- 2 months ago
The Los Angeles Clippers have completely cooked their foreseeable future. The NBA came down heavy on the Clippers and stripped them of five first round picks. Was Adam Silver and the NBA too harsh on Los Angeles or was this a fair punishment?
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00:00All right, so we wanted to get into this penalty that was handed down to the L.A. Clippers
00:05surrounding the Kawhi Leonard situation.
00:08I mean, obviously, massive, massive story over the last 48 hours, 36, 48 hours or so.
00:12We didn't even have time to get to it yesterday.
00:14Yeah, so they're docked five first-round draft picks.
00:18I mean, that's just devastating, first and foremost.
00:21Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers, is suspended for a year.
00:26He's fined $30 million.
00:27Now, $30 million to Steve Ballmer is like taking $20 away from one of us.
00:33Like, it's nothing to him.
00:35That guy has so many shares of Microsoft stock, it would make your freaking head spin.
00:39Yeah, the money will not pain him.
00:41I'm sure he doesn't love it, but it won't pain him.
00:43It much more impacts him being suspended for a year.
00:46Suspended for a year.
00:47Being away from the team for a year.
00:47Yeah, and the guy's a diehard.
00:49Yeah.
00:49I mean, we were even talking to the guys when we were getting the tour of Capital One
00:53and all the renovations that they're doing over there,
00:55and they talked about it, how their arena, right, which is, it's all based around,
00:59because he's such a basketball geek, about guys not leaving their seats.
01:03Right.
01:03Because he wants the fans to be there, in their seats, you know, cheering on the team.
01:09That's how, I mean, this guy's into basketball.
01:11You guys have seen it.
01:12So, that's going to kill him that year.
01:13Well, the biggest takeaway is that...
01:14Well, the five first-round picks.
01:16Well, the acquisition of Kawhi Leonard actually cost them ten first-round picks,
01:20because the five that they're going to get docked here, the five previously,
01:24including dealing away SGA to the Oklahoma City Thunder, I mean, that's...
01:29It's going to go down as one of the worst transactions overall in history.
01:33He's a devastating player to that franchise, and, I mean, he's probably set them back a decade.
01:40I don't know how you recover from not having five first-round picks consecutive years.
01:46I think they get two back in the Kawhi deal, so it ends up really only being three,
01:51because they are trading Kawhi Leonard to the Raptors, and I guess that deal will go through.
01:56Was that already set in stone?
01:57Maybe that's why they made it five, because they knew they would...
01:59They were putting it on hold until the investigation ended, but he's going to be playing for the Raptors.
02:05No, understood, but did the league know that the deal tentatively was set for him
02:09to get two first-round picks?
02:12Because I'm wondering, because that might explain the five.
02:15The five is a massive penalty.
02:18And on top of all that, all they've been trying to do is swim upstream
02:23and gain popularity in that market,
02:26and they're always going to be second fiddle to the Lakers, no matter what they do.
02:30And this just makes it infinitely worse.
02:33It's like, imagine an NFL team coming into Washington or Virginia
02:37and trying to compete with the Redskins-slash-Commanders.
02:41Well, yeah.
02:42They just...
02:43The Redskins have done a pretty good job down the street.
02:45Okay, but I mean like in the same city.
02:47Like, you know, Washington and Baltimore are 30-ish miles apart, whatever it is.
02:52Like, same city.
02:53You've got to deal with the elephant in the room that's the Lakers,
02:56and this just makes it so much worse.
02:59It sucks, because the Clippers, they've contended at times,
03:03but they've never...
03:05I don't think they've ever been in NBA Finals.
03:07No, they made it to one Western Conference Finals with Kawhi there.
03:10I think that was back in 2021.
03:12Yeah.
03:13That just didn't work out with Kawhi Leonard.
03:16It's probably not going to be a situation where they're going to be able to compete
03:19for the next five or six years.
03:21And as you say, you've got to watch the Lakers always making big, splashy moves.
