Unpacking The Biggest Punishment In NBA History

All right, well, the plan was to end this offseason hiatus after Labor Day, come back fresh, like, like normal people, get ready for training camp, uh, talk some training camp storylines, but when the most significant punishment in NBA history is handed down.

You come out of hiatus a little bit early and jump here in the podcast.

So I am back.

Rachel Nichols is back with me here for another season and beginning a little bit early because Rachel, We had some news.

We did have a little bit of news today.

We had some news on Thursday.

The NBA's, uh, year-long investigation into cap circumvention allegations by the Los Angeles Clippers has reached its conclusion.

The NBA releasing a two-page, uh, memo followed by a 35-page report from the A law firm of Wachtel Lipton that outlines the many, many, many, many crimes, basketball crimes that they are accusing the Clippers of and the NBA, uh, did not pull its punches on this punishment.

They have, uh, docked the Clippers 5 first-round draft picks.

They have fined Steve Ballmer $30 million.

They have suspended Steve Ballmer for 1 year.

They have suspended Lawrence Frank for 6 months, the head of basketball operations, uh, with the Los Angeles Clippers, and they have, uh, I wanna get, uh, Gillian's, what's Gillian Zucker, I wanna get her, uh, her name right.

Uh, they have suspended Gillian Zucker, the president of business operations for 1 year.

Uh, they have come down hard on Los Angeles Clippers, and let's make no mistake here, Rachel.

This is the NBA.

Saying that the Los Angeles Clippers are cheaters.

This is Wachtel Lipton saying that the Los Angeles Clippers are liars, uh, you know, in so many words in some ways in this, uh, this 35, they come out and say it a few times.

Yeah, they, they use different softer language, but they, um, they, they definitely say the Clippers were hiding stuff, lying, all that, all that goes into it.

So let, let's start here.

Your, your take.

Uh, generally on this decision by the NBA to just drop the hammer on the Clippers.

I, I thought it was interesting.

Obviously, the report gives a lot of specifics.

We obviously haven't seen these witness, witness statements.

We're not gonna get the chance to interview the witnesses ourselves to evaluate them.

But at some point with such a mountain of evidence, you kind of have to believe what's put in front of you, and it's pretty shocking the level of dates and names and emails that they have.

And again, I haven't seen the emails, but I kind of feel like I don't have to, and it's The scope of what was going on is something that they really nailed in this report.

It was not one company.

It was not two companies.

It was multiple companies.

They have names.

They have dates.

They have witness statements.

They have interviews with people they do mention by name.

Um, sworn testimony, like it, it just, they knew what they were doing when they dropped this report to justify the decision the league made, and I wonder if the severity of the punishment is solely because of the decision of the evidence gathered in this report, or whether sort of the Clippers insisting to this day as we sit here that they did nothing wrong, affected the level of leniency or not.

What do you think about that?

Yeah.

Definitely a possibility, and I don't wanna get to like the, the punishment aspect and some other aspects and including the ESPN aspect in, in a minute.

Um, the, the Steve Ballmer stuff though resonates the most because Steve Ballmer, uh, has been aggressively defending himself publicly and privately for the entirety of this last year.

If we remember in the immediate aftermath of the first episode of Pablo's podcast Drop, Steve Ballmer hopped on his plane.

Went to Bristol, did the interview with Ramona Shelburne, and said, Hey, I got conned.

I didn't have anything to do with it.

We know what the rules are, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit there, but we know what we can and can't do.

We know what a standard NBA contract looks like, and we're not about to, uh, go against that.

This report.

Suggests, outright says that Steve Ballmer oversaw, um, in many ways, a, a complicated and comprehensive cap circumvention scheme that as you said, Involved 4 different companies.

It not only was Aspiration, which was the big headliner there, it was Daktronics.

Um, it was Boingo Wireless, OK.

And it was, what was the, it's an insurance company.

I'm blanking right now on the name, insurance company that all funneled Kawhi Leonard.

Money.

And in all of these cases, according to this report, the Clippers had some make-goods there.

Like they, they gave multi-million-dollar deals to three of the companies that gave Kawhi Leonard a little bit of money.

They, the, the one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Steve Ballmer and the Clippers in this , I thought.

Was this, uh, carbon emissions offset deal they have with aspiration as it pertains to the forum.

Now the Forum, of course, is legendary arena in Southern California.

Steve Ballmer bought it back in 2020 basically so we could build into a dome.

Like you had to , you had to buy that.

I think he bought it from Dolan actually of all people, um, buys the venue, so they, they, they do this deal with aspiration that Supposedly is going to make it carbon neutral or reduce emissions to 00 emission this kind of situation and the payments they made to aspiration were $7 million dollars per year over 4 years, which happens to equal $28 million of the exact amount of money that aspiration was allegedly giving to, uh, to Kawhi Leonard.

And when The investigators confronted Balmer on this.

He and his president of business operations, Gillian Zucker, said that this was a number that an independent consultant gave to them.

Well, as good investigators would, it seems like they went to this consultant.

