LA Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank watches in the first half against the Sacramento Kings at Intuit Dome.
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
The Los Angeles Clippers have been the talk of basketball, and maybe even the world of sports, over the past week as they were punished for salary cap circumvention that involved Kawhi Leonard. The league suspended Steve Ballmer from all league and team activities for a year, and Gillian Zucker was suspended without pay for one year.
Leonard will have to pay $700,000 in restitution, and his uncle, Dennis Robertson, is banned from business with the NBA for five years.
To finish it off, Lawrence Frank was suspended without pay for six months. Speaking of Frank, it was a rumor earlier this year that he was being sneaky, this time when he was the senior manager for Indiana basketball. If there's one thing that fans know about the program is the late Bobby Knight's rant about being tired of losing to Purdue.
In a story written by Doug Haller of The Athletic, he spoke with several people about who they thought may have recorded the rant. Some suspected that it was Frank because they believed he was one of the few who had the heart to do so.
According to Frank himself, he had nothing to do with it.
“What I would tell you is if you wrote that you’d be dead-a– wrong,” Frank said. “That rumor is completely false. I didn’t record any locker room conversation. I had no involvement in it.”
Of course, Frank could say that he didn't do it just to save face, and nobody knows for sure if he had a hand in the recording.
With the latest news coming out about the Clippers and the league's findings, it can be hard to put it past Frank.