NBA Commissioner Adam Silver talked to the media about Steve Ballmer’s situation at the conclusion of a Board of Governors meeting two weeks ago in New York. Silver was asked what the other billionaires thought about the Ballmer news. Silver’s answer: He told them there would be an investigation and then “maybe I cut off any further conversations and said, let’s all withhold judgment.”
In 2014, as Wachtell lawyers looked into Donald Sterling, though, Silver’s tone was sour. “Other news,” Silver said at a press conference in Memphis, “is unfortunately overshadowing the great play on the court.” Silver noted that the audio posted by TMZ “is truly offensive and disturbing.” Silver called the situation “unfair to the Clippers players and coaches.” Players, he noted, had expressed “grave concerns.”
In 2014, Adam Silver said “all members of the NBA family should be afforded due process and a fair opportunity to present their side of any controversy,” but in the Sterling case, he tacked on “which is why I’m not yet prepared to discuss any potential sanctions against Donald Sterling. We will, however, move extraordinarily quickly in our investigation. In the meantime, Mr. Sterling has agreed that he will not attend his playoff game tomorrow in Golden State.”
Silver had not yet authenticated the voice on the tape. Perhaps Sterling had done nothing wrong at all! But punishments were mentioned in public, and Sterling would not attend his own team’s playoff game, just in case he ended up being guilty.
The tone is different this time around.
Pablo Torre has outlined a damning series of transactions, large amounts of money moved from A to B to Kawhi. Pablo has, on camera, records of the transactions, and narration from people involved.
There seems to be little question, in this Ballmer case, that real things happened. Ballmer’s public defense, in public so far, has not been that he didn’t do these deals. It’s that he was duped.
Nevertheless, commissioner Silver has taken a Ballmer-friendly tone.
“I thought of something that Adam Silver said last week,” said Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption. “He said the burden of proof is not on the Clippers to establish their innocence. It’s on the league to establish their guilt, if there is guilt. And I get that, he did say that they’re innocent until proven guilty. That is the American judicial system, and that’s fine. But the NBA is not the FBI, OK? I wonder about how aggressive they’re going to be in conducting this investigation, because they have interest in this, and it just seems to me that Adam Silver would like to see all of this go away.”
In this 2025 case, Silver says “I would be reluctant to act if there was sort of a mere appearance of impropriety.” Then he adds that “the public at times reaches conclusions that later turn out to be completely false.” Silver also notes that “no one certainly around the league is suggesting an overreaction on the part of the league to a set of allegations and nothing else right now.”
Allegations and nothing else? Sounds like someone might want to re-listen to those podcasts.
Pablo establishes in the first episode that Aspiration paid Kawhi $28 million for doing no work at all. Kawhi’s cash income, according to one of Pablo’s sources from the Aspiration finance department, was more than four times every other Aspiration celebrity marketing deal combined, even though the firm had A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., and Drake involved. And Kawhi never lifted a finger to earn it.
The CBA evidently makes proving this kind of infraction easy: “...such an agreement with a sponsor or business partner or third party may be inferred” the document says, where the “compensation from the sponsor or business partner or third party is substantially in excess of the fair market value of any services to be rendered by the player.”
“May be inferred,” seems to expose the weakness of Silver’s saying he’d be reluctant to act at the mere appearance of impropriety.
The following section of the CBA says: “A violation of Section 2(a) or 2(b) above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including, but not limited to, evidence that a Player Contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained.”
Either Pablo’s sources are part of an incredible conspiracy, faking documents and presenting actors to testify, or we’re already there. The money evidently moved in ways that offend the CBA Silver and his team so carefully negotiated with the Players Association.
I am open-minded and hopeful that the Wachtel investigation will shine new light. But the last time they did this, they interviewed a zillion people and essentially ended up confirming, with minor wrinkles, what Baxter Holmes had already reported about Robert Sarver. With what’s public today, it’s hard to see how the NBA could both follow its own rules and let Ballmer off the hook.
At some point, the conversation moves to punishment.
Asked what penalties the league can assess in this situation, Silver told reporters “my powers are very broad.” But as the CBA lays out the penalties, and they seem disappointingly confined:
The NBA can suspend Ballmer.
The NBA can fine the team a whoop-de-damn-do amount of $7.5 million. It’s plenty of money, but if Google is right when it says Ballmer is worth $156 billion, that’s less than a half of a percent of his net worth.
Silver can take Clippers’ draft picks—but the Clippers are already a very-large-market team slated to be sad for a fan-punishing amount of time because of the extraordinary number of draft picks and swaps already traded away. This team being unwatchable for a decade hurts the league, its TV partners, and Los Angeles.
The NBA can void or change Kawhi Leonard’s contract. But as Kawhi makes a huge amount of money, and is getting older and is often injured, that might help the Clippers by freeing up money to rebuild.
It’s not elucidated in the CBA, but let’s assume that the league, or the board of governors, can also force a sale of the Clippers like they did with Sterling.
That last one is the nuclear option, and probably beyond consideration.
But in this exact situation—hear me out—it’s the elegant move. Done correctly, it generates billions for the league, addresses PR concerns, and has the potential to please even Mark Cuban. Bear with me, it’s time to get creative. Hell yes, I’m proposing a backroom deal as punishment for a backroom deal.
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