As Adam Silver flexes go, this was about as bold as it gets.
The 63-year-old NBA commissioner who came up under the fire-breathing David Stern, and who has chosen diplomacy over dictatorship since taking over in 2014, doesn’t typically stick his chest out when discussing such matters of governance.
But during the Wednesday news conference in which he addressed the LA Clippers saga for the first time, discussing the salary cap circumvention accusations that were revealed a week before by the “Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast,” he was asked to explain the scope of his power as it related to the penalties that might ultimately be levied here.
Silver’s skeptics within the league, the ones who surely doubt whether he’ll bring the hammer here if it’s warranted, might have assumed that he would duck the question entirely. And they would have been wrong.
“My powers are very broad,” Silver said in response to the question from Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo! Sports. “The full range of financial penalties: Draft picks (seized), suspensions, etc. I have very broad powers in these situations.”
Adam Silver knows better than anyone that this situation poses a serious risk to consumer faith in the NBA. (David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)
In terms of setting a tough tone at the start of this process, and making it crystal clear that he’ll do what’s necessary if the evidence demands it, this was the sort of signal that needed to be sent. While Silver made it clear throughout that he’s “a big believer in due process and fairness,” all while referencing the importance of the independent investigation that will be conducted by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, it was still something to see him highlight the reach of his role in such an unapologetic way. And considering the mixed-emotions response that is so prevalent around the league, with some owners already pushing for severe punishments and others advocating for more restraint, this is the line he’ll have to walk in these coming weeks and (likely) months.
As Silver knows better than anyone, this sticky situation poses a serious risk to consumer faith in the Association. That was surely the message that came his way from the long line of owners who, according to league sources, called him to express their concerns in the days after all these sordid facts were revealed.
“What’s being said to me (by owners) is a reservation of judgment,” Silver insisted when asked about the mood of the Board of Governors’ room on this topic. “People recognize that that’s what you have a league office for. That’s what you have a commissioner for, someone who is independent of the teams.
“On one hand, of course, I work collectively for the 30 governors, but I have an independent obligation to be the steward of the brand and the integrity of this league. …I cut off any further conversations (with owners) and said, you know, let’s all withhold judgment. Let’s do this investigation, and then we’ll come back to you in terms of our findings.”
The notion of a man of Ballmer’s wealth — $153 billion; most in professional sports and top 10 on the planet — being able to procure and retain elite talent through surreptitious ways is the worst nightmare for fans of the league’s other 29 teams. More specifically, it undermines the very ethos of the strict salary-cap system that is, in essence, a hard cap intended to level the playing field and get the NBA that much closer to the NFL’s competitive model that has worked so well.
So no, it’s not a crucial consideration that Ballmer is the anti-Donald Sterling: Widely respected among his peers, willing to help build the league’s brand all along the way, and known to be among the owners that Silver leaned on the most from a leadership standpoint. Case in point, Ballmer has long held a position as the league’s audit committee chair on the Board of Governors and, per a source with knowledge of the situation, remains in that role.
“They love Ballmer,” one high-ranking team executive said.
It also shouldn’t matter that All-Star weekend is at Ballmer’s personally-financed building, the Clippers’ Intuit Dome, in February, inconvenient and uncomfortable though that might be (among those who believe Silver won’t come down hard on the Clippers, this political factor is popular to highlight). The only thing that truly matters, and which simply must be established by the time the investigation is done, is whether Ballmer or any Clippers officials knowingly played a part in these deals that filled Leonard’s pockets.
Is Ballmer’s claim that he was “conned” by the Aspiration company that he invested $50 million with, did a 23-year, $300 million arena sponsorship deal with, and which turned out to be fraudulent, true? Was Leonard’s infamous uncle and lead representative, Dennis Robertson, possibly acting on his own when he orchestrated the two no-show endorsement agreements with Aspiration that combined for a total ($48 million, which is curiously close to the amount of Ballmer’s investment)? It could certainly help the Clippers’ cause if Robertson decided to back Ballmer’s defense with a public statement of his own, but he is proving to be just as quiet publicly as his understated nephew during this tumultuous time.
Even beyond the defiant public statements from the Clippers, including the initial messaging that these allegations were “provably false,” the private messaging has also been one of innocence and confidence. They already have all their papers in order, so to speak, because of the Department of Justice investigation that preceded this one and led to co-founder Joe Sanberg agreeing to plead guilty of defrauding investors of $248 million. If the focus of the investigation was solely on the Aspiration accusations — as opposed to the broader business relationship with Leonard that has caused backlash among stakeholders and fans alike — there has been a sense from the Clippers’ side that they should be in the clear.
Alas, it’s not.
Like it or not, the Clippers know that the scope of this story goes much wider than that. It dates back to the summer of 2019, when those lavish requests from Robertson during the free agency process (and the subsequent league investigation) laid the groundwork for suspicions that never truly died. This subplot reared its head again this week, when the Toronto Star’s Bruce Arthur revealed even more details about Robertson’s requests of the Raptors that summer.
The most problematic detail, among many, was that Robertson not only told the Raptors “they needed to match at least $10 million per year in extra sponsorships income,” which would be a clear violation of the league’s collective bargaining agreement if granted, but that Leonard “didn’t want to do anything for the money.” The fact that Robertson reportedly asked for team assistance to pursue no-show endorsement deals at that time, only to find them later with Aspiration during Leonard’s Clippers tenure, sets the kind of backdrop that only hurts their case at the moment. As an aside, a Lakers team source said Robertson did not request no-show endorsement deals in his free agency discussions with their team (he did, among other audacious things, ask for a specific amount of off-court endorsement money that could be promised in advance).
So, will Silver wind up exercising all that power he has in his employ? We won’t know for quite some time now, more than likely. But he was the one who deemed salary cap circumvention the “cardinal sin” when complaints like these first arose six summers ago, and who has gone to such great lengths to ensure that these sorts of improprieties are litigated out of his league.
He had no problem acknowledging the hammer that’s sitting right there. It’s just a matter of whether he’ll need it.
“To suggest that there is a stigma around (cheating) would almost be an understatement,” Silver said. “I mean, the amount of attention that this has commanded, certainly no one out there is saying, ‘Oh, this is just business as usual in the NBA; What’s the big deal?’ …In fact, their suggestion is (that) this is highly aberrant behavior, and which is why, in response to a podcast and some additional media reports, we brought in the big guns on the investigation.”
(Top photo of Adam Silver: Franck Fife / AFP via Getty Images)