The consultant was like, no, that's not how it happened.

The Clippers came.

to me with this number.

They're the ones that said $28 million was what we need to spend here.

So, look, is there a smoking gun here?

Probably not.

Once again, there's not a gun with, you know, there's not a, an email from Steve Ballmer saying, hey, let's cap circumvent.

But there sure is to me, Rachel, a ton of really strong evidence that Steve Ballmer.

He was not only guilty of a lack of institutional control, which is something that he's also kind of accused of letting Gillian Zucker kind of run wild and letting Lawrence Frank kind of, you know, uh, just say yes to some of these impermissible payments, but he was actively involved.

I, I can't, I can't blame when, when it's this level of the allegations this report lays out.

Uh, the, the blame comes at the top.

Um, that doesn't excuse what anyone else in the Clippers organization did, but let's not mistake that clearly the fact that it was both sides of the Clippers, the business side and the basketball side, were clearly instructed to do the same thing and took part together in the same thing.

That came from the guy in charge.

And it again, does not excuse anyone else involved, but it feels very clear to me that who was giving the orders and who was carrying them out.

What also strikes me is the brazenness of this by the Clippers because they are not first-time offenders.

We know in 2015, they attempted to cut a deal with DeAndre Jordan to pay him a little bit extra onto the table.

The NBA caught them.

Came down on them lightly in that sense.

Clippers said, hey, our bad.

We thought we were operating within the rules, will never happen again.

2019 rolls around and the NBA through the Raptors kind of gets wind of what Uncle Dennis, Dennis Robertson was asking of, of teams, uh, and of the Raptors to, to get Kawhi to sign on and they literally created a new rule.

That said, hey, if, uh, somebody comes to you, anybody, not just Dennis Robertson, but anybody comes to you soliciting impermissible benefits, soliciting under the table stuff, you have to report it and if you don't report it, you're in the wrong.

Well, it sure, according to this report, seems like.

Uncle Dennis was asking for a lot over and over again, and the Clippers were A, listening to him and not reporting it, and B, giving it to him.

We don't know exactly what it was they were giving.

It's not specified whether it's private jets or, or housing or whatever it was that Uncle Dennis may have been looking for, but clearly they were supplying him.

With impermissible benefits and just like the brazenness of it.

Like just, you know, the NBA is watching this stuff.

They came down on you 10 years ago.

They warned everybody about it in 2019 and they still went out and did it.

The sheer arrogance of the people involved in this scheme.

That, that kind of blew my mind, Rachel.

I think that is part of the NBA's penalty here.

Um, you know, look, we've seen investigations like this into other owners for other things.

The most recent one and the one that sort of sticks with me is the Mark Cuban Dallas Mavericks organization, and Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks took a completely different approach to that to that report and to working with the league.

First of all, Mark, there was no direct evidence that Mark was either involved or even had knowledge of what was going on.

So, It didn't have the same point as this uh Steve Ballmer report in this, in this sense, but Mark cleaned house.

He brought in someone specifically qualified to deal with what was left behind.

He went on television with me the day the report came out and gave a full mea culpa and said, look, I didn't know about this, but I should have, and we went through the report.

Line by line on national television, and he acknowledged all of it.

And that is a very different approach than the Clippers are taking here.

And you see that the result was different, sort of how the league treated the steps that Mark took and the way the Mavericks reacted to what was found with the sexual harassment and other kinds of harassment within the organization.

That they didn't take 5 draft picks away from them.

They didn't penalize them in this way.

And obviously these crimes are more directly against the NBA and more sort of essential to the fact that the NBA is an above board league.

But again, I have to think the way the Clippers have approached this, all the way leading up to leaking.

A few weeks ago that the NBA had nothing.

And all right, so let's, let's talk about that.

Well, well, I mean, I, I just, I can't if we saw the vehemence that the NBA reacted to that with, right, that, that Mike Bass issued a statement.

There was a lot of sort of, oh, you know, you'll see in a few weeks, you know, etc.

etc.

And I don't know if that's when they decided to throw the book at the Clippers, but I'm sure it helped.

I, I tell you, when, when the NBA came out with that statement denying what was in that story, you know, I called some people over there and I said, listen, Like, if you're denying it this strongly, it's got to be more than semantics.

Like it can't just be like, you know, Ballmer gets a fine and see, we told you he wasn't gonna get off.

And they insisted to me at that time it was more than that.

They weren't gonna tell me what exactly was going, the punishment was going to be, but they insisted that there were real substantive issues with that reporting and they were right.

They were right .

Like this is not Steve Ballmer getting exonerated in any way, shape or form.

It is not, it's not even Steve Ballmer.

Like the word funneling is, is getting kind of focused on and like, well, did Steve Ballmer Ballmer really funnel money?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, according to this investigation, 73 interviews, 60 people, 200 pages of documents, 200,000, 200,000 pages.

Yes, sorry, 200,000 pages of documents and, and again, the detail in this, I've got some highlights of the report in front of me, um.

