Mannix: NBA has declared Clippers 'cheaters'
Chris Mannix shares his takeaways from the NBA handing the Clippers the harshest punishment in league history for cap circumvention and looks ahead to what may transpire over the next year.
Video Transcript
All right, it was a huge day in the NBA on Thursday with the league handing down the most significant punishment in NBA history, docking the Clippers five first-round draft picks, fining owner Steve Ballmer $30 million, suspending Ballmer for one year, suspending Gillian Zucker, the president of business operations, for one year, suspending Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations, for six months.
All of this in connection with the investigation into cap circumvention when it comes to Kawhi Leonard.
And make no mistake, this is the NBA calling the Clippers cheaters.
This is Wachtell Lipton, the investigative attorneys that spent a year looking into this, saying that the Clippers are liars, calling them as much in so many words in this 35-page, investigation.
So I've, I've spent, the better part of the day talking to different people around the league, and a few takeaways that I have, on this.
One is that there's not a lot of surprise that the NBA came down with this kind of severe punishment.
If for no other reason, then this report made it almost impossible for them not to.
I mean, Wachtell Lipton lays out some pretty compelling evidence that the Clippers did indeed funnel a significant amount of money to Kawhi Leonard through multiple different companies.
Four different companies, according to this report, were involved in this cap circumvention scheme, that resulted in Kawhi Leonard getting a lot of money off the books.
There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, and while there wasn't maybe one smoking gun, there were a lot of smoldering guns out there that made it impossible for the NBA to ignore.
So it, it wasn't a surprise that the NBA came down hard on the Clippers.
What did surprise some of the people that I talked to was just how hard that Adam Silver came down on Steve Ballmer.
Now, Steve Ballmer is a very influential figure within the league.
He is a powerful figure in the league.
He is the richest owner in the NBA, one of the richest men in the world.
He is heavily involved in a lot of key committees, within the NBA, so he carries a big stick.
And there, there was some thought, or at least a belief among a lot of people I talked to over the last few weeks, that the NBA would perhaps try to find a way to keep Steve Ballmer away from significant punishment.
Instead, they went the other way and handed out the most serious punishment they could give short of taking the team away from him.
I mean, they, in banning Steve Ballmer, they're telling him that he can't watch Clippers games in the building that he owns.
He can't be involved in the day-to-day of the Clippers.
He can't be involved, on the board of governors or any committees within the NBA.
And, you know, f- for a billionaire, that's the one thing that serves as a pretty significant punishment.
So, the surprise was, amongst the people I talked to, that the NBA came down as hard as they did, on Steve Ballmer.
Now, will the Clippers get any of their draft picks back?
That's another question that came up amongst the people that I talk.
If you remember, back in 2000, the NBA issued a similar punishment to the Minnesota Timberwolves, took five draft picks away.
Subsequently, they wound up giving two of those draft picks back, and that was because the Clippers, were on their best behavior.
Or sorry, the, so the Timberwolves were on their best behavior.
So the NBA rewarded them for that.
I don't see that happening in this situation because the Clippers do not seem like they're gonna take this punishment lightly.
The statements that were, they released, both through the team and in the letter to Adam Silver, seem to suggest, that they are gonna fight this as much as they can.
Now, I'm not exactly sure what avenues they're going to have to potentially be successful.
There is no arbitration that they can go to.
They can theoretically take the NBA to court, but courts tend to allow private companies to resolve their differences internally, and the NBA's got a system where they deal with situations like that.
Moreover, the statement that the Clippers issued was pretty ridiculous on multiple levels.
I mean, they criticized the reporting of Pablo Torre and tried to diminish it by suggesting it came from a podcaster and saying it was podcasting allegations, which feels like it might have been written by somebody from, you know, Boomer generation.
It just, it didn't, it, it didn't make a lot of sense to read something like that.
They, they whined about not getting any notice from the NBA, when it came to the release of this punishment.
They claimed that Steve Ballmer's reputation has been irrevocably damaged.
They said that Ballmer has paid $50 million over the course of this investigation and suggested that if you committed $50 million to investigate other teams, you would find, similar stuff.
So none of the, the, the, the ways the Clippers are behaving suggest that the NBA's gonna be inclined at all to, give them any of these draft picks back.
Which brings me to my last point, something else I've been talking to teams about.
Will Steve Ballmer sell the Clippers?
Steve Ballmer bought the Clippers about, 13 years ago for $2 billion, a big number back then.
Well, even now, with the Clippers being something of a distressed asset, he can get at least 3X that.
He can maybe even get 4X that.
You throw in the fact that he owns the building, you might be talking $10 billion, $12 billion overall for that package.
That's a pretty good return on your investment.
Steve Ballmer loves owning the team, loves being involved in the NBA, but he's 70 years old, and does he want to stick around as this team goes through what's going to be an incredibly painful rebuild?
Like, there is not a pathway for this team to be competitive for the better part of the next 10 years.
They don't have any draft picks of their own, first-round draft picks, through 2034.
Now, maybe that gets adjusted when, the Kawhi Leonard, situation with Toronto gets resolved.
Maybe they get a couple of picks out of, out of that deal.
But they just don't have a pathway to be successful.
Does Ballmer wanna stick around for that long and be part of that kind of rebuild, or does he wanna be part of a situation where the fan base is probably going to blame him for the predicament that they're in?
Because it all starts up there at the top.
And then, and I don't think they're gonna be successful, you know, with this, you know, with, with their efforts to get this overturned or reduced, if for no other reason than the guy involved in it, Kawhi Leonard, seems perfectly willing to take his punishment.
Kawhi Leonard didn't cop to anything in his statement after the fact, but he did say, you know, I, I guess, I'm paraphrasing, but, "I guess, you know, people involved in my inner circle did some things wrong.
I'm ready to move on, and I can't wait to be in Toronto."
Like, that's not exactly united front with the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard.
Does Steve Ballmer wanna stick around in that type of situation over the next year?
That is gonna be something that bears watching.
