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

Yeah well. I intend to watch every single Lakers game played, at least twice. As usual.

 

Yep the league knew all about it in 2019, they know about this in 2021, they will do nothing but a slap on the wrist of Ballmer since Silver also have a tree planting contract with a “Environmental group aka money laundering NGO”

 

Yeah 1 month suspension so Ballmer can’t embarrass sweating himself silly in games

 

I think it's pretty obvious what happened here.

Ballmer didn't care about 'Aspirations'.

He just needed a company to act as an intermediary to pay Kawhi.

I find it difficult to believe a man worth $150 billion would just openly fork over $50 million to a company and get conned that easily. If it was a few million dollars, I would understand. Take it as a YOLO investment and probably forgot about it since he's got a wide portfolio. But $50 million is a sizeable amount to where he would get his lawyers and wealth managers to look over everything and update him. You don't get to where Ballmer is at by making openly stupid investments and then claiming he just got conned like he's some old senior citizen who didn't know any better.

Most likely scenario, even if the NBA can't prove it, Ballmer had a *wink wink* deal with Aspirations... Take $50 million, give Kawhi $28 million, and you can keep the $22 million as a fee for orchestrating it.

Aspirations clearly engaged in fraud and mismanagement of funds... But just ask yourself, if you're just scheming to get money, why would you pay Kawhi $28 million to do nothing? You would at least try to backdoor some of that money into your own accounts... Companies that are engaging in fraud are not paying some player who isn't marketable $28 million dollars to do nothing when they can easily spend it themselves, LOL. Even if the deal is legitimate, $7 million per year is insane for a player who isn't marketable and doesn't even have to do anything. Companies like PayPal and JPMorgan are paying $3-5 million per year... and they are 1000x bigger than Aspirations... How is it those companies aren't paying Kawhi but Kawhi managed to secure a $28 million bag from some low fund crappy scam company? Only way is if that company is trying to appease the big guy... Mr. Ballmer.

 

Told you just like I said.

Ballmer was duped. This was a team sponsorship they wanted naming rights on the arena offering more then Intuit.

kawaii did his own deal. With no paper trail no case.

You can’t penalize a man for doing a bad deal.

Aspire duped alot of people.

the league has investigated for the Clippers dealing with kawaii. Cases that were thrown out.

nobody’s gonna risk Clippers or any teams dealings with the team to make a shady deal.


Owners can always advise players on buisness deals moves but the deals players make is up to them.

not concerned Ballmer did anything wrong I believe him.

He put money in it. Cause they were investing 300 million in the team for sponsoring them.

Ballmer gave aspire an introduction to Kawaii.

if anything it’s a $100,000 fine. And 5 game suspension for Ballmer.


I think Kawaii might get penalized to $200,000 fine.
4 game suspension.

this isn’t big as reported.

 

Because Aspirations can use Kawaii in ads. Credibility. Kawaii Leonard is a partner.

those other companies don’t need to do that.


When you’re Steve Ballmer yeah you’re not checking all that. You meet oh this is the new sponsor they’re going to meet Kawaii and take pictures. Okay great.

What else do I have. He has a million other things going on. Team management arena.

like I said somebody should get fired.

because somebody didn’t vet.

Ballmer has a legal team PR team fund team investment team. Charity team. Non profit team. Marketing team.

I hope this doesn’t fall on my girl Gillian Zucker.

it’s crazy. Cause these guys duped a lot. He just started defrauding all his investors.

I just saw a similar deal Vesia did a deal with a beer company Dodgers reliever and they did autograph signings with Interviews voice of the Dodgers David Vasseugh players cut endorsement deals. You see it at the Super Bowl when they do the Carwash.

Shoei Ohtani cut a deal with a sponsorship company in Hawaii allegedly. Some deal fell through with him and his interpreter the same one that’s in jail. And they sued Ohtani saying they took over the deal and had all kind of demands.

so these things go sideways.

Aspirations look like they had some shady s*** going on.

I’ve went back and forth with Clippers people for sponsorship opportunities when they were coming into their new arena. They are a pretty up and up company.

Ballmer seemed very sincere.

 

It is obvious, and you’re right. But you can’t go punishing people without clear proof - that’s just the reality of the situation. For the punishment to fall in the jurisdiction of the NBA, they’ll need something concrete to prove the payment was made to circumvent the cap. It had to be clear.