You know, when these 3 deals came together, these sort of endorsement deals for Kawhi were within 3 days of each other, that it was during the pandemic when nobody was paying NBA players to endorse anything because the NBA wasn't even in session at that point.

According to this report, and that certainly there was pushback within each of these companies of why are we doing this, why are we doing this with Kawhi Leonard of all people, and the report pointing out sort of all of the email traffic that went up leading to this, and it's significant and it pretty much paints a pretty clear story.

And additionally, you said you don't know what Kawhi's.

Uncle Dennis was asking for, I've gotten written here that in addition to laying out page after page of what, uh, you know, the endorsement deals with these companies were these complex systems of funneling money and, and how they came about and all of that, it also almost as an afterthought at the end of this report in pages 31 and 32 talks about, uh .

Paying personal expenses for the players, representatives, family, um, the investigation of the Clippers made such payments for Leonard, his family, and Robertson.

Throughout Leonard's tenure, hundreds of instances of personal air and ground travel, accommodations , gifts, free tickets, um, without deducting the amount that is required by the league.

So even if it was just that, the Clippers would have gotten dinged for this because you can't do that.

That is.

Very clearly a circumvention of the cap.

Players don't.

Players get 2 tickets.

That's part of the collective bargaining agreement for each game.

And if they want more family to show up, they have to pay for them.

And you and I have both heard players complaining about this, right?

Oh, I can't believe I have to pay for these tickets.

I'm the one out there playing the game.

That's the rules.

And the fact that even just in that smaller scale, it was over and over hundreds of instances, according to this report.

I think they would have gotten penalized for that alone, much less the detail laid out here, and the Clippers just incredible denials up to today.

We vehemently, you know, disagree with all of this.

All of the language in these denials, I have to think, played into it.

Yeah , I want to get into the denials too, um.

You know, uh I, I, I like our colleagues over at ESPN, but they just swallowed a big bunch of bullshit, like just a big bunch of bullshit that clearly came from the Clippers.

Like the Clippers, even like in their initial statement .

They said like something to the effect of that the, you know, the NBA saying this now is not what they led us to believe, you know, a few weeks ago, uh, which is basically a tell that they kind of gave away the, the, the store there where they said, hey, because that that implies that they were the ones suggesting they were the ones giving the ones that gave up the story and just.

Like just a whole bunch of bullshit that was out there in that story, and I, I, I don't like to get into media stuff because it's a hard job and so you're fumbling around.

Oftentimes you're fumbling around in the dark, but that's a, you can't run a story like that when, when you're, you're not getting at least a semblance of the picture from the other side.

It's very clear.

That the NBA was not cooperating in any way, shape, or form.

Sometimes they don't cooperate publicly, you know this, but they do cooperate privately.

They'll tell you kind of what's going on behind the scenes.

Clearly they weren't doing that, and, and that led to one of the more egregious misses that we're gonna see in, uh, in NBA reporting.

Um, it is, but that, that's no one involved in the.

Reporting aspect is the bad guy here.

The bad guy are the people who purposely broke NBA rules over and over and over again.

And, you know, if we're going to talk about journalism, I'd rather talk about the feat of journalism that launched all of this at the very beginning, first paragraph of this report, um, is acknowledging Pablo Torre and the Pulitzer winning.

Investigation that he and Amin El Hassan, um, and, uh, Davidson David Samson.

I had Samson.

I didn't have David at the tip of my tongue, um, um, who, uh, who, uh, I want to shout out to because he's, he's, uh, suffered some personal loss lately and he deserves all of our good wishes, um, but that.

I, I like the fact that this for you and I in this profession who have been this for a long time, the journalism I'd like to focus on is what led to all of this, and I think it's pretty spectacular and important and a little tiny pocket of this podcast making the, the statement for newspapers and magazines in the world that you and I both came from.

Of , you know, journalism matters.

No, Pablo nailed it.

He had it from the beginning.

Um, there was no defense that the Clippers could make that even came close to addressing the allegations.

Like they couldn't, and there's email chains, there's text message chain, there's testimonies, all the stuff Pablo said was there.

It was all there, uh, for the investigators to find and to figure out and to flesh out as they continue this.

And look, uh, the denials from the Clippers.

Like right off the top, they just, it rubbed me the wrong way because they're still trying to marginalize this reporting by calling it podcast allegations.

They're still just trying to diminish it.

It's like it's being written by an 80 year old man.

That still grabs his newspaper every morning and doesn't understand that the way of just talk about the importance of newspapers.

I, I love newspapers.

I still write for a magazine, subscribe to Sports Illustrated.

I'm all for it, um, but, but like it's, it's like.

It's so tone deaf to be diminishing the reporting by calling it a podcast allegation or podcast reporting.

Like it's real reporting.

Like Pablo was a Sports Illustrated writer.

Pablo was an ESPN reporter.

Like he's just doing reporting.

In a different medium and you can sit there and say like, well, he's, he's, you're theatrical, who cares?

He's , he's an entertainer too.

He's trying to get you to stay in and watch the whole show, which I don't think enough people did.

