The Lakeshow Review

It’s been a few days since the reports surfacing of the Los Angeles Clippers circumventing the salary cap in order to pay Kawhi Leonard more endorsement money under the table. We’ve had a good amount of time to let these allegations marinate. Needless to say, things aren’t looking so rosy for the Clippers, Owner Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard and his camp, or the National Basketball Association. The ensuing media coverage also certainly hasn’t helped shine a positive light on the Clips, or the allegations surrounding them. At this point, it’s pretty clear as to what is going on based on the preponderance of evidence in front of us. It’s up to the NBA, and the offices of the commissioner, led by Adam Silver, to take action, and do so with impunity. In order to protect the integrity of the league, and the game, measures need to be acted upon swiftly, and aggressively.

Recently, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer had a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelbourne. It was a total trainwreck. Nothing he said was believable, or made any sort of sense. Throughout the interview, Ballmer, who himself invested $50M into Aspiration, the company used to funnel extra-curricular “endorsement” money to Kwahi Leonard, repeatedly insisted that he had been conned by said company. Ballmer, who is comfortably the richest owner in all of North American team sports, and has a net worth totalling over $150B, expects people to believe that he was conned by a now defunct tree-planting company, Aspiration. Yeah, you don’t have to be a Daryl Morey-level genius to call hard BS on such claims. On top of that, Ballmer further tripped over himself, revealing that he and the Clippers introduced Kawhi Leonard to Aspiration during November 2021. Remember Kawhi Leonard signed a $48M deal with the company where he had to do a grand-total of nothing. Kawhi never mentioned his affiliation with Aspiration, at any point. Seeing as how Ballmer shelled out $50M to Aspiration as “investment”, it’s not difficult to put two and two together. Yet Ballmer claims he was conned? Yeah, right. The only people doing the conning here are Kawhi and his now infamous Uncle Dennis. There are amore than enough “smoking guns” in this scenario for the NBA to intervene and lay down the hammer.

But in typical Clippers fashion, things get worse. We know that Kawhi’s deal with aspiration paid him a king’s ransom to basically do nothing. The deal could also only be voided should Kawhi leave the Clippers. Yikes. Among the list of endorsers for Aspiration were the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio, Drake and Robert Downey Jr. Yet, it was Kawhi who was taking home more payout than all of them combined. Double yikes. But, as if that wasn’t enough, it was also recently reported, by journalist and sportswriter Pablo Torre, that the Clippers and their ownership group were still “donating” (read: funnelling money) to Aspiration, as they were going bankrupt. During December of 2022, as the company Aspiration was tanking, Kawhi Leonard was due his quarterly payment of somewhere around $1.75M. Because they were broke, Aspiration could not fulfill this payment, which made Uncle Dennis very, very angry. Out of the blue, Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong (also Steve Ballmer’s former college roommate) stepped in to ‘donate’ $2M through his company DEA 88 Investments, to Aspiration. A few days later on December ’22, Kawhi miraculously received his quarterly payment, and Uncle Dennis rejoiced.

The company was dying, Uncle Dennis was furious and the Clippers owner donates $2M as there was a federal investigation taking place. Also Dennis Wong’s daughter worked at Aspiration, and yet, he still made a first-time donation to the company during this comically questionable time. Yeah. Guilty.

The NBA has the Clippers over a barrel. It’s up to Adam Silver to jump on his big boy pants, and protect the integrity of the league. At this juncture, however, Silver doesn’t seem very enthused to enact his powers and do his job. He said in a recent interview, that “The NBA is not a court of law”, further adding that “the burden of proof is on the NBA” and referred to the evidence presented so far as “circumstantial”. To me, this speaks to someone who is scared and is dubious of his own authority. Yes, the NBA is very much a court of law. They mediate disputes, and castigate improprieties all the time. That’s part of the commissioner’s job. David Stern would’ve revelled in this scenario. The commissioner is the judge, jury and executioner. All he has to do is closely examine the evidence and make a decision, and it isn’t a difficult one. Im afraid, however, that the starry-eyed Silver might in fact fear Steve Ballmer’s checkbook. He’s the seventh richest man on the planet, and by far the richest sports owner. This brings me to my final point.

In the present day, the NBA is increasingly run by ultra-wealthy tech moguls or elite billionaire magnates. They view their sports franchises as part of a conglomerate, merely just an asset to their larger entities. Long gone are the mom and pop days of team sports ownership, as ultra-elites have realized precisely how valuable a sports team can be to their portfolios, because sports in general, in this current day, are incredibly profitable. There’s simply a ton of money being thrown around. Thus, now more than ever, there needs to be rules in place which regulate these massive flows of cash, so that there is an even playing field. If these tech magnates can simply barge in and start dispensing money, left and right, mostly under the table, then that’s effectively terrible for the NBA, and the game of basketball. It undermines the league, the sport, the fans and the powers of the commissioner’s office. It states that the NBA is merely a playground for heavyweight tycoons to play their private game of chess at the expense of the sport and the fans. This can’t fly. That’s why the league needs to act swiftly and make an example out of the Clippers, who are led by Ballmer. If the richest owner has to play by the rules, so does everybody else. It’s about protecting the integrity of the league and the sport. If Adam Silver can staunchly preserve the NBA as a merit-based field, then that’s a win for the game and for the fans. And when you boil it down, that’s basically his job as NBA commissioner. It’s time for Silver to do his job.