How can Clippers mitigate damage moving forward?
Brian Windhorst joins Dan Patrick for insight into where things go for the Clippers after receiving harsh punishments from the NBA for salary cap circumvention and if they are in a position to absorb the punishments.
Video Transcript
Espn senior NBA writer Brian Windhorst, joining us.
Wendy, great to talk to you.
Is there any way the Clippers can mitigate any of this damage moving forward?
Absolutely.
You know, number one, they can drop their chance of, you know, threats of legal action because I don't think it's gonna be successful.
And, you know, they really need this Kawhi Leonard trade to go through that they negotiated with the Raptors as constituted because they're gonna get two first-round picks for him.
And, you know, in the case of the Minnesota Timberwolves situation, and I think it's really reasonable to point that out because obviously it's the one comparable incidence in this, in the history.
They were docked five first-round draft picks just like the Clippers, and when the Timberwolves kept their noses clean and stayed on the straight and narrow, David Stern ended up giving them back two of the, two of the picks.
And that happened over a five-year span.
They were hit with the picks immediately over the following five years.
In this case, the picks are starting in, the penalties start in '29.
They go out to '34.
Who's to say that by 2031 or 2032 if the Clippers keep their nose clean they won't be able to get some of that, you know, one or two of them back?
That's something that you can, you know, talk about off the record right now.
And so in the, in the case of the Timberwolves, Joe Smith's contract was vacated, was voided.
He was a free agent.
In this case, the Clippers are permitted to keep the player with no significant penalty.
They can trade him and r- get assets back for him.
Not only that, but the, the length of the investigation the Clippers used in their favor, they were able to make moves that landed them the number five pick in this year's draft and the ability to negotiate this Kawhi trade without a suspension hanging over his head.
So they are in a lot better position to absorb this than they would've been if this was handled differently.
And while I understand that hell hath no fury like a angry billionaire- with $100 billion, he probably should listen to a little bit of reason because the league said, or at least the report said, that this re- this investigation isn't over.
They left open the possibility there could be more.
So yeah, I, I, I think obviously there's a shock in the announcement and there's a shock when you read all the details.
When you get past it, I think the Clippers can, can mitigate this in a way that can, can I see people r- referencing a death penalty.
It's not a death penalty, Dan.
They didn't give him a playoff ban.
They're still gonna have cap space this summer.
They're still gonna have They, Dan, they have a first-round pick in the 2027 draft.
They didn't take it.
It's a swapped pick.
They're gonna swap it I think with Denver or Oklahoma City.
It's probably not gonna be a good pick.
They have a draft pick in 2027.
So, this is, it's bad.
It's a blow.
It, you know, you're losing a limb, but this is not a death penalty.
Billionaires usually don't get told what to do, so I'm sure that Steve Ballmer is surrounded by people who tell him what he wants to hear.
But at some point you have to I mean, he, they, Lawrence Frank was taking notes in the meeting about circumventing the salary cap.
Like at what point do you say, "Uh, hey, I'm in- impenetrable," or, "The commissioner needs me," or, "I'm so va-" Like, I don't know if there's arrogance involved in this that led him down this path.
Well, I don't have, you know, omni- omnipotent understanding of everybody's feelings on this, but what it looks to me like based on this array of statements yesterday, and the Clippers put out a public statement and then released a two-page angry letter to Adam Silver.
There was a lot of copy generated yesterday.
It looks to me like what they are focusing on is a legalese, situation about how the arrangements were made.
Like, "No, no, we didn't facilitate the deals.
We just acted as middleman."
And that seems to be their, like, legal argument and where they're ready to go to battle on.
Okay.
But Dan, here's the thing.
He didn't do any work for these companies.
He didn't do the endorsements.
He didn't do ads.
He didn't do any of it.
It's, you don't have to have, like, next level understanding o- of, of all this stuff to understand that it, it, it reeks of quid pro quo.
And what we didn't understand until yesterday was that this was four companies, four of them.
And Dan, I don't know One of the companies, two of the companies openly cooperated, Aspiration and Daktronics.
Now Aspiration, and even the report says that the, the, the, that the guy who's in the federal penitentiary is not credible, and I agree.
I don't find him credible.
So they're kind of even, I mean, they put it in there, but they're kind of even ignoring him.
But they had Daktronics.
The, Daktronics copped to it.
They, they openly said what happened, and I get why they're saying it because their CEO yesterday had an earnings call and, and, and said that the SEC is on their backside.
Like, this is not to be messed around with.