I think, you know, too many people were looking for like the Cliff's Notes version and were just not willing to watch, uh, the entire episode.

But it's hard to get people interested in, uh, you know, backroom money dealings of companies they've never heard of.

So I thought the entire approach that those guys over at Pablo's finds out, and as Pablo has said several times, it is a team effort.

He's got a great team of journalists with him.

Um, doing investigations on that show.

I applaud Meadowlark for putting the money into that show, and, um, I just think, I think that, that noting how we got here is important.

And Pablo, I don't know if you saw what he put out today.

I think you were on a plane, but he was saying he's like, well, we were critical of them for not getting this report out.

Why?

What's going on?

He said, it turns out that, according to this report, that the Clippers were making it difficult for them at every turn to find out information.

And he said, also, look, they found more stuff than we did, you know, they have subpoena power, they have the power of the league sort of being behind them, telling them, telling the teams that they had to cooperate, and he's like, it was worth the wait.

So, you know, the, the, it's a nice symmetry between the two.

And again, to get back to what's actually in this report, it is a lot of chain of events that, you know, no, there isn't an email like there was in the Timberwolves investigation, however many years ago.

But there's, instead, there's a lot of emails that paint a story that it's hard, it's just hard to see how they could portray it, that anything but the conclusions reached in this report are true, unless they come out and say, every email they told you about is a lie.

It didn't happen.

Every interview with sworn testimony they told you about with people who put their names.

Names to this are lying.

Everyone would have to be lying for the Clippers' denials to be true.

And maybe that's the statement they're making.

They're saying they were railroaded.

They're saying this was a predetermined outcome that can we just address that?

Can we, can I just again address the denial because it's just, it's so horribly written and it's so.

Lame.

It's just a lame denial.

Like they called the investigation heavily biased, whatever.

Uh, they suggested that witnesses were threatened during this process.

OK, let's prove that, please.

They whined in it about not being forewarned that this punishment was coming.

Like it's the NBA's obligation to, to tell them they're about to punish them.

They actually seem to be bragging about the money Steve Ballmer like committed to this.

They said he paid $50 million for this investigation by I don't know, supplying witnesses and, and what, whatever he's, I don't know, 50 million is a big number, I think.

I think the, um, the way this works within ownership is that if you are the cause of the investigation, you have to fund the investigation.

Your fellow owners, OK, all right, well then, then too bad.

Like it's, you know, no, no, I, I'm just, yeah, yeah, he, he's, and they're also, uh, going out there and saying the bomber's reputation is reparably damaged.

Well, no kidding.

Like that's, that's the.

The way it goes when you find this much evidence.

I just thought the whole denial was lame.

It was like, it was fine kind of when they issued like the three paragraph statement .

Like I get that.

But then they put out the letter to, to, to Adam Silver and it's like, what are you guys doing?

Like, no, no, no.

Put your pens away.

Like if it was in like, it felt like it should have been in Comic Sans MS like an old Dan Gilbert type of.

Letter.

It was that bad.

It was that cringy.

It was a cringy letter, Rachel.

Well, again, this is why I keep circling back to, I am very curious at the conversations in the league office since receiving this report and issuing this out to the public today, because clearly some conversation between Steve Ballmer and the league must have happened a couple of weeks ago, which is why the Clippers are saying, but this is different from what you told us and this is different from what we leaked.

Obviously a conversation happens, well, obviously a conversation happened between the league and the players association and Kawhi Leonard, because if you look at the league rules, Ballmer and the Clippers don't have any right to arbitration.

It's the players association that has a right to arbitration, and the way that the league normally handles these things, and again, it seemed pretty clear that this is the way it went down with the Mavericks report was they talked to the ownership beforehand and they tried to.

Work out.

I, I don't want to say a deal or a plea bargain, but it's a little bit of like, 100% it was a plea bargain got you, we, we've got you.

Here's what we have.

Here's what we're thinking for a penalty.

You know, obviously, it's in the league's best interest not to have one of the richest men in America threatening to sue them up to high heaven.

And it's in the league's best interest to have everybody kind of come together at the end of this and have the Clippers supposedly, I think the idea was they issue some statement sort of saying we accept the penalties.

Blah blah blah blah blah and then the story can kind of end there and clearly it worked with the players association .

The players association has said we're not gonna appeal.

Kawhi Leonard and his statement basically admitted guilt of his family.

I mean, can we, can we do this?

Can we do this?

This is great like because they, they, they did cut a deal with Kawhi Leonard, the players association, and I thought that was incredibly savvy of them to do.

They could have gone after Kawhi.

They could have voided the contract.

They could have tried to take even the contract doesn't hurt Kawhi Leonard, probably, probably.

Not though, like in the short term, probably does because nobody's gonna be able to pay him, you know, this, this offseason.

But they, they could have done a lot of things.

Instead, they gave him a parking ticket and it basically forced, it basically put the union out of, out of this, this, this mix.

And the union that like, I don't think they want to mess with David Kelly in the union.

Like David Kelly's over there.

