[News] Clippers Paying Kawhi Under the Table
- Thread starter Tetsujin
- Start date
Maybe it is Four Seasons Total Landscaping?
Meanwhile in things that the league could ignore for years but may have to address head on now...
www.nbcsports.com
Report: Raptors complained to league multiple times about Clippers tampering with Kawhi Leonard
Doc Rivers' comments drew fine
www.nbcsports.com
Pinehurst now throwing more shade than their famous tree
Pinehurst also going to make millions off that poor tree selling collectibles. $100 tees made from it's wood. Maybe work with Fender on a $7500 custom guitar amp or a $100000 stratocaster.
I'm not normally going to be the one to endorse an 80-minute podcast, but the one that underlies this scandal is pretty much worth it.
I'm excited to see how Adam Silver tries to sweep this one under the rug.
I'm excited to see how Adam Silver tries to sweep this one under the rug.
Terribad?
Right after using his personal money to build them an arena!
After the Joe Smith thing, the NBA didn't force Glen Taylor to sell, but I don't recall how cut-and-dried his involvement was (as opposed to McHale's). This thing looks like it not only has a smoking gun, but it has gunpowder residue all over Ballmer's hands. They miiiiiiight have been able to get away with it if it weren't for the clause in the contract that terminated it for-cause if Kawhi was no longer a Clipper. That was dumb.
That said, my personal opinion is that Adam Silver won't want to do anything, regardless of his previous big talk about salary cap circumvention. But he might not have much of a choice.
Kingz19
Hall of Famer
If Kawhi received the money then there is no way to believe Balmer lol
I mean, if he didn’t. Then Balmer can play stupid by basically saying he is stupid to think such a company can throw around that kind of money if it wasn’t a con job.
But if the cons made good on their commitments to Kawhi then they just paid a guy not to show up for anything just for the fun of it. No way it wasn’t a front.
But the worst thing going against Balmer here is that people know he isn’t stupid.
That said, I think Silver is going to let him slide on it.
I mean, if he didn’t. Then Balmer can play stupid by basically saying he is stupid to think such a company can throw around that kind of money if it wasn’t a con job.
But if the cons made good on their commitments to Kawhi then they just paid a guy not to show up for anything just for the fun of it. No way it wasn’t a front.
But the worst thing going against Balmer here is that people know he isn’t stupid.
That said, I think Silver is going to let him slide on it.
HndsmCelt
Hall of Famer
My two cents worth is that this isn’t just about Adam Silver. Both the ownership groups and the players union are likely to have something to say. Individual owners might think it’s attractive to bend the rules and stock up players with side deals. You don’t want your opponents doing the same thing, especially if their pockets are deeper. Ultimately, this kind of underhanded competition hurts everyone. Likewise, the players association has to be concerned that outside deals will have the effect of dropping the salary cap in that the best players will always be able to get those outside deals so what’s the point of worrying about salary cap when they can just make a dirty deal for another 50 million off the books. That hurts players.
Last edited:
Silver is a convenient scapegoat because people don't like him. I don't know why people think that things were better under Stern, aside from the perception that the players were "kept in line," but we are living in the perception-is-reality timeline, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then there is what appears to be the lack of a "smoking gun," Pablo's reporting notwithstanding. The circumstantial evidence certainly seems overwhelming, but we're ultimately still at the "This smells fishy" stage, and I'm inclined to believe that the criteria for punishment should probably bear a higher standard of proof than that.
I don't like Adam Silver because of what the NBA has turned into -- this zero defense three-point chuck fest that his office's rule changes have allowed to become the new normal. And also the way punishment is selectively enforced (we'll see if this situation is any different). I had a lot of problems with David Stern in his role as commissioner too (his crack down on Allen Iverson's sideline attire being foremost among them) but I at least enjoyed watching NBA basketball during his tenure.
I don't blame Adam Silver for that. The "modern NBA" style offense is the inevitable conclusion of not murdering Don Nelson and Mike D'Antoni and leaving them laying in a ditch for providing the NBA with proof-of-concept for their respective offenses, and then subsequently glorifying the likes of Steph Curry and Damian Lillard. This was going to happen no matter who was in charge, Silver is just the scapegoat.
