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

Silver explicitly said.. that circumstantial evidence is not enough. If he made that statement publicly already, he's not going back on it.

 

Does he really have anything, that is to be considered "hard proof" though? I haven't seen anything he's posted, like that to date. He hasn't explained how 62M being invested, equates to "proof" of being done, for the purpose of paying the claw 28M in an endorsement deal.

The no show thing, is the controversy to me, but is a no show endorsement deal, even illegal in the NBA? Nobody has answered this question yet.

 

Lol. I'm just quoting the man, that is actually going to make the decision, on whether it was circumventing the cap or not. I posted his exact words too.

 

i think what cookie and i are saying is that silver's decision doesn't affect ours (and many others'). it's pretty clear his plan is to ignore it, but that doesn't mean he should.

 

I feel you..I just want our new owner, to have all the guidelines down pat, regarding this stuff. I have no doubts, that he's going to do any and everything, legally allowed to help boost our team.

 

Question to google, Did Adam Silver say that circumstantial evidence would not be enough in the Clippers investigation?

AI Overview
While he did not say that circumstantial evidence is insufficient, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated that he would be "reluctant to act (DUH it's Adam Silver) if there was a mere appearance of impropriety"
. The comment, made in September 2025 regarding the investigation into the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, suggests a high bar for punishment, leading @Slick2021 to interpret his words as requiring more than circumstantial evidence alone.

This isn't a capitol case, and while it's not a civil case either as Silver makes the distinction in that last sentence below .... "not a court of law" ... he implies that accordingly he has even greater latitude as how to find on the matter. When his lawyers finish going through ALL the circumstantial evidence (plus entirely still possible paper trails, even if not from Ballz directly) IF they tell him the overwhelming preponderance of evidence is GUILTY .... IMO ... 180 opposed to your's, he's going to have to DING them. Silver also said this:

"My powers are very broad. Full range of financial penalties — draft picks, suspensions, et cetera. I have very broad powers in these situations."

"The public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false," Silver said. "I'd want anybody else in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in now, or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me." He then said that the NBA is "not a court of law at the end, of the day, either," and has "broad authority to look at all information and to weigh it accordingly."

 

the only problem is Lebron will be retiring soon, no matter what way we could imagine otherwise.

 

I would keep Rui until we can upgrade to a forward who is better defensively.

 

behead him!!!

 

And...um...you are saying what exactly here? I posted his direct quote, not an AI summarized version. Reading his actual quote, I don't see anything happening.

 

True but again.. I have my doubts that we view Rui as his replacement.

 

I like him as a player but do not view him as a frontline 2 way star. If we could find that guy, I would be willing to move Rui for him. I have my doubts that Wiggins is that guy, but I am one of those guys that doesn't have much care which ever way our FO chooses to go on this. They are going to do what they think is best and so far, that has been pretty good. Life is a journey, getting to the top is a struggle and it NEVER happens to anyone or any team without struggles. Enjoy the journey, the journey is what everything is actually all about. Winning without struggles or without acknowledging the journey is hollow, and boring at best.

 

I spent 15 minutes looking for it. If you have it (the full statement he made) somewhere, please post it. The original here on LB below is now no longer available. Considering all of his other quoted comments in that same session (that I found in actual reports about his statement with quotation marks) there's NO way he point blank said he would NOT find on only circumstantial. It's your interpretation.

 

he said he wouldn't do anything based on the appearance of impropriety, right? the rules state evidence can be circumstantial here. whether silver has the appetite for applying the rules is another question. there's also the question of whether he interprets the rules in the extreme way, which actually suggests that basically all bets are off. this is why i keep referring to the spirit of the cba moreso than the actual cba. like everybody knows that if someone floated this particular hypothetical while they were writing the cba, everyone would be like..."yeah, you can't do that. it would mean that there's no real cap on any given contract and thus no real cap on the full payroll."

 

This case has taken a few interesting turns:
Two days ago, one of the CEO’s came out and said that it wasn’t a no show endorsement of Kawhi.

Yesterday Torre revealed his signed declaration from some executives that they had no input on the endorsement to Kawhi and that they believed it didn’t make sense for the company and wasn’t in its best interests.

Today, it seems that someone has done some more digging, and one of the main parties that brought all of this fraud stuff against Aspiration to the SEC was an investor who invested 50m into the company (Balmer not named explicitly).

Strikes me as strange that Ballmer, who was attempting to circumvent the cap, would then whistleblow to the SEC that the company was defrauding their investors…

I’m now starting to wonder how much of this Ballmer/Kawhi/Clippers fall out is to paint Balmer in a bad light before they get to criminal court for Aspiration fraud case and he has to testify against Sanberg and the executive team.

 

MOAR! As abeer has said these guys both sides trying to cover their a**** pop off with denials the then Pablo comes back with .... in this instance, oh look here it's a "court document". Cherny himself in this case.

 

For Astros

what goes on in a company that is not tied to the NBA or NBA team is irrelevant. Word from a bunch of employees who drew up a contract that didn’t agree with Company policy so what?

Maybe he just wanted to give Kawaii all the money and didn’t care. Just wanted his name attached to the company.

I see their animosity this contract cost them their jobs. But that’s just disgruntled employees. So what the CEO made a bad decision. Where have we heard that from before? NFT guy?? Sam fried. Bernie Madhoff?

what’s that got to do with the Clippers???

did they circumvent or not? Where’s the evidence? Other CEO said he drew up the contract okay!!!!! Great. Now where’s the email from Steve that says okay guys are we on board with Kawaiis agreement and payment? Oh that’s right. There isn’t one cause one doesn’t exist.

 

exactly basically saying all the s*** yall talking is gossip. Until I have substantial evidence. I can’t move on disciplining a guy I work for.