In his first public comments about the Los Angeles Clippers' alleged salary-cap circumvention involving star forward Kawhi Leonard and so-called "green bank" Aspiration, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that he and the league must "let the investigation run its course." He also said that, if the investigation finds that cap circumvention did occur, he would have the ability to impose significant punishments.
"My powers are very broad," Silver said. "I have a full range of financial penalties, drat picks, suspensions, et cetera. I have very broad powers in these situations."
Before last Wednesday, when "Pablo Torre Finds Out" reported that Leonard had secretly signed a $28 million contract for a no-show job with Aspiration, the commissioner had "never heard of the company," Silver said, and "never heard a whiff of anything around an endorsement deal with Kawhi or anything around an engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers, so it was all new to me." Rick Buchanan, the NBA's general counsel and chief compliance officer, had a conversation with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, and "we quickly concluded this was something that rose to the level that necessitates an investigation, in fact one that's done outside of our office," Silver said. The league enlisted the New York-based law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to oversee the investigation.
After the podcast went live, the Boston Sports Journal and Pablo Torre Finds Out reported that, in addition to the $28 million endorsement deal that required nothing of Leonard, he signed another contract with Aspiration for $20 million in stock. The Clippers have denied any wrongdoing, and last week Ballmer flew to Bristol, Connecticut for an ESPN interview in which he said that he had "no control" of Aspiration, a "fraudulent company" that independently "went off and made a deal" with Leonard after the Clippers had introduced the two parties, as they are allowed to do. Ballmer said that his $50 million investment in Aspiration gave him an ownership stake of less than 3% and he didn't know "why they might have done anything they did, let alone the specific contract with Kawhi."
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Silver, speaking to reporters in New York after a board of governors meeting, simultaneously emphasized that the league takes the allegations seriously -- "we brought in the big guns on the investigation," he said -- and has not come to any conclusions.
"The public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false," Silver said. "I'd want anybody else in the situation Mr. Ballmer is in now, or Kawhi Leonard for that matter, to be treated the same way I would want to be treated if people were making allegations against me." He then said that the NBA is "not a court of law at the end, of the day, either," and has "broad authority to look at all information and to weigh it accordingly."
There is a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that states that the league can infer cap circumvention when a team sponsor, business partner or third party pays a player "substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player for such sponsor or business partner or third party." One might take this to mean that, based on information that has already been reported, the Clippers have to prove to investigators that they didn't circumvent the salary cap. When Silver was asked, however, where the burden of proof lies and whether or not the league needs "hard" evidence against the Clippers, he said that the burden is on the league because it is "the party that is, in essence, bringing those charges."
Silver would be "reluctant to act," he said, based on the "mere appearance of impropriety." He added that "the goal of the investigation is to find out if there really was impropriety."
In the course of that same answer, though, Silver implied that the distinction between "hard evidence" and "circumstantial evidence" is blurry. "I was only quasi-joking with someone earlier that, when people talk about a smoking gun, that's obviously circumstantial," he said. "It means the gun is still smoking, it must have recently fired." This is all to say that, if you are trying to parse Silver's words for clues about how this story will end, good luck. At this stage, the NBA's stance seems simple: The league will not hesitate to discipline anyone that circumvents the salary cap, but, for now at least, it has not found that the Clippers and Leonard have done so.
"I'm reserving judgment because I don't know the facts here," Silver said. "I don't know what Kawhi was paid. I don't know what he did or didn't do. We'll leave all that for the investigation."