Around the NBA 13

[wilson115]

Is it too late to trade for this guy?

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[Bassman]

Is it too late to trade for this guy?

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I would have loved to add him here but his salary is massive, would represent an enormous gamble, and this front office wouldn’t go anywhere near him for that reason.

[fatlever]

we had our chance, but we signed kelly oubre instead

[mg]

Yesterday Pablo put out his one-on-one interview with Mark Cuban where they debated the Clippers situation. I still can't see why Cuban is trying to defend Steve Ballmer so much... Cubans defense of Ballmer basically boils down to the following

- He got scammed. Scammers are smart. All of us have been scammed including - Mark Cuban.

- billionaire owners are way too busy to be involved in day-to-day stuff at this level. The 50 million donation was a drop in the bucket and would not have caused bomber to put any more eyes or effort into aspiration as a company.

- there's no way ballmer could possibly be so dumb as to have anything that would potentially Trace back to the Clippers

- discounts the seven employees who all confirmed that it was basically understood and company-wide knowledge that signing Kawhi Leonard was away for the Clippers to circumvent the salary cap. His explanation is that the scammers scammed the employees and convinced them that they had to keep their mouth shut for this reason so that they wouldn't talk about the fact that they are scammers as a company. Their way to get their employees to keep their mouth shut was to tell them a lie that this was to circumvent the salary cap and that's why it had to be hush hush.

- the reason the out clause related to the contract being terminated if he no longer played for the Clippers, was simply that as partners with the Clippers they wanted Kawhi Leonard on the team to help their own investment.

In my opinion, none of Cubans arguments hold up when you look at the entirety of all of these circumstantial evidence, and the fact that Kawhi Leonard threw his brother had tried to do this back in 2019 during the original free agency or the fact that Steve Ballmer had already been found guilty in 2015 of trying to circumvent the salary cap.

I appreciate Mark Cuban's willingness to go on the podcast and debate with Pablo one-on-one for an hour. And as far as billionaires go Cuban ranks fairly low on what I consider the who is the most evil Evil billionaire list. There's no such thing as a good billionaire, but he's nowhere near the bond villain level of billionaire villains like the nerd reich. But I find his arguments to be ridiculous. And this is the same argument he tried to use when all of the reports about all the inappropriate behavior happening in the Mavericks front office came to light a while back. That he was simply too busy to be involved in that level of day-to-day stuff and would have no idea of all that awful **** that was happening under his ownership.

There are 7 whistleblowers who are also former employees that came forward to expose the scam. They actually expected to plant trees.

You can see the disdain Cuban has for whistleblowers in the interview. Billionaires despise the working class.

[Braggins]

Is it too late to trade for this guy?

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I would have loved to add him here but his salary is massive, would represent an enormous gamble, and this front office wouldn’t go anywhere near him for that reason.

His massive salary is probably the only reason the price for him might be doable. If he was on the kind of contract he was previously Ainge would demand every draft pick imaginable for him.

[Diop]

Is it too late to trade for this guy?

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I would have loved to add him here but his salary is massive, would represent an enormous gamble, and this front office wouldn’t go anywhere near him for that reason.

After a successful Euro Basket tournament I predict he will play less than 50 games next season

[HornetJail]

Is it too late to trade for this guy?

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I would have loved to add him here but his salary is massive, would represent an enormous gamble, and this front office wouldn’t go anywhere near him for that reason.

After a successful Euro Basket tournament I predict he will play less than 50 games next season

seems like a perfect fit for the charlotte hornets

getting 50 games out of a key player would be a welcome sight

[yosemiteben]

https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/philadelphia-reportedly-considering-trading-drummond-oubre-to-open-up-cap-space-for-grimes

Would add to the chopping block, but we could fit both Drummond and Oubre into our MLE

[luciano-davidwesley]

https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/philadelphia-reportedly-considering-trading-drummond-oubre-to-open-up-cap-space-for-grimes

Would add to the chopping block, but we could fit both Drummond and Oubre into our MLE

What is Philly giving us for doing them a favour? Drummond and Oubre aren't exactly known for their selfless style of play.

[yosemiteben]

https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/philadelphia-reportedly-considering-trading-drummond-oubre-to-open-up-cap-space-for-grimes

Would add to the chopping block, but we could fit both Drummond and Oubre into our MLE

What is Philly giving us for doing them a favour? Drummond and Oubre aren't exactly known for their selfless style of play.

They have a smattering of their own draft picks and others over the next 5 years (other than next year) so they would have some draft capital to throw in.

[HornetJail]

I'd take Drummond in a heartbeat. Use one of our cuts on Plumlee

[fatlever]

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?t=iQKAwdi2RNCunrSwl16VNg&s=19

So here is new additional evidence pointing directly at the involvement of Steve Ballmer. In the interview with Mark Cuban he told Pablo that if aspiration was running low on money and knowing that might expose ballmer, then why wouldn't ballmer have put in additional money to try to keep things under wraps. Well, that's exactly what happened. What is Mark Cuban's defense now?

The amount of circumstantial evidence pointing that the Clippers were very much in the know about all of this is overwhelming. And yet silver still looks like he and the other owners I guess are going to let this slide with a slap on the wrist. I don't think any of them want this level of scrutiny so they're going to turn the other way.

