Semi-OT: Pablo Torre Investigation into Kawhie/Clippers

[drosestruts]

One important reminder - this is not a court of law.

I've seen people here and outside the board mention it will be difficult to directly tie the money Ballmer invested in the company to the money Kawhi received, but that's not true. Circumstantial evidence is enough for the NBA to impose fines, suspensions, etc.

FYI pretty much anything can be proven by circumstantial evidence in a court of law as well.

I will certainly defer to the lawyer here.

Main point being - the bar for "guilty" is lower

There's enough evidence already (and more coming in) for the NBA to already act. Will be interesting to see if and what they decide to do.

Not every owner is Ballmer. While teams can help faciltate endorsements, this seems so far beyond the usual scope. A number of owners are likely very pissed about this - starting with Toronto and the Lakers who probably feel this contributed to them losing out on signing Kawhi.

[MalagaBulls]

Read on Twitter

[jnrjr79]

Read on Twitter

Not a real account.

[kodo]

No, they wouldn't. That is not the same (or even similar). When Nike pays you, Nike pays you. It has no CBA implications. When your team is funneling you off-the-books cash, that is not analogous.

Ballmer is not the Clippers, he's an owner.

This would be no different than Chicago Sports Network, owned in part by Jerry Reinsdorf, paying a Bulls player for an appearance. That's not direct money from the Bulls to a player as salary cap circumvention.

Bobby Marks was a GM, and on his latest video he's saying they're going to have prove that the money Ballmer invested into the company was directly sent to Kawhi. And he doesn't think that's the situation, if it's just an investment there's no case. They need something from Ballmer saying "this money is not to be used to invest into your company, give it to Kawhi directly." He said he's been part of salary cap investigations and this doesn't qualify.

Hopefully Silver doesn't see it as Marks sees it, but if Marks is right it just validates that this kind of thing is rampant.

[kodo]

I would guess the big issue here is that other teams are almost certainly doing this, albeit in less outrageous ways.

Ballmer’s defense is that “team sponsorship deals” are common and paying the star as part of that is also common. That is probably true / however, it is almost certainly also a way of circumventing cap limits. But it’s an *accepted* way of doing it

The problem is how do you regulate what is acceptable and what is unacceptable sponsorship? A no-show job seems unacceptable - but I would still be
suspicious of it if he made $28 million for a Twitter post and a couple photos - but that would be considered, basically, legit

The "no show" part doesn't surprise me. At a former company we partnered with the NBA on a player deal, it was a HOFer. It was insanely expensive and we were shocked at what they were willing to do, which was nothing. The agent said we could use any existing photos, his name and that's it. No photo shoot, no appearances, won't even record a voice line mentioning us. Basically the player wouldn't lift a finger and expected 7 figures. We went with a less famous player willing to work with us for a lot less.

[jnrjr79]

No, they wouldn't. That is not the same (or even similar). When Nike pays you, Nike pays you. It has no CBA implications. When your team is funneling you off-the-books cash, that is not analogous.

Ballmer is not the Clippers, he's an owner.

Best I can tell, that fact is wholly irrelevant for purposes of whether what he did violates the CBA.

This would be no different than Chicago Sports Network, owned in part by Jerry Reinsdorf, paying a Bulls player for an appearance. That's not direct money from the Bulls to a player as salary cap circumvention.

And that would be a violation, too, if the payments were not in line with the appearance fee section of the CBA.

Bobby Marks was a GM, and on his latest video he's saying they're going to have prove that the money Ballmer invested into the company was directly sent to Kawhi. And he doesn't think that's the situation, if it's just an investment there's no case. They need something from Ballmer saying "this money is not to be used to invest into your company, give it to Kawhi directly." He said he's been part of salary cap investigations and this doesn't qualify.

IMO, Bobby Marks is wrong about this and his status as a former GM, while relevant, does not mean he would have any particular expertise in the circumvention provisions of the CBA. He might, don't get me wrong, but what he says is absolutely contradicted by the plain language of the CBA itself. They absolutely do not need a writing from Ballmer instructing the company to give it to Kawhi to prove the violation, but the lack of such a document could be used by the NBA to avoid making a big issue of this if it would prefer to sweep it under the rug.

Hopefully Silver doesn't see it as Marks sees it, but if Marks is right it just validates that this kind of thing is rampant.

