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

How does that prove anything?

 

Could be wrong here of course but if I believe Kl99 about past FO history with a franchise, and I lean that way from all the things said, I’m going to guess it was much earlier Clippers under Sterling.

 

And if there’s a rule in the owners handbook that no show deals are not allowed and Steve Ballmer knowingly steered Kawaii into a no show deal.

That’s a penalty. If that can’t be proved then that’s that. But if they can he will be penalized simple as that.

As simple as this if it was clear in the contract that Kawaii had to meet parameters goals in that deal to get paid and he didn’t then that’s on Kawaii and the deal. As the co ceo stated.

if Ballmer made a payment to cover his partner anybody can do that. Partners cover payments so this is a case of that. Now what that ceo does with the money is up to him. And he frauded. Now Ballmer was trying to keep it afloat.

let’s stick with facts that Dennis Wong made a 1 million dollar payment that went to Kawaii.

Ballmer has to explain why his partner made that payment. Keep it to that.

if he keeps it a buck and said it was to pay Kawaii for funds the CEO didn’t make that’s up. To the agreement league agreement pertaining to players and endorsement deals so we have to see.


And the company being bankrupt that Ballmer is a part of is a bad look.

as for Steve my boy has done business with him. Says he’s a great guy. I never heard of him being an a****** just pretty nerdy.

 

My experience with L.A. owners I had a heated debate with Donald Sterling pertaining to me advocating he pay Corey Mgette. I said he’s a great player. Donald said he’s a good player.

which led to Penny Marshsl saying I’ve never seen anybody stand up to him like that.

as for Jeanie Buss she called me on my cell phone luckily I actually answered the call. Jeanie Buss with the los Angles Lakers. This was about business with Phil Jackson.

Lakers first class. I’m just keeping it 100.

I got Claire Kupchak’s Mitch’s wife tickets to Justin Timberlake backstage. And Mitch pulled me aside and said he appreciated that.

I’ve always had great dealing with the Lakers.

 

Where the hell is OX? Can’t even bother to weigh in on this …. only shows up randomly to pick on Bronny illogically.

 

You do realize that, this information about the company burning through cash, and how much they had in the bank, wasn't public knowledge at that time right? This was disclosed after the scam had been exposed.

So none of the investors, including Ballmer had any idea of this being the case. That's makes things hit differently, this is why I think people, are just jumping to all kinds of conclusions here, without looking at the full context, of what was going on.

Now I don't know if Ballmer turned them in or not, I doubt it, since he says he was unaware that they were defrauding everybody, until the Feds contacted him.

I do know that investors tend to throw good money into a bad investment, hoping to save their investment. This happens all the time, sometimes company go through short term cash crunches, and in this case, sometimes it's just fraud all along.

I hate Leonard and f*** the Flippers as previously posted. Yet I do have selfish, Laker related interests in this situation. I just want the rules to be clearly laid out here. I think we can benefit from it. I care nothing at all, about the small market teams, or owners with less cash than ours.

 

f*** those small market teams. Those small market teams are why we don’t have Chris Paul.

and I know for fact the biggest proponent against the Chris Paul trade was Dan Gilbert.

 

Two parties bought this to the SEC, Ballmer and Oakhill capital, both parties are listed by their investment amounts but not by name. There is a clear line of investment into the company that verifies them. So I think it’s fairly certain that they were the whistleblowers, it’s jsut the court of law doesn’t like to list these things to the general public.

I think it’s just interesting that someone who would be engaging in illegal activities would bring this to the SEC, don’t you? I’m not saying this absolves them.

I’m just saying I think proof would be helpful. Here are the key points as I read them from Adam Silver’s press conference (being objective):

- they have broad disciplinary powers to do what they want regarding financial fines, draft pick or other penalties
- the burden of proof is on the league if they’re going to discipline a team
- they will look at the totality of the evidence, both clear and circumstantial
- if there is only the mere appearance but not clear evidence of impropriety, silver would be reluctant to act
- he made the point that the public at times reaches conclusions that turn out to be false in hindsight

This makes me think that his goal is to do an investigation and if there is clear evidence, punish accordingly. But it’s the appetite of how thorough that investigation will be and how strict the punishment dealt will be that I question. I’m not sure the owners are baying for blood, that the players association will allow a thorough investigation.

 

So apparently a significant part of the $50m Ballmer invested went to other urgent payments and not to Kawhi. Kawhi received 3.5m of his third payment from that money at this point. He wasn’t paid the other 3.5m until the last round of raising capital had occurred some 7 months later in December 22. He was also never paid his last 7m. So he was paid 21m only.

So Kawhi received 2 payments at 7m, then the 50m came in and he received half of the third payment and half of the other third payment 7 months later.

I’m not saying that Ballmer didn’t cheat, but it’s also not as cut and dry as Torre insinuated - he made it look like 50m came in and 48m went to Kawhi. When in reality it went more like this:

Kawhi paid half his endorsement contract
Ballmer invests into a company in need of cash flow that wants to invest 330m into the clippers stadium naming rights
Kawhi gets his third payment over a 7 month period
Ballmer invests another 10m
Company goes bankrupt
Kawhi never gets his 4th payment or stock options
The company defrauded over 250m in clients money

The most likely outcome is the investigation shows that Ballmer got frauded and Kawhi had a weird endorsement deal that doesn’t make sense - but the players association protect him from the brunt of it and the league looking to deeply into it - because they want to protect players endorsement rights.