So what's the stop this from continuously happening again especially with teams with the most money? What's going to stop all sorts of players from asking for similar deals on the side when they're negotiating free agency?

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[fatlever]

Correction, it was one of the Clippers minority owners that added the additional $2 million dollars to make sure that Kauai got his upcoming 1.75 million payment. I think that actually makes it look worse because it shows there's multiple people within the Clippers adding money to the pot

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[JDR720]

If the league doesn't drop the hammer they just out themselves as shamelessly corrupt.

[fatlever]

If the league doesn't drop the hammer they just out themselves as shamelessly corrupt.

The league exists to make money for the owners and the advertising partners. It's in their best interest to bury this as quickly and quietly as possible.

The actual playing of basketball and having a competitive Sports League is way down on the list of priorities for the commissioner and owners and advertising partners.

I mean there is nothing in our current political landscape that suggests that billionaires or extreme capitalism or corporate and shareholder profit will ever be held accountable for their wrongdoings.

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[JDR720]

If the league doesn't drop the hammer they just out themselves as shamelessly corrupt.

The league exists to make money for the owners and the advertising partners. It's in their best interest to bury this as quickly and quietly as possible.

The actual playing of basketball and having a competitive Sports League is way down on the list of priorities for the commissioner and owners and advertising partners.

I mean there is nothing in our current political landscape that suggests that billionaires or extreme capitalism or corporate and shareholder profit will ever be held accountable for their wrongdoings.

Sent from my SM-G973U using RealGM mobile app

Oh yeah, all that is very true. So in the end I doubt much happens with this.

[fatlever]

I wasn't suggesting that you aren't on board with what I'm saying. It probably came off that way. I think I'm just highly annoyed with different sets of rules for the rich. ugh.

According to the new Pablo podcast, he's saying that yesterday at the Board of Governors meeting Adam silver did not even mention the Clipper situation which left the other owners kind of stunned that one of the biggest scandals and the entirety of silver's tenure as commissioner doesn't even get a mention. And I saw another quote somewhere that when asked about the Clipper situation in the press conference yesterday silver said he didn't even know or wasn't aware of the company aspiration. Which is absolutely wild because they were one of the jersey sponsors for one of your 30 teams. You're telling me the commissioner is not aware of a company that's a jersey sponsor on one of the 30 franchises? It's so frustrating that people like silver can just lie through their teeth and expect everyone to just nod their head and go about their day. And it's also wild to me that all these other so-called sports journalists are lining up to defend Ballmer, probably because they are turning their nose up at what amounts to a a podcaster breaking such a huge story. They probably don't see him as a credible journalist. Despite the fact that he's probably done more investigative sports journalism of anyone in the past year. I mean he had been working on this story for seven months before he released it. And had seven credible witnesses from the company.

And if nothing is done this is just the blueprint for how the rest of the teams should operate. - use third party company to funnel money for a contract that doesn't get counted against salary cap and as long as you don't leave an obvious smoking gun paper trailer you won't get in trouble. And if that's the case I hope our owners do the same thing next year, or else you'll never be able to compete with big pocket franchises.

[fatlever]

Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/marcstein/p/adam-silver-says-the-onus-is-on-the?r=nuq3a&utm_medium=ios

"Leading up to Silver's first public comments on the matter, I spoke to so many people from various NBA outposts who were openly outraged and likewise convinced that the Clippers are poised to receive some type of penalty. The general perception of their alleged transgressions is that negative. I've spoken to multiple team strategists, for example, who told me, with chests puffed, that if the Clippers aren't docked multiple first-round picks — if Leonard's contract isn't voided while his salary obligations remain on the Clippers' books — they will feel emboldened to seek out their own version of shell companies to provided additional compensation to their players.

That might be the extreme (and emotional) end of the spectrum in terms of leaguewide reaction to this controversy ... but it's out there."

[JDR720]

It'll just set up an arms race. Before you know it players will sign deals with Saudi Arabia or Qatar or something to play for teams who have sponsorships with their state companies.

[fatlever]

It'll just set up an arms race. Before you know it players will sign deals with Saudi Arabia or Qatar or something to play for teams who have sponsorships with their state companies.

just wait until Saudi Arabia decides to create a basketball league. Look at the money they've been throwing around in the soccer world the past five years. And then they did it with golf. What's to stop them from creating a basketball league with no salary cap. Is someone like Bradley Beal gonna go play for the Clippers

Back to this Clipper story because I'm watching the new podcast right now adding information as I watch it. So the minority owner for the Clippers that added the $2,000,000 in order for kawhi to get paid the 1.75 million that he owed all happened at a time when the company was going under and they were laying off people left and right. This is when the documents show kawhi Leonard was listed as a critical Payee. He was out that money the minority owner put in $2,000,000 and then nine days later kawhi was paid. The fun part is the minority owner is named Dennis Wong. His daughter was a project manager at aspiration. So we have another link between the Clippers and aspiration. Dennis Wong was also the college roommate of Steve Ballmer at Harvard back in the 70s.

circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Anyone that tries to rationalize this as bad luck or a company that scammed the Clippers is either on some type of payroll or has some type of vested interest in this outcome being in favor of the Clippers or some type of grudge against Pablo.