I also hope Silver sees it differently, but Marks's comments about what would be needed to prove a violation just don't go to the question at all of whether this kind of thing is rampant.

[jnrjr79]

I would guess the big issue here is that other teams are almost certainly doing this, albeit in less outrageous ways.

Ballmer’s defense is that “team sponsorship deals” are common and paying the star as part of that is also common. That is probably true / however, it is almost certainly also a way of circumventing cap limits. But it’s an *accepted* way of doing it

The problem is how do you regulate what is acceptable and what is unacceptable sponsorship? A no-show job seems unacceptable - but I would still be
suspicious of it if he made $28 million for a Twitter post and a couple photos - but that would be considered, basically, legit

The "no show" part doesn't surprise me. At a former company we partnered with the NBA on a player deal, it was a HOFer. It was insanely expensive and we were shocked at what they were willing to do, which was nothing. The agent said we could use any existing photos, his name and that's it. No photo shoot, no appearances, won't even record a voice line mentioning us. Basically the player wouldn't lift a finger and expected 7 figures. We went with a less famous player willing to work with us for a lot less.

Sure, but in this event, did Aspire ever even use Kawhi's likeness? And while you indicated the player your company wanted to work with wanted "7 figures," Kawhi here was getting a solid 8-figure number. I sincerely doubt any NBA player has ever been paid anything like $28 million on an endorsement deal that required them to do absolutely nothing beyond giving name and photo rights. Nobody would ever pay that much for that little. Heck, it sounds like your company wouldn't pay even 7 figures for it.

[jnrjr79]

Interesting tidbit that makes this look worse for Ballmer, IMO:

The $28 million deal was to be paid in quarterly installments over four years, but it was not the only compensation Leonard received. According to a high-level source, Leonard also cut a side deal with Aspiration to receive an additional $20 million in company stock. The stock was to be paid out from Sanberg’s personal holdings in the company over four years.

That brought the total of promised compensation to Leonard to $48 million. Around the same time as the Leonard deal, Aspiration was going through its rounds of fundraising. They had raised approximately $600 million, including the previously mentioned $250 million from Oak Tree Capital Management. That number also included a $50 million investment from Ballmer. That investment has been characterized to Boston Sports Journal as having been made with light-to-no diligence.

Think of it as getting a commitment on Shark Tank after only a couple of questions.

The commitment from Ballmer was also curious, as he paid a higher price for his shares than others. The Oak Tree commitment to Aspiration came at $10 a share, but Ballmer paid a premium of $11 per share, raising his overall investment to $50 million. Typically, an investor of Ballmer’s caliber would have been wooed with a discounted share price, so the company could tout the investment of a major player.

At this point, the $48 million commitment by Aspiration to Leonard and Ballmer’s $50 million investment stand as two separate transactions. The league is currently investigating whether there is a connection that circumvented salary cap rules. If there is a finding of wrongdoing, it would not be the first violation for Ballmer and the Clippers. They were fined $250,000 in 2015 for offering DeAndre Jordan unauthorized endorsement opportunities.

https://www.bostonsportsjournal.com/2025/09/04/exclusive-kawhi-leonard-endorsement-deal-that-triggered-nba-investigation-actually-worth-48-million

EDIT: I also really recommend Zach Lowe’s podcast from today if you want a good non-lawyerly rundown of the Torre report, CBA/punishment implications, etc.

[MAQ]

I guess I'm not as convinced as everyone else that this is a major red flag.

In an underhanded way, I feel like every bit of this is way more common than we the fans will ever be made aware of. Against the rules, but an unspoken reality of that business.

In a non-underhanded, by the book, way, it sounds like the majority of this situation is indeed common where a team will help facilitate sponsorships with local businesses.

The idea that Kawhi did nothing to earn this money is eyebrow raising, however his contract with that company specifically stated he only had to do anything for them if it were requested by the company. Safe to assume the company never requested him to do anything.

The 2 major questions I'm left with are:
Is it typical for sponsorship deals to be negotiated in free agency? I'd assume no, but i dont know.

In the event where the team is helping facilitate this local sponsorship, is it common for the team to also invest in that company? Balmer giving them 50 million, in addition to all the other business dealings he had with Aspire, makes these seem innocent. Because no way they'd openly flaunt these illegal moves with so little care?