03:27The LeBron era ends, but now it's the Luka era.
03:31And it's just all the hoops that they had to jump through for Kawhi,
03:34like getting him fake endorsements to circumvent the salary cap
03:37and hooking up his family with jobs.
03:40And it's just like all the bending over backwards for Kawhi.
03:43Meanwhile, all he's doing is destroying your franchise.
03:48The only thing I'll say here is, and look, I didn't do a deep dive.
03:51And read all about the allegations or read the report and stuff is
03:56Balmer's pretty vehement and they are fighting back.
04:01He's pretty vehement saying that he didn't do this.
04:05He basically said they introduced Kawhi Leonard to a sponsor and then they
04:10stepped away.
04:11Well, I mean, of course he's going to say that.
04:13That doesn't mean it didn't happen.
04:16That's just his public, his forward facing.
04:18I mean, it's your way.
04:19I agree.
04:19It's the way you're covering yourself.
04:20It's kind of like when Adam Peters says he's confident in the offensive line.
04:24You either believe him or you don't.
04:26The way that Balmer has presented it, I almost believe him.
04:32Now, maybe he was naive in what was happening.
04:35You don't think he knew that this was kind of almost a prearrangement.
04:38Hey, if I introduce you to these guys, I've got a boatload of cash.
04:40They'll hook you up.
04:41Don't worry about it.
04:43I don't know if he knew that it was basically like a shell company or whatever.
04:47Yeah, I don't know enough about the company.
04:49Aspiration company that was, you know.
04:51Is that what it was?
04:52It was a fake company?
04:53Not the deal?
04:54It wasn't a real company?
04:55Drab?
04:55I don't think he ultimately had to do anything.
04:57It was a shell company.
05:00I don't know.
05:00People call it like a tree company.
05:01And they said, how could Balmer be duped by?
05:03This guy's one of the shrewdest businessmen of all time.
05:06I'm sure he wasn't duped.
05:08I'm guessing.
05:09Well, what I think a lot of it is, is what he's saying, is the stuff was pawned off on
05:13his presidents and things like that to do these business deals.
05:16And he wasn't necessarily plugged in.
05:17He's saying I was conned.
05:19I don't know if he's saying the other guys were conned.
05:21And then Lawrence Frank, who's, I believe, the president of basketball operations.
05:25Apparently, he's the rat in this whole thing.
05:26He got suspended for six months.
05:28And he just rolled over on everyone.
05:30And so to cover for himself, I think he would have got a much longer suspension.
05:34So I think he's a snitch.
05:37I don't know.
05:38It's a pretty juicy, juicy story here.
05:41I always liked Steve Balmer just because he was a passionate guy and, you know, put fans
05:46first.
05:46I really like that about him.
05:47He was partial to the Microsoft, but he has Seattle connections.
05:49Well, of course, a little bit.
05:51But I just thought that him thinking, like, I want the fan experience to be first.
05:57And he was, I just, I just appreciate all that about him and his enthusiasm.
06:00But that interview with the other day didn't come off great.
06:03And this is just a really bad beginning to his, I don't know, first 10 years of ownership.
06:08So he's got to step aside for a year.
06:10But he says, we vehemently deny the NBA's findings, which is the result of a heavily biased investigation
06:17seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.
06:21What the league told us privately differs from what it announced today publicly.
06:27And they have not held themselves close to the standard Commissioner Silver set at the
06:31start of this investigation to ensure its fairness and accuracy.
06:34Right.
06:35So he's going to come at them legally and we'll see if anything changes.
06:41He owns, by the way, 333.2 million shares of Microsoft stock.
06:47Not $332 million worth.
06:50He has 332 million shares.
06:53Okay.
06:53Because I know this will offend you.
06:54I have no idea what the current price of the Microsoft stock is.
06:57What is it?
06:57I believe Microsoft is right around $510 a share.
07:02Right.
07:02So multiply 333 billion by $510.
