Lakers VS Slippers Discussion

While I've been in management for a while now, the law degree hanging on my wall and the bar exam passed many moons ago say I am at least somewhat familiar with the law and how to interpret it.



My comment was snarky. You're certainly welcome to your opinion. I will return to this tomorrow but a good bit more has been released since McCann spoke on this last year.

 

So, I have a number of thoughts but I will stick to just couple of things mainly because I do believe there is a lot to this case we haven't seen yet.

As @abeer3 says, a lot of our chats were around this part of the CBA prohibiting teams from entering "into an agreement or understanding with any sponsor or business partner or third party under which such sponsor, business partner or third party pays or agrees to pay compensation for basketball services (even if such compensation is ostensibly designated as being for non-basketball services) to a player under contract with the team. Such an agreement with a sponsor or business partner or third party may be inferred where: (i) such compensation from the sponsor or business partner or third party is substantially in excess of the fair-market value of any services to be rendered by the player for such sponsor business partner or third party; and (ii) the compensation in the player contract between the player and the team is substantially below the fair-market value of such contract."

Unless the Clippers can show that Kawhi did literally anything, I still think this is a problem for them particularly when you add in Kawhi taking a bit less than he could have on his last contract, Balmer owning a part of Aspiration, and the other no work deals Torre alleges are in place here.

Even if someone argues that Balmer can fight that, it brings up a very big caveat to all of this in my opinion. I don't think Balmer actually wants this to go to arbitration. They will use the threat of it to try and bring down the punishment the league imposes, but that's a road I think both parties want to avoid. For Balmer, it sounds like they allegedly did a good bit to try and appease Uncle Dennis. Can't imagine they want any of that to come out unless they have clear evidence that clears them.

 

upon reading this again the "and" is why the "if it's a max contract it doesn't matter" stuff comes in. and sure, if you want to play it that way, i guess you can wiggle out, but it just means that there's no max contract, which to me, violates the spirit of the rule in the first place.

the irony here is that clear exculpatory evidence almost can't exist. you'd basically have to have ballmer personally emailing the aspiration CEO to tell them to stop, and the CEO responding with "this is totally kosher, bro, and we're doing it no matter what you say!" file under: things that will never happen for any reason ever.

of course this is why the cba language makes it clear that this kind of evidence--in either direction--is not required to hand down punishment.

but after many pages of discussion, i haven't seen anything that refutes my basic point: if ballmer didn't do anything wrong, there isn't a salary cap. that's fine, but i guess just admit it and go forward as MLB. pretending like this is a thing is laughable if they walk away from this without serious penalties.