With Its Clippers Punishment, the NBA Showed Its Teeth in a Way the NFL Refuses

After watching Roger Goodell continuously let teams off the hook over the years, Adam Silver deserves praise for dropping the hammer.

The penalty NBA commissioner Adam Silver handed down to the Clippers on Wednesday should remind NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that he, too, can put the hammer down on league owners when they get out of line. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

In the NFL, the status quo is to slap misbehaving owners on the wrist. The NBA’s decision to take the Clippers to task for the Kawhi Leonard scandal strikes a markedly different tone, writes @ConorOrr: 

We are but a choir of different voices taking their turns to sing. And so, when I read that the NBA has gone vintage NCAA-Miami football nuclear on the Clippers for circumventing the salary cap, two immediate thoughts came to mind. 

The first (the cynic): Other NBA owners were the most mad that they hadn’t thought of it first. And like the cotton-soft gang that teamed up against Patriots owner Robert Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to bring Deflategate to the American consciousness as retribution for alleged preferential treatment New England received in the past for other rule-bending incidents, the NBA ownership cabal ensured that commissioner Adam Silver was wielding a blowtorch when he opted to dock the Clippers five first-round draft picks and fine them $30 million. 

The second (the optimist): Good for Silver, man. Because the NFL would never, ever, never, ever, never, ever do something like this. 

The NBA’s punishment feels especially prescient at a time when we’re wondering whether 49ers owner Jed York will be penalized…at all…in conjunction with a recent prostitution sting, which is not a guarantee, given that Kraft wasn’t punished, either, during his own improprieties of a similar nature. While I’m not conflating the seriousness of what York and Kraft did with attempting to upend the competitive balance of a league by cheating—the two punishments wouldn’t be remotely comparable—I am of the mindset that it’s kind of refreshing to see someone as wealthy and powerful as Steve Ballmer get his team wiped off the face of the NBA for cheating.

For perspective, the NFL stripped the Dolphins of a first-round pick and fined the team $1.5 million in 2023 for repeatedly violating the league’s anti-tampering laws by simultaneously courting a future Hall of Fame quarterback (Tom Brady) and borderline Hall of Fame head coach (Sean Payton). Tucked within that investigation were allegations by former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores that team owner Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 per loss that season to attain a higher draft pick (and, I suppose, seeing the difference between Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa in real time, that may have felt a little light). 

The Patriots lost one (one!) first-round draft pick for illegally spying on their opponents and only a third-round pick for essentially trying the same thing again in a Bengals press box as part of a sham documentary. The team also gave up a first-round pick to the Jets as compensation in a negotiated settlement to release former coach Bill Belichick from his Jets contract.

The Saints lost a second-round draft pick for operating a bounty-for-cash system over two years. Former Commanders owner Dan Snyder was fined $60 million for hiding revenue and creating a toxic workplace culture that included instances of sexual harassment. 

The Browns were neither fined nor penalized, despite offering Hue Jackson additional financial incentives for making more draft picks and spending less money. 

You could make the argument that some of these are more abhorrent on their face than what the Clippers did, essentially clumsily throwing around the additional incentives that many players enjoy in a given market and failing to adequately cover it up or make it fit within the confines of the rules. This was one historically woebegotten team facilitating high-priced side hustles for one player in an attempt to woo him in free agency. And while it is extremely dumb and extremely sloppy, do we really believe that this practice is a complete and total outlier within the NBA and in professional sports in general? And do we think it is five times worse in terms of draft pick penalties—because I truly do not care about monetary fines for billionaires—than purposely attempting to injure one of the league’s best players, which could have resulted in a career-altering event and the loss of millions of dollars (not to mention the downward trajectory the team with the injured player would face)? Or stealing another team’s head coach within the same division?Or reaching out to players and coaches on other teams to gauge their interest in relocating to Florida? Or, maybe, allegedly, paying a coach $100,000 to lose a game? 

It’s at least an interesting question, right? It at least shows the utter (appropriate) brutality with which the NBA operated on Wednesday, comparatively.

Also interesting is the developing central difference between both leagues, and why we can all double down on the idea that the NFL ownership club has the same penal code as an elite Catholic all-boys school. Discretion is at the forefront; embarrassment is only self-imposed and rarely triggered by the league itself—unless you’re one of the unpopular kids. In that case, you’re forced out of owning a team together and disappear like a Soviet double agent (or Snyder to a yacht in the Mediterranean). 

The NBA is imposing a penalty that will make the Clippers totally noncompetitive for the foreseeable future. In addition, Ballmer must vanish for a year from his attention-soaked courtside seat. Still, when he returns, he must sit and marinate in the grossness of a franchise that must overcome a total inability to use the best way to pipeline affordable, cost-controlled players onto their roster. It feels like the professional sports version of what 1980s parents would have done (eat the soap, kid).

It’s macabre. It’s badass. And it’s fitting. It’s going to suck, and the team will almost certainly lose a chunk of its fanbase, with each losing season regenerating the story from the dust as a reminder of the team’s ill intentions and ultimate criminal ineptitude. It’s also a reminder to the NFL that we can do stuff like that, too, when owners get out of line. A slap on the wrist never quite hurts enough, does it?