07:07Yeah.
07:07I don't know what that is.
07:08And I think it comes out to about $150 billion.
07:10Yeah, but that probably doesn't mean that much to him.
07:13The Clippers mean a lot to him.
07:14Like that's his passion.
07:16That's what he said.
07:16And that stings to be out of it for a year.
07:20Oh, no doubt.
07:20And for the fans, like you said, you're always second class citizens.
07:24Always.
07:25Because you got the Lakers.
07:26But you've had these dalliances where you've had good teams.
07:29I can't remember who it was.
07:30It might have been Jeff Teague or somebody on a podcast that said, you know, Balmer just
07:34rolls different because he's so wealthy.
07:36And that he just goes around like L.A. and the surrounding neighborhoods and builds
07:41courts and emblazes them with Clippers logos.
07:45Right.
07:45To try to brainwash the masses into becoming Clippers fans.
07:49That's actually pretty cool.
07:50No, it's great.
07:51But it just shows you like the efforts that they have to undertake to try to make headway
07:56in that market to try to supersede the Lakers.
08:00And it's probably just despite all his efforts and all his money, it's never going to happen.
08:05They're just never.
08:06They're never going to be on equal footing with the with the L.A.
08:09Lakers.
08:09And it has to drive him crazy, has to drive him nuts.
08:13Yeah.
08:14I just wonder.
08:15So let's just get back to the allegations a little bit.
08:17Are that if if it wasn't a shell company, what if it was just a legitimate company that
08:23was paying him?
08:25That would still, to me, potentially be a way to circumvent the cap, though, like kind
08:30of knowingly.
08:31But yeah, the part which you can't do it, the part which I, again, felt for Balmer in
08:37the way that it was presented was a lot of times you introduce your players to sponsors.
08:42Of course.
08:43And he's basically just saying, we just introduced them to a sponsor.
08:46So my fault the sponsors is like fake and gave him this money to do nothing.
08:50Mm hmm.
08:51Yeah.
08:52But what if.
08:52But I guess the NBA is connected, not saying, well, you knew that they were going to pay
08:56him to do.
08:57The NBA found that the Clippers used a now bankrupt, bankrupt company, Aspiration Fund
09:02Advisor, LLC, to pay Leonard $28 million in endorsements and millions more in company
09:08stock on top of whatever the team is paying him salary-wise.
09:11But if it was a legitimate company, would the NBA still have the same leg to stand on?
09:17I don't think so.
09:18I don't think so.
09:19Like if.
09:20No, I think if he goes out and gets an endorsement outside of the NBA.
09:25You're allowed to get endorsements.
09:26Yeah, that's completely allowed.
09:28Right.
09:28Equity in the company.
09:29Right.
09:29But what if it was legitimately set up by.
09:32I mean, I don't know.
09:32Is that.
09:32I'm sure that's not the only place where it's happened.
09:34Where they say, hey, if you come to D.C., the nation's capital, you're going to get
09:37great endorsements.
09:38Yeah.
09:38What Balmer is trying to say is.
09:40You're going to get great endorsements.
09:41What Balmer is trying to say is, like, we just did the tour of Capital One Arena.
09:45Yeah.
09:45United's a big sponsor.
09:46Mm hmm.
09:46Right.
09:47It'd be like if Ted Leonsis, you know, has in his owner suite, has the CEO of United, who's
09:53spending all this money at the arena, and he says, hey, AJ, meet so-and-so.
09:58He's the CEO of United.
10:00Balmer's just saying that's all he did.
10:01Right.
10:02Right.
10:02It was just a pass-off.
10:03And I'm agreeing with him.
10:04I'm just thinking about it from all angles.
10:06If you go to New York, part of the reason why you go to New York is you get all
10:09those
10:09endorsements.
10:10Yep.
10:10And the connections.
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10:19Coming up next, we'll give you the latest on the Commanders as we hit the skins here on
10:23the Junkies.