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i'm going with yes, lol. ballmer should put some folks here on his shelbourne plan.

isn't this actually written in part of the cba regarding these things: if the deal doesn't make sense, that's evidence. people keep pointing to him not doing anything (which is a huge issue), but it's also that he was paid way more than others who actually did things. when the league's lawyers come asking, what are aspiration's folks going to say to that? that it was a good faith effort to sway ballmer to invest more? if ballmer then invests more because of this relationship...isn't that still cap circumvention? in a reverse sort of way? if ballmer was a sensible business man (which he obviously must be), wouldn't he just refuse? if he's investing in part to ensure that an endorsement deal gets paid out to his guy, that's circumventing the cap.

maybe. though it's also clear they invested in order to get ballmer on board.

if a third party (instead of me) opens a fake hot dog stand and pays my player a bunch of money, then i float them more money than that, is this a good thing for the league/cba? instead of incentivizing owners to create companies, this could incentivize companies to create sham endorsement deals at huge value then come knocking for investments, right?

honestly, the evidence that would get me off ballmer for this is if at some point long before we ever heard of this, he told the league and other owners about the situation.

like if you're investing heavily in a company that you know has an endorsement deal with your franchise player, isn't this a point at which you take a look at that deal? and if you're totally innocent, wouldn't you just call silver and say "hey, i'm realizing that i'm into something that's pretty weird right now"?

absent him doing that, my mind isn't changed much even if the order of the investment was semi-inverted (not totally, as payments occurred after, too).