Sixers 2025-26 Will our luck ever change? [LeBron to Sixers!]

[allentown]

Well the NBA doesn't have any jurisdiction over the companies.

Except it says that a Clipper's minority owner made an investment in one of those companies. That company wasn't punished for THIS, but it is bankrupt and a co-founder is in prison for fraud.

Contrary to the headline, I wouldn't say the Commissioner lowered the hammer on Kawhi.

[zambonir]

Right, but the NBA can't punish any company, period. The law could (and the law could punish Ballmer too).

Reading more I guess the $700K is merely expenses the Clippers paid for Kawhi that he should have been paying back all along. The NBA's position seems to be that it wasn't illegal for Kawhi to ask the Clippers to make connections for him but it was illegal for the team to do it.

Or you could say in this scenario Kawhi is pretty much the low-level criminal and the prosecutors only wanted the big fish.

The agent is the biggest loser in this (as far as an individual), and probably deservedly.

[zambonir]

A lot of crazy stuff here. Sounds like Frank wasn't too thrilled that the business side was doing this and was essentially a cooperating witness (thus the six months instead of a year). And the agent had a role in everyone getting caught because he wasn't happy about being cut out of the (real) deals.

When this happened to the TWolves NBA voided Joe Smith's contract and his Bird rights (which cost him a bunch of $) but that was a more straightforward under the table deal solely between him and the team.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/49806683/nba-punishes-la-clippers-kawhi-leonard-investigation-30-million-fine-steve-ballmer-suspensions-top-questions

[VoteForKalas]

Well the NBA doesn't have any jurisdiction over the companies. They could ban them from any future deals with teams but I assume that's already a given. Anything else would be on the legal system.

As for Leonard, he's allowed to take as much money as he can make as outside income. He wasn't breaking any league rules, the team was. Even if he was not innocent of what was it really meant.

So, he's paying the league back $700,000. Is that allegedly the amount of money that actually violated the cap or is it that number for some other reason? And why is it paying the league "back."?

A good punishment for Kawhi would be to make him stay with the Clippers, however.

The NBA has control over who the league does business with and who their teams do business with.

They absolutely could and should ban any company involved in the actions from ever working with the league or their teams for some number of years or forever.

They also could and should punish Leonard - $700K is a joke, one of the no-show deals he had with one of the companies alone was for $28M. How much $ did he pocket before this came to light and was stopped? It was almost certainly a hell of a lot more than 700K.

If Leonard was not actively pushing for and demanding extra pay outside of cap constraints and, instead, refused to cooperate with this activity, nothing would have happened. The companies, agent and team would have never set up the scheme to begin with.

If there truly are no rules against players engaging in (and, in fact, demanding and orchestrating through family members and his agent) cap circumvention activities, that would seem to be an absolutely cavernous hole in the rule book that would need to be filled for the good of the game as a result of this disgraceful behavior.

They also could and should veto the trade the Clippers made with the Raptors or, if they want to move forward, put iron clad restrictions in place so the Raptors & Leonard will not engage in similar behavior with very clear punishments defined for all parties. Unless Toronto & Leonard agree in writing, the trade should be cancelled. Leonard should get zero benefit of the doubt after his behavior.

The agent should be banned from working with NBA players for a number of years or forever.

The commissioner should formally define in a letter to every NBA team the consequences of similar behavior and the zero tolerance for undermining the integrity of the league and cheating the game. And if, again, those rules do not exist currently, they should be voted on and approved as soon as possible to protect the league. If the players union fights it and will not accept such rules, then a collective bargaining resolution will need to be found, but I would hope that players understand how corrupt this behavior is and that it cannot be allowed.

[andyb]

They did ban the agent for 5 years. I think the 1-year penalties are the limit against owners and team personnel for this type of offense in the league by-laws.

The big part of this is really the draft picks which will just cripple the franchise. While they don't have salary cap penalties it feels like a situation where top free agents will not want to sign with a team that won't have aa number one pick for 8 years.

I think the league did a good job here and sent a message. I do worry that there are "marketing" arrangements in lots of contracts that really approach a gray area here. Kind of like Latin American prospects in baseball where there have been a couple of big penalties for egregious actions but all 30 clubs violate the spirit of the rules every single year.

Systems need to be simple and clear. They have sent a direct message to teams here and hopefully it works. Until gambling scandals bring down the league of course.

[zambonir]

There just aren't any rules against outside income though. When Saquon does the Cure Auto Insurance commercial or Joel is in a Skechers ad, that money isn't circumventing the salary cap. He's still entitled to the money. The team just wasn't entitled to be involved in the deals. They were ones the circumventing the cap, not him. It's not like he said, "pay me less on my NBA contract and instead we'll get the money from Boingo" He just said, "get me more money." That's the difference between this and the Minnesota/Joe Smith deal, where both sides deliberately hid money to be paid in the future, while Smith agreed to smaller not-secret contracts to circumvent the cap.

There are surely some other loopholes, like when a player works with a car dealer that is also a team advertiser. And for sure both Kawhi and his (now former) agent just seems kind of nuts, and maybe even greedy. The difference is most teams said no to their ridiculous demands in the past. The Clipppers, instead, went to companies they already were involved with and in some cases directly connected to (in addition to Ballmer's involvement at one Zucker's husband was the chairman of the board at another). In some ways, while it is their own fault, the companies also got ripped off (which less involved people at some of them did raise questions about).

[bigegypt0417]

I wonder what this means for 2029...

Sixers have the right to swap picks with the clippers but it's top 3 protected...do the sixers still have the ability to swap since the clips lost that pick?

If they do...is it still top 3 potected?

Sixers future draft pick tracker

[zambonir]

Apparently the pick the Clippers are losing in 2029 was originally the Pacers' pick.

NBA: Sixers' 2029 first-round pick swap rights with Clippers unaffected by...