Plus they wanna do b- you know, they sell scoreboards.
Do you wanna be in business with it, with the NBA if you sell scoreboards?
I think you do.
Yes.
So they cooperated, but here's the thing, Dan.
These investigators had the, the, the data and the money for all four companies.
How'd they get it if two of the companies didn't cooperate?
They had internal whistleblowers participating.
They had the dollars, Dan.
They knew exactly how much was paid.
So these companies didn't do any ads with Kawhi.
He didn't act as an endorser.
So this is the thing, like Steve Ballmer or another owner could look at you square in the face with their hand on the Bible and say, "We have the agents for our superstar players on our backside all the time about getting them deals, getting them endorsements Absolutely that happens, and absolutely there's teams out there that have acted as middlemen.
In fact, there may have been teams out there that have acted as more than middlemen.
But those players, to our knowledge at least, are doing the endorsement contracts.
Like, when you see a, a, you know, the star player doing a deal with the team sponsor, he's at least out there with his face on it.
The reason this is so repugnant is that it just is a, is very cleanly obvious th- that it was a kickback.
Because in this case, they weren't When, in 2019 they didn't just sign Kawhi Leonard.
They were also building the arena.
And so that meant there was a whole bunch of vendors and companies that they were doing hundreds of millions of dollars in business with that they don't normally do.
You don't build an arena every year.
You don't buy a $100 million scoreboard every year.
But this year they were building the $100 million scoreboard.
And Pablo Torre and Hunter Brook Media went and dug into that Daktronics was struggling at the ti- I don't need to go into all the details.
It, this report, if you were on a jury and you didn't know anything about basketball, you didn't know whether the Clippers played in Los Angeles or London, if you got this report and you read it, you would vote to convict.
I don't think it's even really close.
How did Kawhi s- kinda skirt, And I know it's $700,000, but I thought he was gonna get suspended or they would void his contract.
What about you?
Well, I think there was two reasons.
Well, there's, there, there, I would say this.
There's probably some unknown reasons that we don't know.
I'll just leave it at that.
The second thing is when you have a disciplinary action with a player, you, y- you, you have to f- there's an arbitration process spelled out in the collective bargaining agreement.
The arbiters are already picked, the process is set out, and you're gonna have to present evidence and potentially do interviews and stuff like that.
You have to go to court.
And I'm not sure that the, that the investigators had the documentation where they could win an arbitration against Kawhi Leonard.
I do think they felt like they had the documentation to go against Jillian Zucker and Steve Ballmer.
And so basically the burden of proof with Kawhi was much higher.
But, I'm not gonna say more than that.
You've, you know more than that.
You're not saying- I don't know.
I speculate.
Okay.
And I'm not gonna get into that.
Okay.
I always find this tricky, that, you know, whenever I'd, I have a source, you always have to wonder what, if the source has an agenda.
And I don't know how you navigate this.
Now, first 10 years at ESPN, it, you know, it was a pretty powerful place, even then.
And then I never questioned as much as I should've, what is somebody's agenda here?
And I don't know, how do you navigate if somebody gives you the information of, okay, do I trust them?
Can I go with this?
You know, like Pablo Torre.
He's one guy going against very powerful person here, and didn't back down, but you also have to wonder about that source or sources, what's their agenda?
Yeah.
It's a absolute, the complex web that we operate in in the modern era, this is absolutely a factor, and you try to do your best is the e- either you try to do your best or you don't.
That's, that's, that's the basic way you can say it.
I mean, even I, a, a moment ago, I, I praised Hunter Brook Media.
Hunter Brook Media has done a bunch of investigations.
I don't know if you're familiar with them.
No.
They're a new media company, and Pablo has, has partnered with them.
Hunter Brook Media is a hedge fund backed media source.
They do investigations and then oftentimes short the companies that they do the investigation against.
Which they disclose, okay?
And I'm just telling you that they, had done, did great work here.
But they have an inherent- Yeah conflict of interest.
So yeah, it's a hard thing to figure out, which is why a lot of people end up stepping in quagmires.
And, caution doesn't always win the day.
Sometimes people who are cautious get r- get r- get rolled over.
This particular situation is extremely thorny, and this is an imperfect response.
The NBA is not gonna be able to get a Because it's so nuanced.
That's why I think the Clippers are so mad because I think the Clippers feel like they were dancing within the rules here, and they feel like they c- m- more to the point, they feel like they can prove that they w- can dance within the rules.
And, and the league is basically saying, "We don't think you can."