He's already out for blood when it comes to some other things, when it comes to the CBA.

I don't think they want to go to war with Kawhi Leonard.

They cut a deal with Kawhi and then they went after the, The defendant, I guess in this case that they really wanted, which was Steve Ballmer and the LA Clippers, and I got, I just, the statement from Kawhi was just hilarious because while the Clippers are out there vehemently denying literally came across my feed at about the same time.

It did like Kawhi, but Kawhi, his statement is basically like, yeah, guess we did do something.

My bad, we move on.

What up Toronto?

I'm back.

Like it was.

I was dying.

I did have a question for you about this.

So I assume Toronto still wants to make this deal, right?

I mean, nothing that happened today really affects Toronto's plans for its future.

They agreed to this deal.

They want Kawhi Leonard.

Kawhi Leonard's already been up there.

He was at Kyle Lowry's, you know, retirement thing.

He's talking about, I want to be in Toronto.

Their fans are expecting him in Toronto.

So I, I can see the Raptors wanting to follow.

Through with this deal.

And I can see the Clippers wanting to follow through even more than ever because they were supposed to get a couple of draft picks back, and now they need those more than ever.

I wonder if either Toronto wants to change the terms of the deal because they are kind of holding the Clippers over a barrel barrel right now.

And I wonder if the league's going to approve a deal between these two teams that delivers draft picks back to Toronto.

I mean, back to the Clippers, because they'll have to approve it.

And while Kawhi said, you know, on to Toronto, I don't know for sure if that's guaranteed to happen.

It absolutely could still happen, but I wouldn't count it as guaranteed to happen until we see the trade and we see it approved.

I don't think it's guaranteed either.

Um, I do.

I think it's very likely because the NBA was going to allow this deal to go through back in early July.

They just warned both sides like, hey, we let it go through, you know, chips fall where they may 1 of you may regret pulling the trigger on this deal.

Um, the Raptors.

Hate the Clippers They do.

They hate the Clippers for how they, yes, and, and they felt that there was tampering going on, you know, in that 1819 season, the championship season, and the Raptors, that front office is still run by a lot of the same people.

Massiah Giri is gone, but Bobby Webster is still there.

There's a lot of the same people in that ownership, uh, but, you know, upper management, a lot of the same people still, still involved there.

Now, could I see them being like, you know what.

They will take a little pound of flesh here, maybe 1 1st round draft, maybe, maybe, but they also really want Kawhi for whatever reason they think that Kawhi is like.

They think he can be a difference maker again with this team.

We can agree to disagree maybe on that one.

But if you're the Clippers, and I know we're getting off on a tangent here, but if you're the Clippers and Toronto does say, actually it's only one first-round pick, it's not gonna be two, I think you kind of still have to take the deal because now you need even one pick more than you did before.

Um, I don't know what it's gonna be like.

I mean, that's one thing I wanted to ask you about is because I I have not seen this while I've covered the league, and I mean, there's no one, none of us have, right?

There's never been a punishment that's been this heavy.

I've never seen a franchise crippled in this way, because I think when it was a penalty to Minnesota and it was 5 picks then, they hadn't also given away 5 of their other first round draft picks.

So this is basically making the deal for Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, not only be Shea Gildres, Alex.

Standard not only the other players and other, you know, people who factored into that deal, but now 11th round draft picks.

How does a franchise, like what's going to happen to the Clippers?

Who goes there as a free agent?

Like what, what, what happens?

And they're not drafting anyone except in the 2nd round, I guess.

No, they're not, because when the next time they have control over their 1st round pick, I saw a tweet about this and I thought it was funny.

Um, that that player right now is 11 years old.

The next time they're able to draft in the 1st round, currently without the Raptors, if you're an agent and your client is drafted in the 2nd round by the Clippers with one of their 2nd round picks, do you tell them not to report?

I mean, do you say, hey, we're gonna actually, I don't know, pull an NFL thing and go back to college for a year?

Like, like, what do you think happens?

What are agents telling?

Clients who may be courted as a free agent, who may get drafted into that organization.

I just, I've never seen anything like this in pro sports, and I cover a lot of sports, and I, I just, I'm seriously, does the franchise end up folding?

I can't see that, but I don't, I don't understand how they're gonna be a functional franchise with players on the floor who want to play and be there for the next, to your point, what, 7 years?

It, it's the closest thing to a basketball death penalty as you can find.

Um, they're not gonna get any stars to sign there.

You'll still get guys to sign there because players want the money and money can be scarce in today's second apron landscape.

And look, and 2nd round picks are gonna go there.

Like guys are gonna, are gonna go and play, but you're not going to get stars.

You can't do deals.

You have no like lubricant there.

That's what 1st round picks are.

You have no way to grease the skids on these deals.

You have no pathway.

to being a relevant team for the better part of the next decade.

And there's no changing that.

And maybe this you get a couple of first-round picks in the Raptors and you could do a couple of different things, but this team is now in basketball purgatory.

There's, there's no doubt about that.