Right now all they have is, 1) Balmer acted like an idiot (which he isn’t) when he invested 50m in a stupid way (which he doesn’t normally do) into Aspiration and 2) Kawhi is a sleazebag that received payment without doing anything for it.

Neither of these things are illegal. They’re just quite obviously dodgy, but without clear proof - I’m not sure how much the NBA will want to get involved. I also wonder how much the NBA owners would want to prosecute another owner. What kind of precedent does that set? Do they go after Lacob next for his tech buddies hooking up role players? What about Cuban giving Dirk a job to do nothing for the Mavs to make up money? San Antonio with Duncan? What about all the other endorsements that are set up to sweeten the deal when they sign with new teams? I know the lakers use their connections in entertainment a lot…

 

Also another point that’s worth stating is: the clippers didn’t really benefit from paying Kawhi extra. He was already on a max, it’s not like they paid him the minimum and then circumvented the cap to get him to sign with them. This would be far worse if Kawhi was signed to something other than the max.

 

Kawhi is such a bad investment with no returns why lauder money for his benefit?

 

i think if the clips skate here, literally all bets are off. there is no salary cap, imo. if you don't enforce rules, there aren't rules. someone said how about lacob opens a hot dog stand and pays lebron 100 million dollars to stand in it for one day? this s*** is ridiculous, and i can't believe all the defending i'm seeing here, tbh.

it's ok to say nothing will happen; it's not ok to suggest that that's ok.

what's really guilty? the information already put out there is enough to demonstrate what's happened--and pretty much everyone (even the ballmer defenders) agrees on this.

read somewhere that it may have actually been closer to 50 million paid out to kawhi, but i forgot who said that.

how much more clarity do you need? if the burden of proof is a check from ballmer to kawhi, this is some dave chappelle r kelly s***. if the standard is really that high, just scrap the cap, tbh. again, i hope lakers ownership is taking notes.

right now, all they've got is lebron getting his lifelong dream of endorsing a hot dog stand and joe lacob making an unwise hot dog stand investment. sorry gaiz, no harm no foul.

yes, yes, and yes? or scrap the rules. also, huge difference again is those were literally wink/wink things that require trust. this is different because of all the inherent mistrust in the dealings, evidenced in the need for that crazy endorsement contract (which required he stay with the clippers to collect!).

i agree you can't do anything about stuff that wasn't written down. this was written down. harden hates morey because they made a verbal agreement that morey didn't honor. kawhi didn't give ballmer that chance. the fact that there's risk in the dirk/duncan/harden situations makes them qualitatively different. marc stein--who's very familiar with cuban/dirk--said the other day that this was NOT run-of-the-mill wink/wink stuff that happens elsewhere.

they benefitted from getting him at all. sounds like if we cheated harder, the clips would still be in the basement. kawhi choosing them was a big boost for their brand (and a big ding on ours, too). the fact that they're worse off doesn't change what happened. imagine if they'd won a couple rings like everyone expected.

anyway, i continue to disagree that

a) everyone does this all the time

and

b) not having repercussions for it is fine

i think both of those claims are false.

 

Yeah, I threw out the hot dog stand and that's what the league is looking at if they let this slide.

Something has to be done even if its internal among the owners. You can't have this. The league has already set the bar ridiculously low on these side deals.

If they let this go you might as well just contract the league to us and a handful of others because it will all be about the strength of the team brand and the pockets of the ownership groups and the smaller franchises that already feel like they have a tough time keeping up will truly be in for it.

 

Speaking of LeBron, my side thought here is how much this will end up bring some insight into his stance on taking less cash. Kobe as well. We hear story after story praising guys for taking less cash, but these side deals could have been much more lucrative than we may have guessed. Circumventing the cap ends up being a win / win for some of these players. They still get their money plus some and they get pats on the back for sacrificing for the team.

Our guys take deals that follow the rules and are critiqued for it.

I won't say we are squeaky clean. But, to the credit of the front office, and specifically Jeanie, we know they value playing within the rules of the CBA and will draw the line somewhere. And if I'm a guy like LeBron and I know the "sacrifices" other guys are making are complete BS and they are cheating, I'm not paying any of those narratives any attention whatsoever.

If the league lets this slide then who knows where this goes. I get the feeling the view of this will be much different in a couple of years when we trot out Luka, Giannis, and Wemby all under the cap.

 

Clippers benefitted Huge from Kawaii they got Intuit. And I know they were getting Intuit anyway.

but it enhances the brand when the Marquee player free agent chooses the Clippers. Clippers over Lakers???