I think the last, one of the public statements that the Clippers made was so telling during this process.
They, they said, "We didn't We are not guilty of wh- of what we are accused of."
It's a loaded sentence.
So you, you get into situations like that, and it's, it's Look, I have spent a, a lot of hours in the last couple of weeks reading legal documents, Dan, while covering the NBA, with the whole Buss family and now the Clippers.
This is the era that we're in, is that I've gotta read all these legal documents to, to cover the NBA.
Talking to Brian Windhorst of the Mothership.
What happens with the Lakers with the Buss family?
Well, the, the gigantic difference between a, a year ago when the, when the Lakers sold and then this time, and I mean, this is elementary, but it, it needs to be pointed out, is that a year ago, the Busses had majority control, and now they do not.
And when you are a minority shareholder, you are exactly that.
You don't get to have say.
Now, Jeanie Buss' standing is a little bit different as she is the governor.
But she, as the governor, you serve at the, you know, the pleasure of the controlling owner.
And so the Lakers' controlling ownership is going to change hands whether the Buss family can get their act together or not.
And whether Jeanie has the title of governor or not, the controlling owner, which is going to be Josh Kushner, assuming that he, completes it, and, and I think Bob Iger is going to be the managing partner, they're going to have control over the Lakers because they don't need the 17%.
The Buss family drama is amazing.
There has been two television shows in the last five years about the Buss family, one directly, the HBO show.
The second one, Running Point, the Netflix show which Jeanie made, was really about her.
It wasn't It was based on her life.
And neither of those shows will be anywhere near as good as the true story of what's happening within that family drama.
It is incredible, palace intrigue.
But they no longer have control over the Lakers, and so it will remain palace intrigue.
It won't affect the decisions with the basketball team.
12 and a half billion dollars.
What do you make of that price tag?
I make that Jeanie Buss sold low so that she could get a sweetheart deal for herself, because I think 10 billion was low.
And I'll tell you this, I can't predict the future.
I wouldn't sit here and try to guess the socio- the macroeconomic, future of the country, but my guess is that the $12 billion purchase will not end up being a bad one.
And here's something else.
Bob Iger and Josh Kushner were trying to buy the team in Vegas, and the thought process was that that was gonna cost maybe eight or nine billion dollars, okay?
And maybe more.
Maybe it'll end up being more.
I don't know the answer.
But that was about what they th- people thought it was gonna cost.
So they were trying to raise eight or nine billion.
This is what you have to understand.
When you hear that the Lakers sell for 12 billion, they're not actually selling for 12 billion.
There's h- they're buying about 73% f- f- of it at the 12 billion valuation, which means that they're gonna be paying about eight or nine billion, okay?
So yeah, they only have 73%, but they're controlling it.
So what would you rather have, Dan?
Would you rather spend the same amount of money to own the Vegas this name goes here or the Los Angeles Lakers?
Is, LeBron still in the hunt for m- the expansion team?
Is he allowed to be, have his name involved in this?
So he has openly said that he is no longer pursuing that.
Okay.
Two things happened.
I think number one, the o- you know, LeBron was never going to be able to be the controlling owner of a team.
He has done fabulously well.
His net worth is north of a billion dollars, but a billion dollars, even if he sold everything, doesn't get it done, you know?
And even two or three years ago when he was really looking at this, it was still gonna take in the, in the So you needed a partnership where you would partner with somebody who had a giant piece of money that would be your partner.
His partners with, y- Jerry Cardinale and the Fenway Sports Group, those were the groups he was, he was in business with.
They have backed away from NBA ownership.
In fact, Fenway is divesting.
They just sold a big portion of Liverpool.
They're selling.
Jerry Cardinale has gone on the record on a number of occasions saying he thinks prices for NBA teams are too high.
So the, so his preferred partners were not looking like they were gonna bid on Vegas.
So that was one of the things that happened.
I mean, he could have found other partners, but that's one thing that happened.
The second thing is he's still playing, a great basketball player, and he's still able to continue to play, and he's not retired at age 41.
So he's gonna keep playing.
The, the expansion teams are probably gonna get named, and he's gonna miss that window.
But I'll tell you this, if you think LeBron's done trying to be an owner or trying to have heavy involvement in the NBA, he's not.
His life has many decades left in it.
His influence is gonna be on.
It's just not gonna be with this particular expansion deal.
Always great.
I know you're busy.
Thank you, Windy.
Thanks, Dan.
Have a good day.
That's Brian Windhorst of the Mothership.