I, I just, the whole thing is, is kind of amazing that we are seeing such, I mean, I, I couldn't have predicted on the day that I watched Pablo's first, uh, report on all of this, which I did watch all the way through, that this report is what we're gonna get.

I, um, I can't show it to you because it's on.

The computer that we're doing this podcast on, but I have the entire report with yellow highlights everywhere.

And I gotta tell you, Chris, it is one thing after another.

I really recommend people go through this if they are having doubts about, you know, who really did what wrong here.

Uh, because it all points back to Steve Ballmer, and you're talking about, oh, the, the press release and the letter, and I can't believe they put out this press release or I can't believe this letter from the lawyer .

The through line I see is that all these people work for one of the richest people in America, where, I mean, he's definitely in the top 10.

Is he in the top 5 still?

I mean, he was at one point the richest man.

He's, I think, in the top 5.

It could slipped to the top 10.

Who knows?

But, um, And, you know, I think about Lawrence Frank, like who you and I have known for decades.

You know, at some point, yes, you can just quit the team and leave, I guess.

And by the way, that was more of a possibility for Lawrence Frank than it was for Gillian Zucker.

Like, where's she getting another job after this?

Like, I think she's, she's at the intersection of all this.

Like Lawrence Frank, you, Lawrence Frank can, although I mean part of Lawrence's problem now is like he's the guy that did the Kawhi Leonard trade, which Didn't really work out obviously for them, uh, but like giving impermissible benefits, we both know teams do that all the time.

Like you can bounce back from that.

What Gillian Zucker did , I'm not sure there's any bouncing back from like orchestrating four multi-million dollar deals that funnel money to your star player.

Like I don't know what NBA team is clear who was organizing this.

And again, I am not, I am not saying any of the people named in this report, certainly not from Gillian, certainly on down, certainly not from.

Lawrence on down, but like I just think it's important to, it's like with the reporting thing, like let's keep the focus on the main, uh, adjutants here, the main players.

The main players in this story are Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard, Uncle Dennis, Pablo Torre, and now Lipton and Adam Silver.

What, what did you think?

It brings me to one of my final questions here.

What did you think of Silver taking on Ballmer, because going into this week.

Like, I, I, the Clippers were never gonna get off with nothing.

Like I, I could have seen them get docked a couple of first-round picks to the 5.

I could see a fine.

I could see Lawrence Frank getting in trouble.

I could see Gillian Zucker getting in trouble, but I was really of the belief that Steve Ballmer was going to escape any kind of serious payoff.

But even Pablo, I was watching some Pablo clips, you know, during the last few weeks, and I think he believed that Ballmer was going to, he, he was gonna skate, um.

In, in issuing this kind of punishment, a one-year penalty, which to be clear, Steve Ballmer cannot watch Clippers games in the building that he owns.

Like he can't do it.

He can't be around the team at all.

Can't go to the board of governors.

He can't cannot exactly.

I don't know.

I'm sure he's on several committees.

He might even chair a few like that's gonna go away.

I, I just, it's, it's a significant, significant penalty.

And what do I make of Adam Silver issuing it?

Well, he's, let me finish.

Like, he, I, I, I'm not gonna give Adam overwhelming credit for punishing the Clippers because I, I don't think he had a choice.

I think that Wachtel Lipton presented him with so much evidence that if other teams saw that report.

And he had chosen to slap the Clippers on the wrist, they would have said it's open season on these types of deals.

You would have had like bars in Boston sponsoring Jayson Tatum or Sonic, you know, being the new sponsor of Shay Gildes Alexander and paying him millions of dollars for no-show type of jobs.

He had to do something.

But taking on Balmer.

was different.

I, I, the teams that I've talked to and the executives I've talked to have been more impressed by that because he very easily could have said, you know what, we're gonna fine you, Steve, we're gonna ding your team.

But, you know, we don't really have enough to say we're going to suspend you for a year, to basically take your team away from you for a year.

That, that to me was, The most spine Adam Silver showed in all this.

It wasn't dinging the Clippers.

It was going after Steve Ballmer.

What did you think of that part of it?

I, I thought that's where the blame lies.

Like it is a, it is a, a chump move.

I, I to blame the henchman and not blame the one calling the shots.

Like, I think it was fortunate.

It for the NBA office and Adam, to have such a detailed report, I think the thing that would have put them in the toughest position would have been if the report had come back with some evidence showing some things and having it be somewhat circumstantial and it being clear that wrongdoing was done, but not having, I mean, they have paper trail after paper trail here in this report.

And that by delivering such a thorough report and by the Clippers, frankly, leaving all of these paper trails and having all of these witnesses who came to them and and talked to them, I think it empowered the league office to say it's all right here.

And you're right, they couldn't have turned around and given any of them, including Steve Ballmer, in my opinion, a slap on the wrist, but I think they're grateful they didn't have to.

I, I, I think.

I, I don't know.

I'm not inside the league office, but gosh, it has felt like they were pretty damn pissed for a pretty long time.

