The defense of the owner of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard Court Courtiving Salary and ApproDction Scandulation “No Show” was “plausible denial”. Ballmer said he was “dupped” like other investors When he invested $ 50 million in the aspiration of the Green Bank Company (a company that had become a 300 million dollar team sponsor in 2021, but which is now bankrupt with its CEO guilty of fraud). Ballmer noted that the Clippers ended their sponsor relationship with the aspiration after having failed on his obligations, and said that he and the team knew nothing about the approval agreement of Leonard $ 48 million with the aspiration (28 million dollars in cash, the rest in stock) other than it existed. Ballmer vehemently denied the accusation according to which the Clippers used the approval of Leonard’s aspiration to bypass the NBA’s salary ceiling.
This argument becomes more and more difficult to believe.
After a detailed initial report came, a second of the PaboT Pablo Torre Forty Out (which broke the story initially) that The owner of the Clippers minority, Dennis Wong, invested $ 2 million in the aspiration at the end of 2022 – When the company failed and had difficulty paying payroll – and a week later, Leonard won a lagging behind the $ 1.75 million quarterly approval.
Now comes a report that Ballmer made a second investment of $ 10 million in aspiration in March 2023, although it was clear at the time that the company failed and was heading for bankruptcy. The report comes from Mike Vorkunov to athletics.
In March 2023, the owner of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, invested nearly $ 10 million in the aspiration of the financial and sustainable services company, according to legal documents examined by athletics and corroborated by a former suction manager …
Ballmer’s investment in 2023 was part of a fundraiser composed almost entirely of previous suction investors, Wong being the only exception. The company hoped to collect $ 75 million in fresh money, but has reached nearly $ 9 million.
What is not known is when the payments on Leonard’s approval stopped. He is a creditor of the bankruptcy of the aspiration, looking for $ 7 million that he is still due.
Ballmer and The Clippers did not comment on the last allegations, but their defense is probably the same: Ballmer made a personal investment (and not a big for Ballmer, which, according to Forbes, was worth 153 billion dollars), in the hope of supporting the company and recovering its initial investment, that it had nothing to do with Leonard.
This last report is another wave in the tsunami of evidence that the clippers used the aspiration to channel additional money in Leonard outside of his standard contract – perhaps these are all circumstantial evidence, at least what we see publicly, but it is not difficult to connect these points. These are short and straight lines between these points.
The NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Wednesday that the burden of proof was on the League – who hired a law firm to investigate as a third neutral part – and that he “would be reluctant to act if there was somehow only a simple appearance of irregularity”.
It seems more than an appearance now, the buzz in the circles of the league is that many owners feel the same thing, which means that the money will have to bring the hammer back to the mowers (probably taking the future draft choices in the first round, bringing the contract of the mower to 7.5 million dollars, although the last is different).
The official NBA survey is underway and will probably take place for a while.