The Clippers host concerts. Kawaii comes home they sale it. Kawaii is viewed as a Clipper.

that gets other guys Beal players want to come here it’s L.A.

and you have a marquee player which gets you Harden.

there is appeal him signing here in L.A. Kawaii new balance.

Clippers got a win on that. No championship though.

Ballmer just wants to make this team a global brand.

I will say Kawaii has gotten into a lot of s***. That s*** would never fly on the Lakers. So he was smart.

it was a good choice for him. He lives in San Diego is routinely late for team planes. But hey the Clippers are his team and I get it.

Kawaii wasn’t going to do s*** it in that deal. And it was a shady a** company. Intuit is really a nice place. Ballmer isn’t f***ing with his ownership.

I think the Clippers as a team did some f***ed up s***. It was different. Let kawaii get this money. Kawaii is taking free extra money.

it would look different if it was Harden cause the Clippers never really gave Harden a max.

Why the f*** does Kawaii need this 28 million??? Career earnings $400 million dollars. You get easily $100 million from shoes.

This sounds like some uncle Dennis s***. He’s been whoring around his nephew trying to get planes ownership houses. Just some real ghetto s***. But if you can why not.

and Ballmers that owner who isn’t going to say no.

Kawaii lost his dad in a tragic way. So he really leans on uncle Dennis. I think uncle Dennis takes advantage.

Clippers did a lot hired kawaiis boy trainer.

Kawaii sees it more as a partnership with the Clippers like LeBron with us. Once again he was never getting that here.

I do think Steve Ballmer is extremely nice when it comes to the players. And Kawaii is going to keep asking. How do you tell these guys no? I know Ballmer like okay just invest in the company that’s like $100,000 to him.

Kawaii was never going to do s*** in that partnership.

what I can generally say is I think Ballmer knew Kawaii wasn’t going to do s***. And didn’t want to tell Kawaii hey you gotta do those video shout outs.

Ballmer gave away a lot. Him and kawaii talk ball and hang out. Can’t see how aspiration didn’t come up. How’s the deal coming?

Kawaii wouldn’t know that s***.

seems like Uncle Dennis got 28 million.

 

As for the small market. f*** the small market. OKC won a championship with Shai (former Clipper) Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. And guess what they paid them all and signed all of them to max contracts.

 

yeah, it's an interesting thought. though again, i think scale of the dirk/duncan stuff is totally different. first, both guys took less, then got a bit more on the back end. they probably ended up breaking pretty close to even on salary, and the reason it happened was the strength of the relationship between player and team. same with haslem in miami back in the day, i think. and all three of those guys got cushy high-paying gigs after they retired. the difference is none of this was officially negotiated through an intermediary. and again, i think that matters.

lebron not taking less here might simply mean that the level of trust required wasn't there. and maybe that's fair. though i would say that rob and klutch have worked together on wink/wink stuff pretty well over the past several years (kcp is the chief example), so lebron not taking a cut kind of surprised me from that angle. enough that i wondered if silver pre-emptively told us that wouldn't fly (supposedly he's done similar periodically).

this last part just strengthens the idea that if the clips skate here, he's lost control. either he blessed it before or he's tacitly blessing it after. and if he's gone to the trouble to warn teams against lesser infractions, how is anyone to take him seriously going forward?

 

btw, this is the rule:

the red "and" is doing A LOT of work here and basically saying (if i read it correctly) that if the player is on a max contract, you can do whatever. hell, even if it's not, it's still pretty subjective what "fair market value" would be, i think.

ok fine--let ballmer skate, but change that rule, like yesterday. or it's hot dog stand time. i'm buying jokic all the horses in serbia. sorry, my environmental consulting firm (in which i invested the exact dollar amount of all the horses in serbia) is buying jokic all the horses in serbia.

 

The only constituency that matters here in terms of what Silver is going to do is the other owners. He's not going to impose a punishment on Ballmer because fans want him to. As far as I've seen, the only other "owner" (I know he's no longer in charge) that's come out and talked about this is Cuban. And he came out in support of Ballmer and plausible deniability.

I could easily see this being a situation where a lot of owners/teams do similar things to this, but not nearly as egregious. And I could see the threat from Ballmer behind closed doors being that if you bring the hammer down on me for this, I'm exposing everything everyone else is doing. Pablo won't have to dig into whatever may have happened with Brunson, I'm sure other owners are fully aware. So we'll see.