2025 NBA Offseason News

[Mori Chu]

(Pablo Torre Finds Out tweet)

It's been pretty interesting to me to see some of the league's richest owners and most powerful folks rush out to defend Ballmer. The defense seems to be, "He wouldn't be that stupid!" Why wouldn't he? These billionaire tech guys do stupid stuff like this all the time. Maybe Ballmer got some bad advice, or maybe he thought it was technically allowed under the CBA, or maybe he just didn't think he would get caught. But I don't buy the talk of, "nobody would be so dumb as to bribe their player with a shady endorsement deal." That is no defense. Anyway, I still believe in due process and being innocent until proven guilty, so I look forward to the league's investigation. It can be hard to "prove" what Ballmer knew or did, but if it is his money directly going to this company that does essentially nothing with it but bribe Kawhi Leonard, that is pretty damning.

[Gladiator]

Or they’re all doing the same thing (or similar) so can’t be critical.

[O_Gardino]

Thomas Sorber (Thunder 15th overall pick) has a torn ACL and will be out for the season.

Bummer. I love his game, but he fell to OKC for this exact reason. As Marty said, luckily for him he's with an org that can afford to be patient with him.

[ShelC]

Yea Sorber was my guy in the draft, dodged a bullet there.

[pickle]

Josh Giddey signs 4/100 deal with the Bulls.

[specialsauce]

Noooooooooo

[Mori Chu]

Josh Giddey signs 4/100 deal with the Bulls.

Seemed like he was always destined to go back there and that it was just a question of money. I agree with Saucey that he would have been good here, but I don't think we were ever realistically in play for him. We weren't reaching out to him or the Bulls, and he wasn't reaching out to us. So I guess it was never going to happen.

[Superbone]

Giddey was a pipe dream. The Bulls were always going to resign him.

[Superbone]

I like this.

[Superbone]

[Superbone]

[ShelC]

Some highlights from Silver's Presser

[Charlie Smithy!]

WWDSD?

(what would David Stern do?)

[wpmiller42]

WWDSD?

(what would David Stern do?)

Suspend Amare and Boris of course

[Mori Chu]

WWDSD?

(what would David Stern do?)

(Barkley voice) Man, David Stern rollin' in his grave ...

[Superbone]

WWDSD?

(what would David Stern do?)

(Barkley voice) Man, David Stern rollin' in his grave ...

Stern is disintegrating in his grave along with the Suns' championship aspirations.

[Charlie Smithy!]

WWDSD?

(what would David Stern do?)

(Barkley voice) Man, David Stern rollin' in his grave ...

Stern is disintegrating in his grave along with the Suns' championship aspirations.

[ShelC]

Really good interview with Shane Larkin about his career overseas, among other things

[Mori Chu]

The more that comes out about this Kawhi / Ballmer thing, the more it seems likely to me that they are in trouble. It sounds like not only did Ballmer basically completely bankroll this shell company that then handed the tens of millions of dollars straight to Kawhi for a "no-show" endorsement deal where Kawhi pocketed millions to do literally nothing, but, another major owner / investor of the Clips also seems to have bought up a bunch of stock in the same shell company right as they were in big financial trouble, and that investment seems to have ALSO been funneled straight to Kawhi, at a time when most of the other investors and stakeholders and partners of the company were getting bilked and losing all their money. It seems like too many "coincidences" that happen to funnel money essentially straight from Ballmers and Clippers co-owners to Kawhi Leonard and his representation, through this company.

And I bet the other owners are livid about it. This is a guy who was acquired by Toronto as a FA, at considerable cost to them, and helped lead them to a title. Then that same summer he leaves and goes to LAC, where it seems he was likely promised / wink-winked that he would get tens of millions of dollars under the table in shady endorsement deals. And there seems to be a record that Kawhi's reps asked Toronto to try to give him a similar deal and they said no, so he left. So Kawhi and his people seem to be complicit in this and seem to have been asking for this exact type of arrangement, so it will be hard for them to claim that they were ignorant of all this or thought it was all above-board.

I think the Clips are going to be found guilty by the NBA's investigation and that there'll be major consequences for it. I think the Clips org will be punished and Kawhi himself will also receive consequences.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/ ... tion-probe

[Mori Chu]

Pablo Torre keeps unraveling more details about this Clips/Kawhi scandal. Now a document from several leadership members from the shell company, Aspiration, claiming that when they learned about the Kawhi endorsement stuff they didn't think it made any sense for their company's mission and didn't want to do it and raised "significant objections" to it but were overruled. Dunno if accurate or just trying to cover their derrieres now that everything is coming out. But it adds to the evidence that something very fishy and inappropriate was happening here that didn't make any sense, in terms of this small tree-saving company giving multiple gigantic endorsement contracts to an NBA player to do nothing.