And what happened with that article that came out that was clearly leaked by the Clippers that said, oh, the NBA doesn't have anything.

Can you imagine being the people, I mean, I, I would not have wanted to be on the other end of the phone that Adam picked up to Mike Bass, to Mark Tatum, to any of those people that morning that that story came out, because He would be completely in his rights to be screaming his head off, and not at them, but to, you know, with them about what the hell were the Clippers going out and doing.

And I don't think they were very happy with the Clippers going into that story.

And again, from what I know of all the people involved, I, I imagine that once that story dropped, it was just, OK, we're done.

Like kid gloves, if there, if there ever We're going to be anyone, be any , they are off.

And that is, again, of the Clippers and Steve Ballmer's own making.

Like, nobody does any of this.

Gillian Zucker doesn't do any of this.

Lawrence Frank doesn't do any of this.

PR doesn't do the Clippers doesn't do any of this.

The lawyer doesn't do any of this without Steve Ballmer telling them to.

And again, I am not absolving anyone involved, but Let's focus on the guy giving the orders, because the other people involved, they're being punished and they're deservedly being punished.

But to not punish Steve Ballmer in this way, I think if I had seen this report and it had been a fine for Steve Ballmer, you would have had me on this podcast saying, hey, what are you doing?

You're punishing the, the underlings and you're not punishing the guy who directed them to do what they're doing.

I, I, I just, I, I think this had to happen.

And it is brave in some ways to take on one of the richest men in America.

I'm going to keep saying that because he has unlimited resources .

And one of the things he sort of, there was a veiled threat in that letter to Adam Silver saying, I, I don't have the quote in front of me, but the equivalent of, I'm sure if we spent $50 million investigating other teams, you would find improper.

It's for them too.

And so while the Clippers, I cannot imagine what justification they would have in court to quote fight this ruling, I can imagine Steve Ballmer, who literally dropping $50 million is not anything to him.

I think he makes $300 million a quarter from his stock dividends alone, plus all the other things he's invested in.

I mean, literally, nobody could spend the money fast enough that this man makes.

That it, it would be, he could literally spend $50 million investigating every other team in the league and putting his own version of Wachtel and Lipton on every other team in the league.

And, and I don't know if that's what he's gonna do, but there was a veiled threat that that's what he was gonna do, um, in that letter.

And that is where I wonder sort of what the next stage of all this is.

That feels like the world's worst idea to go out and conduct independent investigations of all of this seems like the world's worst idea.

Well, it was the world's dumbest idea first.

Like all this other stuff was just dumb right from the start.

Again, the brazenness and the egregiousness and the paper trail, the digital paper trail that was left with emails and I think there is a smoking.

You said there's no smoking gun per se.

No, there isn't an email from Steve Ballmer directing anybody in his organization to do this, but there are plenty of paper trails, a lot of smoldplenty of emails smoldering.

There's a lot of people, and you know, the danger of doing this with 4 different companies.

I mean, one of the quotes from one of the witnesses here was we got.

Paid a $2 million consulting fee.

My company doesn't do consulting.

That's not what we do.

We've never gotten a consulting fee before.

And Daktronics is telling the people in this report that, I mean, the investigators who are investigating this report that, oh, we were basically told if we didn't do this with Kawhi, like we wouldn't get the scoreboard contract, and the scoreboard contract was a lot of money.

You have.

A lot of other people that you have now brought into this sort of subterfuge.

Of course one of them was going to talk.

Of course 10 or 20 of them were going to talk.

They say a secret between 3 people is not a secret.

This was a secret that was supposed to be kept by about 40 people.

It just was never going to happen.

Why does Daktronix need an endorser?

Like, who are they selling to?

What common man are they selling to that they would need Kawhi Leonard to be the endorser?

Like an insurance company, I can get on board with, kind of even Boingo.

I could potentially get on board with.

What does Daktronics need Kawhi Leonard to endorse their product for?

Like, it doesn't sound like it was their idea.

It certainly, it certainly wasn't.

Can I give you, uh, before we go, my, uh, completely just made up theory on how this all plays out, um.

I think Steve Ballmer sells the Clippers.

I do.

Uh, Steve Ballmer bought the team for $2 billion back in 2013, I guess it was.

Um, you could sell it for at least 3 multiples of that, probably 4, maybe more.

I mean, you think, what's it worth, $7 billion.

08 billion dollars now with the arena.

You throw that into it.

It is, but you get the arena to, um, I, I'm not saying it's gonna go for the Lakers, but the Lakers went for 12, Clippers can go for 7 or 8.

I, I, I firmly do.

Believe that with a guarantee that you can't get your team off the ground or be successful for the next 7 or 8 years.

I mean, if you're getting at the right price, you know, if, you know, if you're getting an LA franchise with a brand new building profit, we can agree on that.

He can sell for a profit.

I think he sells the team.

And I think he buys the expansion team in Seattle.

Oh, I don't think they're giving him an expansion team in Seattle, my friend, and that, that, that ship has sailed.

I don't, I don't think, I don't.

Here's what I've been hearing.

