Lakers VS Slippers Discussion

Honestly, I will be surprised if Silver remains commissioner after this. He has been a disgrace, no matter what angle you look at it from. He is bad for the league.

 

Aspiration executive:
$248M fraud → guilty plea → 14 years federal prison

Kawhi/Aspiration arrangement:
$28M contract → alleged connection to salary-cap circumvention → NBA investigation still ongoing

And now:
A second alleged sponsorship arrangement involving Daktronics
Whatever
Kawhi and his uncle still making millions out of thin air

 

so...we're going to investigate gary trent in milwaukee, but just accept this:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/49604287/beal-stays-clippers-2-year-deal-worth-132-million-deal

player option on year 2? something stinks.

 

I mean Beal is sort of worth that, if healthy. Gary Trent… I mean, crazy stuff.

 

clips want to be the lakers so bad they're even giving out player options now

 

i'm not sure beal should have a roster spot. the same is true for trent at this point. they're both pretty unplayable, and beal rarely plays anyway. the fact that it's above vet min and has a PO is super weird to me.

 

What happened to Beal? I thought he has been injured.
Yeah he's a pretty one trick pony as he can only score and probably looks awful in advanced metrics, but to put him in the Cam Thomas class seems like a stretch?
Even Cam deserves a team in a specific role. I'm all about advanced metrics and like winning impactful players are getting more visibility, but hell the game is still about putting the ball in the basket and these guys are elite. There are teams that lack so much offense that could benefit from these ball hoggers.

Btw, Mathurin haven't signed also right? He's a pending RFA like Watson, Duren? Imagine it's pending Kawhi/Watson resolutions, but a bit weird the Clippers haven't resigned after getting him for Zubac as an important piece of that trade

 

he had hip surgery last year. you know, the thing that apparently makes looney completely finished even though his hip surgeries were 10 years ago and he's 3 years younger than beal? that. and he had been bad before that.

yeah, i'm a little baffled by cam thomas. he averaged 21 and 24ppg the two seasons prior to last year. i don't put much stock in last year, playing on the QO on a terrible team trying to develop everyone but you, then moving to another tough situation in milwaukee. and i get that good teams might not have the role he wants, but at this point, nobody has a vet min for someone who can put up that many points? we're sure that beal and thj and gary trent and whomever are going to help you win more games than thomas? and i've never been a thomas fan. low iq, no defense (lol, he grades out in the 0th percentile). but guys like him have managed to help teams here and there. hell, rui and kennard were almost as bad defensively, not as good offensively, and some of us have been mourning their loss at higher prices.

it kind of goes to show how important culture and mindset have become to nba gms, though, right? even the kuminga situation smacks of that. a couple negative words, and you're finished. you can't make any waves unless you're an absolute superstar because they feel like they have two-way guys who will shut up and do their job.

of course, all it takes is one attention-grabbing reclamation to turn it around again.

ok, so part of my theory about the zubac trade was actually that indy didn't want to deal with the RFA headache with mathurin. people talk about kuminga not understanding his market, but it's possible mathurin's agent did similar things in indy, and they watched how the kuminga/gs thing went and were like...we'll pass.

supposedly, his agent was seeking between 20 and 30 per at the outset of FA, and it looks like MLE is where they'll have to settle, this year or next.

 

https://x.com/TheNBABase/status/208...hi-leonard-emails-between-team-and-daktronics


Yikes

 

Still... not enough proof. Alien boy will make it all go away.

 

the funniest part of this whole thing is it could've all been avoided if kawhi had just made the time to do a single ad, appearance, whatever for these companies

instead, it seems like he went out of his way to make sure he didn't have to do anything

 

Pablo must have another 100 smoking guns just ready to fire. It's quite hilarious and equally pathetic that none of it is moving the needle for the league to act on this circus show.

Push the trade through, fine Kawhi, make Uncle Dennis disappear from any interaction with anything involving the NBA, fine the f*** out of Ballmer, fine the Clippers, and strip their picks and MLEs and BAEs.

Largest active player fine I believe was Vlad Rad for hiding his snowboarding injury. It was about 10% of his salary. So fine Kawhi 10% of his. Make him donate that $5m to saving the trees. Largest team fine was the Wolves in '00 with a $3.5m fine for the Joe Smith stuff and Glen Taylor was suspended for a year. Today, that $3.5m is $6.7m when accounting for inflation. So fine the Clippers as a team that $6.7m, keep Ballmer at home for a year and fine him personally $8m for threatening the integrity of the league. Arbitrarily came up with $8m because Sarver's $10m fine for being an awful racist human being is worse. Take the Clippers next two available firsts and their FA spending options other than the vet mins for the next two seasons.

BUT since they're negotiating with Ballmer about a punishment he'll accept, it's going to be a nothingburger...what the f*** does that even mean?! You don't negotiate punishments. You hand them out and they eat it. Silver is such a coward.

 

Just make him not earn a check for the games he sits due to "injury." That's a bigger suspension than any number of games they'd hand out.


Also, the only reason I'm not in full support of a suspension is it punishes the Raptors. That's why I think it has to be more monetarily based. Now, if he stays a Clipp...drop the hammer.

 

Hold their feet to the fire

 

as slimy as uncle dennis/kawhi are, to me the real sinners are the ones with power who grant the illicit request. as such, i'm with jsm in that i think the league should just let the kawhi deal go down. they should then yoink those ill-begotten picks. kawhi should get a fine, for sure, but his new team shouldn't have to eat the punishment, imo. i guess a compromise would be amending the deal to reduce the draft compensation to la and fine kawhi the process.

but yeah, the whole thing is super dystopian from the get go. ballmer having more money than god is the problem. so much so that the league's commissioner has to check with him to see if the punishment for flagrantly breaking the rules is ok. it's the modern era in a nutshell, and i'm on the side of burn it down.