I see what you're saying and will even agree with it to a point. But I don't think "scapegoat" is the correct term to use here when Adam Silver does have a leadership role and should at least bear some of the responsibility for what has unfolded. And also, it's not just the stye of play that I have a problem with. I could become convinced -- if enough evidence were presented to prove that the owners have overruled him on proposed rule changes -- that he may not himself like the style of play changes but lacks the power to combat them himself. Even then I would still feel justified in holding him responsible for certain teams and players being allowed to bend the rules more than others. And for one player in particular (Draymond Green) being allowed to repeatedly blatantly break the rules and receive only perfunctory punishment for those violations.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
The NBA commisioner is merely an employee of the collective billionaire owners. They are cheifly interested in the NBA’s ability to 10x their investments every 10 years. All of the commisioner’s powers are dedicated towards managing that middle to long term growth. By that measure, Silver has been the most successful NBA commissioner in history. It is the only accountability that matters.
With that in mind, there is a range of possible responses by the league office. As Slim noted, without a paper trail, or a direct confession, this is deniable. I don’t think Silver especially wants to smash the balls of one of his bosses. On the other hand, if the commissioner obviously selectively ignores a rule in the CBA, it undermines his authority to continually manage the league’s stakeholders for greater prosperity.
I don’t see an angle for the players to care about this. I am skeptical there’s a fan outcry that would influence the outcome, most fans aren’t aware of/don’t care about the long dry legalistic text that is the CBA. Cuban’s reaction is probably an indicator of how the billionaire class thinks about this.
I’m guessing the response will be somewhere in between completely ignoring this and a slap on the wrist.
With that in mind, there is a range of possible responses by the league office. As Slim noted, without a paper trail, or a direct confession, this is deniable. I don’t think Silver especially wants to smash the balls of one of his bosses. On the other hand, if the commissioner obviously selectively ignores a rule in the CBA, it undermines his authority to continually manage the league’s stakeholders for greater prosperity.
I don’t see an angle for the players to care about this. I am skeptical there’s a fan outcry that would influence the outcome, most fans aren’t aware of/don’t care about the long dry legalistic text that is the CBA. Cuban’s reaction is probably an indicator of how the billionaire class thinks about this.
I’m guessing the response will be somewhere in between completely ignoring this and a slap on the wrist.
This makes it sound to me like you blame Silver for not fighting the flow of the river. Like I said before, it was inevitable.
Well... if we're going to excuse Adam Silver from any of the blame for the Chef Curry era than does it make any sense to give him credit for happening to be the guy in that job role when the economic reality of the last two decades was inevitably going to multiply franchise value many times over between 2006 and 2025 anyway? He could have been asleep this whole time and still making his bosses heretofore unimaginable millions of dollars in profits.
Based on the precedent that Adam Silver has already set, a lot of us (including you) expect this to blow over without much if any lasting punishment for Steve Ballmer. Which would only further reveal him to be a complete non-entity as a leader. Maybe the same would be true of anyone in that role but how am I going to know that? Adam Silver is the guy --who else am I supposed to hold responsible? Or am I just supposed to shrug and say: "yeah, everything the NBA supposedly stands for is a lie but we already knew that so why should I care?" That sounds like nihilism.
Insomniacal Fan
Starter
Yes, I am basically saying that we shouldn't trust the NBA commissioner to be fair for fairness' sake. He's there to be responsive to the needs of the privately owned business.
I appreciate the nihilism jab, it's probably deserved; but I'll defend myself by saying that this is actually Science! I have a mental model of how the system of the NBA business works, and I've got a hypothesis for what's going to happen as a result of this natural experiment. If I'm right, it'll be evidence supporting my model. If I'm wrong, I'll update my model.
I believe that if we don't understand systems, we have little chance of influencing them. Right now, perhaps billionaires are able to operate with minimal regard for the rules they purport to follow. I don't think that was always true, and it doesn't have to be true forever.
I think paying more attention and support to journalists like @pablofindsout who report interesting stories like this, is the most effective way to rebalance this power dynamic.
I wasn't trying to make it personal. I don't think it's unreasonable to hate both the player and the game, so to speak. People try to excuse their bad behavior by blaming the system but what is a system really in this context? It's not a naturally occurring phenomenon like a semi-annual flood or a forest fire for which it may take 100 years of data to begin to form an accurate mental model and all our attempts to take control of it so far have only made it worse. The system here is a range of economic factors and regulations (or lack thereof) whereby franchise value is assigned based on projected future earnings. Each one of us is capable of blowing up this business model by demanding accountability and fairness in exchange for our attention and our patronage.
These billionaires think they own us but all they own is imaginary projected future value. We're all paying attention, we've been paying attention. Rebalancing isn't going to happen because we watched a video which confirmed what we already strongly suspected to be true. Rebalancing comes when we change our behavior to reflect a different reality than the one they have mapped out for us. Because you and I both know that the one they have mapped out is more of the same and my argument has been and will continue to be that their model only becomes reality if we accept it as true and play along.
Similar threads
- Locked
- Poll