[jnrjr79]

I guess I'm not as convinced as everyone else that this is a major red flag.

In an underhanded way, I feel like every bit of this is way more common than we the fans will ever be made aware of. Against the rules, but an unspoken reality of that business.

In a non-underhanded, by the book, way, it sounds like the majority of this situation is indeed common where a team will help facilitate sponsorships with local businesses.

The idea that Kawhi did nothing to earn this money is eyebrow raising, however his contract with that company specifically stated he only had to do anything for them if it were requested by the company. Safe to assume the company never requested him to do anything.

The 2 major questions I'm left with are:
Is it typical for sponsorship deals to be negotiated in free agency? I'd assume no, but i dont know.

In the event where the team is helping facilitate this local sponsorship, is it common for the team to also invest in that company? Balmer giving them 50 million, in addition to all the other business dealings he had with Aspire, makes these seem innocent. Because no way they'd openly flaunt these illegal moves with so little care?

All of this is super inaccurate if you read the CBA. I’d recommend you listen to today’s Zach Lowe podcast if you want a good digestible rundown of what is kosher vs. not kosher.

[dougthonus]

I guess I'm not as convinced as everyone else that this is a major red flag.

For me, I think there is a difference between "is this a major red flag" and "is this more common than we think". It's not a perfect analogy, but I'll say similar to the initial steroid era of baseball, where people viewed it as major, but initially thought it was highly isolated when it wasn't.

In an underhanded way, I feel like every bit of this is way more common than we the fans will ever be made aware of. Against the rules, but an unspoken reality of that business.

In a non-underhanded, by the book, way, it sounds like the majority of this situation is indeed common where a team will help facilitate sponsorships with local businesses.

I think the non underhanded stuff is probably fine. The underhanded stuff where it circumvents the cap is not fine.

I'm a bit on the side that it probably isn't happening so regularly though, because you don't see guys taking really weird contracts for way less money to super rich billionaire owners or whatever.

If this was rampant, you would expect to see things like an MLE (or better) caliber player taking the vet min with the Clippers because they're paying him 40M off books somewhere to make him whole, but helping them save 100M in luxury tax penalties. You really don't see situations like that on the surface, when if this was easy to set up, you would think you'd see it all over the place on tax teams.

In the event where the team is helping facilitate this local sponsorship, is it common for the team to also invest in that company? Balmer giving them 50 million, in addition to all the other business dealings he had with Aspire, makes these seem innocent. Because no way they'd openly flaunt these illegal moves with so little care?

I don't know that they're openly flaunting. I'm not sure if this is only visible due to Aspirations bankruptcy or if it would have been part of public record before, but there's no one whose job it is to comb through all the public records and search for this type of deal.

[jnrjr79]

I don't know that they're openly flaunting. I'm not sure if this is only visible due to Aspirations bankruptcy or if it would have been part of public record before, but there's no one whose job it is to comb through all the public records and search for this type of deal.

It's definitely due to the BK. There would otherwise be no accessible public record of this beyond the existence of the LLC formation in whatever state it was formed. The remaining records (the contract itself, any board minutes about it, etc.) would be private. Kawhi presumably has the income listed in his tax returns, but those also would not be publicly accessible.

When a company goes bankrupt, it has to file a schedule of all of its known creditors. It listed Kawhi's LLC here, which seems to be how the scent was picked up here.

[Michael Jackson]

The NBA has announced it is opening an investigation.

[Michael Jackson eating popcorn GIF]

I do like popcorn

[kodo]

The Torres interview with Mark Cuban was pretty interesting with Cuban's view as an owner.

- Ballmer did try a side endorsement deal with Deandre Jordan and Cuban knew the little details because it involved the Mavs. Ballmer was fined $250k and told not to do it again by NBA general counsel. This seems remarkably light? I wonder how seriously the NBA actually takes cap circumvention.

- Cuban doesn't think the Deandre Jordan thing is happening here, he just thinks Ballmer got scammed. Says its not that uncommon and it's happened to him. At their level you trust your people, if your people say this group is legit you just trust it. You can't dig into the books of every company you invest in, there's too many of them.

- Cuban said money could be routed to Mavs player through companies he's dealt with and he wouldn't know it, he doesn't know the details of every company he's invested in

- He questions why someone as rich as Ballmer let the company go bankrupt which discloses this deal as public, he thinks it's crazy that Ballmer is OK with a fake company used to send Kawhi money making all their dealings go public.

