2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

btw, torres hints he knows more about brunson to ny than most, and i'd love to hear that. nobody cared at the time because brunson wasn't a big deal and the mavs aren't big news, but that was dirty all the way down. and i think him re-signing at sub max was also pretty bizarre, considering. again, people can ignore it because brunson even now is maybe not quite a super duper star, but players of his stature don't sign for sub max in their prime.

torres also quickly dropped harden's name with dan patrick (which was where he teased the brunson thing), but it wasn't clear which harden move he was talking about.

anyway, his point was the same as mine above--yes, these things happen, but generally not to the scale of the kawhi thing, and not as brazenly (though hiring brunson's dad was pretty freaking on the nose, lol).

 

I’m not calling any forum poster naive, I’m trying to say all of us fans would be naive to think that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen more than we think in professional sports. I remember the Spanish government trying to sue Cristiano Ronaldo for unpaid taxes. He argued he sold his image rights to an offshore company, and therefore any endorsements weren’t taxable domestically in Spain. (I believe the company was owned by immediate family)

But as with all things, the rich get away with murder and it’s hard to prove things without irrefutable evidence, which almost no one is stupid enough to make/keep/lose.

The only time justice is served is when the powers that be want to make an example of someone/something. I don’t see other owners doing that to the richest one and the current commissioner is a yes man.

 

again, all true, but i think there may be "soft" consequences. this is the league that basically rigged the 2006 finals because they wanted to muzzle cuban (it worked, btw).

i'd love to be a fly on the wall when silver discusses this with the owners. like, yeah, they're all doing it so nobody will push too hard, but if i'm in the room i might ask what grounds silver is going to have against me when i push the limits further? what if ballmer's team beats mine in the playoffs? is my lesson that i just have to cheat harder?

 

Yeah. I think this is really egregious as well and that’s the problem.

The bar for performance on these deals is really low. Which makes sense to an extent right. You don’t want obligations to a side company interfering with team obligations.

But with that bar being so low, not doing anything at all is even worse. Especially when the contract seems to be worded in a way to allow exactly that.

if Kawhi literally had planted a single tree, took a picture, something, this is probably nothing. But he did nothing and the owner is financially involved with the outside business. That just can’t be allowed honestly.

if nothing else, I think they have gone way too far and ruined the “wink wink” aspect of these deals for everyone. Performance will have to be much more clearly defined and met on these deals moving forward.

 

ALL THE WAY, Cuban!
We haven’t forgotten your little temper tantrum to the League Office after we traded for CPDirty.

 

It does happen. You are 100% correct. But it also doesn't happen as well. Some teams aren't doing this. So those owners who aren't doing this would expect punishment to be dealt.

It's about sending a message. The NBA can't have teams circumventing the salary cap, period. Otherwise, the salary cap doesn't matter and the NBA doesn't mean what they say they do. So there has to be some form of punishment here to dissuade teams from even thinking about doing it.

Will it still happen? Yeah. But for the NBA's image, it's best Silver take action if the reports are credible.

IMO, just the fact that his uncle has made demands previously (other NBA teams can attest to that + the NBA previously investigated it) and that Kawhi hasn't done any marketing for the company but got paid guaranteed sums of $ should be enough for the NBA to make a decision here.

 

he had similar arrangements with dirk throughout the years, hence why he's on ballmer's side. not to mention this is the same guy who ignored years of sexually inappropriate conduct within the mavs FO

i had forgotten how scummy of an owner cuban was

 

lol 48 million when guys like DiCaprio! were making 1/10 of that - come on now. This is one hell of turd in terms of stink

 

No, it's not? Unless I'm missing something. What Ballmer/Kawhi did broke league rules, not actual laws. It's not legal blackmail to say I'm not signing a contract to play with your basketball team unless I get paid $28 million from this related party. This is all coming out in bankruptcy filings because the Company was found to have defrauded other investors, unrelated to this Clippers thing.

 

this is the part i'm surprised is allowed all by itself--a company the owner is invested in is the company paying the player? i'm guessing if a major shareholder in nike bought an nba team, there would be shoe contract issues, right?

i'm just trying to figure out how they're going to explain not basically going nuclear on the clippers here. and they're going to let them off easy, but...how will they justify it?

 

Yep totally the business I would have Kawhii trying to endorse. the plausible deniability here is a joke

 

Yeah. If you take it to its extreme, there would be nothing to stop any owner from opening a a couple of hot dog stands and then signing a player to a 50mil endorsement deal for it.

Maybe there was some kind of behind the scenes, gentleman's agreement thing going on here that everyone agreed to but didn't want in writing. Balmer just went way too far with it.

 

Saw somewhere that maybe Ballmer leaked all this to try to get the league to rescind Kawhi's contract lol.