometown discounts," to help the Dallas Mavericks maintain salary-cap flexibility. The most extreme example came in 2014, when he signed a three-year, $25 million contract after turning down maximum contract offers worth nearly $100 million.

As one pod guy said last night, Cuban immediately jumped in front of a moving train to defend Ballmer. And we know why.

[drew881]

Intuit’s bid was half of Aspiration’s and they still went with Intuit because it was more “established.” Wouldn’t be a shocker if they have some player side deals too.