I don't think the NBA loves the dollar figures in Seattle right now.

I think they love the ones in Vegas, love them, love them.

And the reason that You know, Eger and, uh, Kushner turned around and went to the Lakers because they knew they weren't getting a Vegas team like that.

I think, I think the Walmart group is gonna get the Vegas team.

That's kind of my read on that situation.

Um, I don't think the NBA is in love with the dollar figures in Seattle.

I think right now it's only, it's, it's a 1.

It's only one bidder, right?

It's the owner of the Kraken.

I, I'm blanking on who they are.

The, I think it's a, who owns the arena too, maybe.

I, I don't they can always decide just not to expand there.

They can always do this.

Oh, no, you can't do that this year, no, no, no, you can't do that.

Wait, hear me out.

Hear me out again, and I'm not advocating for any city to lose their team.

I hate that.

But you could always, you have at least two financially distressed teams with distressed arena deals and, and financial.

They're not getting the financial support that they need from their market.

So if you decide, the reason the money figure when you say they're not happy with the money they're being offered is the reason this is so important is that when you expand, you are now agreeing to split every dollar that comes into the NBA from all of these billions of dollars television contracts, etc.

You are agreeing to split every dollar, not with 29 other owners, but now with 31 other owners, you being the $30.

Second owner if you are one of these, these owners in, in the NBA.

And they can decide, you know what, we're not gonna get enough money upfront from an expansion fee and from the price of this, of this team to justify splitting it another 30-second way.

And they could decide, let's move a team instead of expanding there.

I'm not saying any of that's gonna happen.

I think there will be an expansion team in Seattle, but the league has remedies for being Less, I, I don't, I don't wanna call anyone greedy, but I will because I just, there are, there are avenues for all of the billionaires that own NBA franchises maybe having a little less money and Seattle having a team.

Do you think Ballmer sells the team?

I could see him if the backlash becomes so strong that he can't sort of be out in the world and be the Steve Ballmer he wants to be.

He has enough money to turn around, sell the team, pull out of any other sort of day to day business he's doing, and just walk away.

And he has a beautiful estate in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm sure all of his friends are telling him, oh, Steve, you got screwed, man.

And he is perfectly capable.

When you have that much money, you can live a completely isolated life and never have to hear about this ever again.

Nobody will mention it around you.

You can have your, uh, your, your email screened.

You can have your social media screened.

You can do all of the things to just completely leave this behind, and it's If it never happened to you and your friends and the people you associate with.

So, can I see him doing that?

He's got the option to do it.

We've seen reclusive billionaires before.

It's not like this is an unprecedented thing.

We've seen people who've been in disgrace, but have a ton of money just go tuck away to their island somewhere and live their life, you know, as they wish.

I think that if that happens, he sells the team.

I don't think at the moment he's, he's ready to stop fighting, so we'll see what happens.

Well, it, it brings me to one last thing, which is, um, the fact that the Clippers seem hell bent on fighting probably eliminates the possibility they get any of these picks back because you remember with Minnesota they got docked the five first round picks, but you know they took their punishment like Glenn Taylor just said, you know what, yeah, it happened.

Uh, sorry, our bad.

Took the punishment and as the years went by, the NBA gave two of their picks back.

I've made a couple of calls on this and I, and I, I don't get the sense the NBA is inclined to consider that option right now.

And if the Clippers fight this thing as strongly as they're suggesting they're going to, and really court is the only place they can go.

There's no arbitration, as you said.

There's no.

There's no recourse there.

But if they try to fight the NBA tooth and nail, the NBA is never gonna give any of these picks back.

So, you know, these 5 first-round picks are going to be in the pocket of the league for the next, what is it, 6 years, 7 years, and that's, that's crushing.

Steve Ballmer is 70 years old.

Does he want to own a team that is going nowhere for the next decade?

Like, is it, is it worth it to him to own that team?

Yeah, but then it might not be, but I think, I think if he withdraws, you will see a complete withdrawal, and that he will just go live in his billionaire world, and that none of this will touch him the way.

You can pay for nothing to touch you.

Yes, exactly.

All right, Rachel, good stuff.

I know you gotta get up early, appearing on Fox on Friday morning.

Looking forward to watching you there, hearing some more about this topic, which I think will dominate the airwaves for a while, and I'm looking forward to, um, Not hearing anything from some Clippers people that, you know.

Yeah , just, yeah, there was a lot.

There was a lot going on, Rachel.

I think John Krasinski had a good tweet about this during the day about, uh, he said something to, I wanna pull it up actually.

He said something to the effect of the The campaign behind the scenes, I think that was going on.

I wanna pull it up because I do want to read it to the, the audience right here.

Uh, John Krasinski from the Athletics says, quote, one thing that stands out to me, the clips, both publicly and behind the scenes launched a ferocious defense that was accusatory to anyone who dared question them.

Today's punishment is severe on its own, but it also a very bad look for the spinsters in the house.

I would just say, John, I wholeheartedly agree with that take.

I wholeheartedly agree.