[jnrjr79]

One important reminder - this is not a court of law.

I've seen people here and outside the board mention it will be difficult to directly tie the money Ballmer invested in the company to the money Kawhi received, but that's not true. Circumstantial evidence is enough for the NBA to impose fines, suspensions, etc.

FYI pretty much anything can be proven by circumstantial evidence in a court of law as well.

I will certainly defer to the lawyer here.

Main point being - the bar for "guilty" is lower

There's enough evidence already (and more coming in) for the NBA to already act. Will be interesting to see if and what they decide to do.

Not every owner is Ballmer. While teams can help faciltate endorsements, this seems so far beyond the usual scope. A number of owners are likely very pissed about this - starting with Toronto and the Lakers who probably feel this contributed to them losing out on signing Kawhi.

You're l having out some important stuff here.

At minute 28, Cuban says that if Ballmer knew "it's over" and "he's toast" and that this would be "far worse" than the Joe Smith situation.

Cuban's view seems to be that this was an effort to circumvent the cap, but that's it's possible it was done without the knowledge of higher-ups at the Clippers.

[cocktailswith_2short]

Ballmer looked both like a liar and worried in that interview. People should be more upset over this it's bull I don't care how common place it is .

[jnrjr79]

One other thought here:

Let's say you go with the Cuban position here, which is that the higher-ups at the Clippers didn't know about this. He nevertheless believes it was cap circumvention - i.e. the point of the Aspiration deal was to funnel money to Kawhi so that he would stay with the Clippers, not because Kawhi was actually going to do any sponsorship activities - then it would seem to me that it is possible that Kawhi could be punished, even if you weren't going to fine the Clippers or dock them picks. In that event, I wonder if the league considers voiding Kawhi's contract to punish Kawhi, without taking any further action against the Clippers.

I think it's more likely that the Clippers were in on it, but even if they weren't, that doesn't necessarily mean everyone skates here.

[kodo]

List of Aspiration investors other than Ballmer:
- Bill Lee (Tesla)
- Dan Rosensweig (Yahoo)
- Joe Lonsdale (Palantir)
- Oaktree Capital Management (manages $190B)
- Leo Di Caprio
- Robert Downey Jr
- Drake

Pretty impressive con job.

[dougthonus]

List of Aspiration investors other than Ballmer:
- Bill Lee (Tesla)
- Dan Rosensweig (Yahoo)
- Joe Lonsdale (Palantir)
- Oaktree Capital Management (manages $190B)
- Leo Di Caprio
- Robert Downey Jr
- Drake

Pretty impressive con job.

Or it isn't a con job, and all of them are like Ballmer and this is just a shell company created by a bunch of rich people to do nefarious things, and we know why Ballmer was in on it, but others also had a need to move money around in some weird way.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

The Torres interview with Mark Cuban was pretty interesting with Cuban's view as an owner.

- Ballmer did try a side endorsement deal with Deandre Jordan and Cuban knew the little details because it involved the Mavs. Ballmer was fined $250k and told not to do it again by NBA general counsel. This seems remarkably light? I wonder how seriously the NBA actually takes cap circumvention.

- Cuban doesn't think the Deandre Jordan thing is happening here, he just thinks Ballmer got scammed. Says its not that uncommon and it's happened to him. At their level you trust your people, if your people say this group is legit you just trust it. You can't dig into the books of every company you invest in, there's too many of them.

- Cuban said money could be routed to Mavs player through companies he's dealt with and he wouldn't know it, he doesn't know the details of every company he's invested in

- He questions why someone as rich as Ballmer let the company go bankrupt which discloses this deal as public, he thinks it's crazy that Ballmer is OK with a fake company used to send Kawhi money making all their dealings go public.

Cuban seems to have contradictory ideas on this: "Steve isn't so dumb that he'd let the fraud be revealed" and also "Steve's pretty dumb and got scammed and doesn't do due diligence when spending $50,000,000".

Not buying it. Either he circumvented the cap because he thought he was invincible and wouldn't be caught or he's incompetent and negligent. Either way, the result is the same and there ought to be real consequences. Does he really expect us to believe he didn't know that $28mil went to one of his players? If he didn't know it, he still shouldn't be in charge of an NBA franchise.