What will Adam Silver do about Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer, and the Clippers?
Well, I had other writing plans this week (namely, vacation), but it feels like this needs to be discussed.
As he is wont to do,
found out that the Clippers gave Kawhi Leonard $28 million in real money for a fake endorsement (i.e., he never had to lift a finger or do anything) for a now-bankrupt fraudulent company called Aspiration. The story is properly insane. You simply must go watch it on Torre’s YouTube channel, as he goes into wild detail:The investigation dives into some potentially serious federal crimes, but we’ll focus on the NBA side of things. Allegations stand that Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer, one of the richest people in the entire world, essentially gave Kawhi Leonard $28 million outside of the salary cap as part of a sham endorsement deal in return for absolutely nothing.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and let’s start with the acknowledgments that A) I’m no lawyer, B) this is a very new case that we’ll undoubtedly learn much more about, and C) the Clippers, predictably, have stated that neither they nor Ballmer have committed wrongdoing. Nothing has been charged against them either in court or by the league, yet.
But I have several off-the-cuff basketball-related thoughts that I wanted to try and sort through by putting on paper, including how a potential Clippers punishment could directly impact other title contenders.