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My understanding is this is a huge leap past typical endorsement deals with companies affiliated with teams which is why the other franchises including us cried foul. Endorsement /sponsorship deals with various benefits are common but the players do at the very least have to actually endorse the product or something. Kawhi doesn’t appear to have actually done anything at all here which is part of what sent Pablo down this rabbit hole. Even a couple of retweets, photos or liked posts might have gotten them some cover, but Leonard did nothing.

The federal investigation around the scam company also doesn’t help Balmer’s case here.

My thought here right now is that the other teams know how to straddle the line and wouldn’t raise a fuss unless it was pretty egregious. This one may have more legs than I thought earlier today so we might just find out for sure how crazy some of these deals can get.

 

We just found out, Dirk had close to 100mil offers but took Mark's 25mil (or something like that). There's loyalty and all but come on now, that's shady af.

 

yeah, i believed those reports at the time, but because the lakers made the claims, it was supposedly just sour grapes.

ok, sure.

you can see cuban making ballmer's argument--essentially aspiration laundered the money. ballmer is acting like he didn't know where it would go, but he did. and THAT part i bet they don't have in writing.

 

Yeah, the player-sponsorship deal isn't an issue. It's the fact that it was seemingly structured specifically for Kawhi as "extra salary" to circumvent the salary cap. I already read (not sure) that the amount given to him was more than they gave other endorsers.

At the very least, it's strange for a company to pay Kawhi that kind of money whilst not actually expecting nothing in him for return.

Apparently, New Balance pays Kawhi $5.5 million annually to endorse them. So why would Aspiration pay Kawhi significantly more than New Balance did whilst getting nothing in return?

 

1) Leonard, through his company KL2 Aspire LLC (where he's listed as the manager/member), signed a four-year endorsement deal with Aspiration worth $28 million ($7 million per year from 2022–2025). The deal was for Leonard to "promote and market" Aspiration via "organic" social media posts, likes, retweets, or appearances (e.g., five instances per year).
2) Payments were guaranteed and the clause stated that Kawhi *didn't* have to do anything he didn't want to do. So basically, free money for Kawhi.
3) There is zero evidence that Kawhi has done any marketing in exchange for the money on social media, interviews, public appearances, etc., Other celebrities who were paid are Drake and DiCaprio - both whom did some form of marketing.
4) Kawhi's uncle was the direct correspondent on Kawhi's side.
5) Kawhi received $21 million. They didn't receive the remaining $7 million because Aspiration went bankrupt during the final year of the deal with Kawhi.
6) Seven Aspiration employees were interviewed by Torres and stated that Kawhi's deal was essentially to circumvent the salary cap. His deal is also higher than all the other endorsements combined that were paid to other celebrities - including Drake and Dicaprio (both bigger stars than Kawhi). They also confirmed that Kawhi didn't have to do anything to receive those payments.


Balmer put in about $65 million in funding towards the company but is claiming he didn't know what they were doing with the money. Strange!

 

it's funny how both jeanie and ujiri talked about the kawhi camp demanding all types of s*** they wouldn't have been able to give out because of the CBA, but once kawhi signed with the clips no one batted an eyelash as to what the clips could have promised

i wonder if jerry west knew about all this

 

NBA did an investigation and didn't find any wrongdoing but said they would re-open it if more evidence appeared.

It's tough to really expose these things without insider info. The only reason people found out is because Aspiration went bankrupt and their filings showed Kawhi was getting paid $ by them.

 

the paper trail is there now, whereas i don't think the league had access to all that during their initial investigation

 

The Wolves did similar thing with Joe Smith, yeah Jerry West not only knew about it but probably was the master mind who encouraged it

 

this is far, far worse than the joe smith thing

 

Man this is shady af.

That is exactly what this looks like, money laundering. I wonder if fun guy paid taxes on that. What if this aspiration company was literally a money laundering front. This is a tree company with celebrity endorsements? The whole thing is strange.

 

Exactly. It just doesn’t pass the smell test

 

Shady AF and man how corrupt is Leonard - I'm absolutely positive that there are bunch of sweetheart deals mega stars get on the side but I bet they are the wink wink type of stuff. (I own this nightclub show up and we get you 100k appearance fee, do some microsoft conference meets up for more etc.). His team clearly wanted way more than the typical and on top of it needed it in writing on top of it so they could plan what to do with the cash

 

I wonder what will come from this, at the moment, I don't believe a huge amount.

It's just really hard to prove that Balmer paid money to Aspiration and that money was intended to circumvent the cap to pay Kawhi. That's the crime. The crime isn't that Kawhi did nothing and got paid endorsement money and the crime isn't that Balmer invested in the company that paid Kawhi. It's that this whole thing as designed to circumvent the cap.

The reason it's hard to prove, is because other people invested into the company and other stars were paid endorsements out of that company too, we can make deductions and assumptions. But there has to be clear and irrefutable evidence. So I think it'll all wash out unfortunately.

 

Balmer does not strike me as the type of person who would invest $50 million into a company and then completely ignore where that money was going or how it was being spent. That's not how billionaires become billionaires. It's inconceivable to me that Aspiration essentially paid Kawhi $28 million just to stay on the Clippers (the only enforceable term of the deal it seems) and Balmer didn't know about it. Puh-leez.

 

I think we would be naive to think much more substantial deals aren't being paid. As an example, my business associate pays player X endorsements from company A. I have a partnership with my business associate in company B where our profit dividends are split in a way that conveniently accounts to the endorsement amount from company A - a company that I have nothing to do with but did pay one of my players.

 

I agree but you have two teams in Toronto and LAL you clearly were getting jittery/antsy about the stuff that was going in with Leonard. Throw in how he left SAS (never made sense and his salary like Curry would be exploding being on the same team) and that's 3 teams that didn't know how to deal with him. That's a pattern that definitely suggest the Klaw was hoping to grab a lot more then his compatriots typically do

 

the narrative may end up being the biggest problem--something ballmer knows all too well. like, what if the clips won a title with leonard now--after all this came out? can't happen, man. this stinks to high heaven, and while they can't pin it on, they also can't wash it off.