Clippers Get Hammered

[Lipoli390]

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/498 ... awhi-probe

Justice was done. The Clippers will receive essentially the same punishment the Wolves received for the Joe Smith deal. I was worried the Clippers would get off or get away with something closer to a slap on the wrist. It’s good to see relatively even-handed justice for once.

[Jester1534]

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/498 ... awhi-probe

Justice was done. The Clippers will receive essentially the same punishment the Wolves received for the Joe Smith deal. I was worried the Clippers would get off or get away with something closer to a slap on the wrist. It’s good to see relatively even-handed justice for once.

Its the most minnesota sports franchise for the history of this to he Joe Freaking Smith and not for a player the caliber of Kawhi lol

[Coolbreeze44]

My respect grew for Silver today, not by a lot, but I was surprised how hard the hammer was for an LA franchise. Fuck Ballmer.

[KiwiMatt]

Just curious as to how the 1st Round Picks get reallocated?

[Phenom]

Just curious as to how the 1st Round Picks get reallocated?

Itll just be a 29 pick first round. The draft eligible players get boned with one less guaranteed contract. Maybe the league should randomly award the 30th pick those years or put it up for bid.

[WildWolf2813]

Just curious as to how the 1st Round Picks get reallocated?

they just get erased, same way 2nd's got erased for tampering

[Monster]

What's mind bogglingly blatant about this whole thing is the Clippers still saying they are innocent. I'm sorry the NBa isn't going to be doing all this because they started investigating and then decided they had to do something but there wasn't anything to support it. It benefits the NBA to move past this as quickly as possible. It seems wildly clear to me there was more than adequate evidence to throw down this level of punishment. I'm annoyed that Leonard didn't have more punishment (I guess at least he said something about accepting responsibility) but yeah fuck the Clippers.

[FNG]

This one is puzzling to me, perhaps because I haven't really dug into what the Clippers did. But we all know many NBA players supplement their reported pay through other revenues related to advertising and endorsements. Do we really think Ballmer and Glen Taylor are the only owners that have ever done anything to increase their player's income? I suspect it happens far more frequently than the league knows about. I wonder if there is now going to be a rash of reported violations and penalties.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

Yeah, this was obvious circumvention.

The Clippers are crying that the evidence is circumstantial, but if you read the report and follow what's been shown to be true, there's literally no other explanation for what happened here OTHER than circumvention.

On top of that, this isn't the first time they've done it, and it sounds like Ballmer and Zucker lied to the investigators.

And that ESPN report a few weeks ago that the league hadn't found anything? It wouldn't surprise me at all if that story was driven by Clippers sources.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/496 ... hi-leonard

Don Van Natta Jr., Baxter Holmes, and Ramona Shelburne should be taking a good long look in the mirror and having some tough conversations with their editors and ESPN about journalistic ethics and practice because that story looks a lot more like a PR plant from the Clippers than careful reporting.

[Monster]

This one is puzzling to me, perhaps because I haven't really dug into what the Clippers did. But we all know many NBA players supplement their reported pay through other revenues related to advertising and endorsements. Do we really think Ballmer and Glen Taylor are the only owners that have ever done anything to increase their player's income? I suspect it happens far more frequently than the league knows about. I wonder if there is now going to be a rash of reported violations and penalties.

It's worth remembering that the reason why Joe Smith stuff came out was that his agents were fighting and then info about the agreement was made known. Jon K pointed this out in his article about the Clippers situation.

If I remember correctly there are ways for NBA teams to work with players to get endorsements. The difference with Leonard was he basically did nothing after receiving the money. If Arod was like hey Kuminga we have a partner that wants to have you as a guy that endorses their product and Kuminga signed a 1 million deal and did a commercial and some public appearances...ok great that's probably fine. According to reporting I read this morning in one instance Leonard got paid like 10-20 times what Robert Downey Jr and some other celebrity that you might argue is more well known and Leonard did basically nothing for that money. I'd be curious where the endorsement money went. I wonder if the Uncle got a fairly big cut and that's why Leonard the player person is getting off kinda easy. If Kuminga signed 20 million dollar endorsement deal with Target and then did no promotional work for them that would be pretty fishy right? I mean obviously Leonard is a bigger name than Kuminga but the guy is absolutely not a guy out there doing public stuff.

Again fuck the Clippers unless stuff was absolutely made up (which seems very unlikely) this was blatant getting a player extra money for basically doing nothing. What's kinda funny about the whole thing is Ballmer got scammed...what is it they say about Karma?

There is absolutely plenty of shady stuff that goes on in various businesses and organizations and this is just another proof point of it.