(09-07-2025, 06:12 PM)SleepingHero Wrote: @Fullcourtpass
Voiding Kawhi Leonards contract with the Clippers is on the table, per
@sam_amick
“If they can prove that Kawhi was incentivized to not only stay, but to sign team-friendly deals that gave them more flexibility”
Yes, the CBA can allow a contract to be voided should they find evidence.
The "if" that he says needs to be proved is the hard part. When Kawhi got this deal, he did not sign a team-friendly deal that gave them more flexibility. Instead, he got a max deal that paid every dollar possible under the CBA.
In his latest extension, it was also a max deal, but the raises were not max raises. That wasn't signed until 2024, however, about 2 years after the "endorsement" deal, and it was his first one signed under the 2023 CBA with its hard cap consequences (which would offer a very real alternate reason why KL might have been willing to moderate his pay).
In any event, if there's a connection, it sure looks like it might be hard to validate if there's not direct witnesses (instead of "anonymous sources" who won't speak on the record) and emails or other docs supporting the claim that Ballmer/LAC were directly orchestrating all this. The optics are bad, to be sure. But I don't think they have a smoking gun, at least not yet.
The NBA is taking it seriously, however. It's not being ignored or swept under the rug.
Per the Athletic, the NBA has hired law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct its investigation. That's the same law firm the NBA has used to investigate two previous NBA owners: the 2014 allegations against then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling for racially insensitive comments that forced Sterling to sell the team to Ballmer, and the 2022 investigation of then-Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver of several inappropriate remarks and behavior, for which Sarver was suspended for one season, and chose to sell the team in response.
One other thing worth noting: Ballmer's interviews sound like a guy who works hard to follow the straight and narrow, but his track record has left question marks. In 2015 he was caught by the NBA doing this sort of illegal side deal, when trying to re-sign De Andre Jordan in 2015, and in the original signing of Kawhi in 2019, there were all sorts of allegations that arose and had to be investigated because of Kawhi's uncle chasing side benefits off the books as part of him signing.