League still silent on Clippers?
Rich and powerful
I’m a Blazers fan. There was a lot to love about Tuesday’s win over the Clippers in Los Angeles. New Blazers honcho Tom Dundon was in attendance. I only know a little about him, but I know his presence meant good riddance to the creepy Jeffrey Epstein-tied Paul Allen and his also-creepy sister.
When her former-Navy-Seal bodyguard accused Jody of purchasing form-fitting swimmies and insisting on a fashion show, her lawyers responded that it was all in good fun. She also appears to have stolen penguin bones from Antarctica. So (even though Bill Gates’ daughter is in the new ownership group) it’s a win that’s over.
The Blazers played elite defense, hit some 3s, won convincingly, and improved their odds at a good seed in the Play-in Tournament. No one got hurt. For a rebuilding team, that counts as the biggest win in five years.
But increasingly, being an NBA fan means turning a blind eye to the reality that in 2026, the richest people do whatever they want.
As someone who wrote a book about cutting-edge injury prevention, I watch every game knowing that many NBA billionaires have sent their children to train at the cutting edge movement lab P3, but not their NBA players. More players might be out there if we did things better. This game was missing Shaedon Sharpe, Damian Lillard, and any Clipper who can play center.
Earlier in the day, on a radio show they asked me why it was taking so long for the NBA to investigate the Aspiration scandal centering around Steve Ballmer and the Clippers’ acquisition of Kawhi Leonard. It’s an amazing question. When players break the rules the NBA has their punishment set in a matter of minutes, hours, or at most days.
But when billionaires do it … wow is it slow. If the NBA’s salary cap rules had been followed, Kawhi might not be a Clipper at all. Kawhi joined the Clippers in 2019. Talk about slow enforcement!
The NBA did their own investigation, and failed to see any of the many red flags. They needed Pablo Torre and his podcast to map it out for them. They’ve allegedly had their second investigation up and running basically all season. And? There’s Ballmer sitting on the baseline. This season he has shared those seats with a procession of scandal-tainted figures, including Bill Gates, Dennis Wong, and Irving Azoff.
Pablo’s radical concept is that the rules should apply to everyone; the NBA’s response seems to be along the lines of “we’ll see about that.”
With about nine minutes left in the second quarter, the NBC cameras happened to focus on the Clippers’ VISIT RWANDA jersey patch.
Rwanda is ruled by a brutal dictator who has had some policy successes and the most incredible PR. For whatever reason, Paul Kagame has been particularly embraced by the NBA.
The Clippers’ reported $300 million jersey patch deal was negotiated by a team based in the United Arab Emirates, a country which has its own logo on the NBA referees’ shirts. The UAE is a global crossroads of money laundering, arms deals, and offshore Russian money, with a history steeped in sex trafficking and BCCI.
The kinds of people who are nowadays going to great lengths to downplay their ties to Jeffrey Epstein sure do seem to love Kagame:
Here are CD-Roms of Bill Clinton photos from his Rwanda trip with Jeffrey Epstein.
Tony Blair wrote one of the great articles promoting Kagame’s work, which was noted in Jeffrey Epstein’s inbox.
Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative is funded in part by what used to be called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, before Bill and Melinda got divorced in part because of Gates’ Epstein ties.
Michael Milken’s Milken Institute has played a leading role in developing Rwanda’s capital markets.
And Epstein’s lawyers maintain that Epstein himself knew Kagame. The 23-page letter that Epstein attorneys Gerald Lefcourt and Alan Dershowitz wrote to prosecutors in 2007, arguing for leniency for Epstein, says: “On a trip to Rwanda to inspect the genocide camps, Mr. Epstein approached the President of Rwanda and offered to help identify and then to fund two worthy Rwandan students to earn undergraduate degrees in the United States.”
So “VISIT RWANDA” was on Bennedict Mathurin’s jersey as he tumbled into the front row, knocking the famous hat off a figure from the world of fashion-or-something: Jimmy Goldstein.
In a move I now regret, I had Goldstein on TrueHoop TV once or twice ages ago. I used to think what most people watching on TV think: he’s a funky figure from another world, part of the NBA circus. Harmless.
But I’ve been around long enough to see him differently now. To most of the NBA, the point of Jimmy is that, like Epstein, Goldstein travels with women, usually models, who are a fraction his age. The way Goldstein treats women has raised alarm bells for the NBA in the past.
But even after #MeToo and the Epstein files, Goldstein seems beyond welcome. Mathurin hadn’t finished checking on Goldstein before an arena staffer came over to do the same. “The ball always finds energy,” declared NBC’s Noah Eagle. “And in this case, the ball always finds the hat of Jimmy Goldstein.”
Derek Fisher declared Goldstein “tough.”
“Oh yeah, he is,” continued Eagle. “And Bennedict Mathurin recognized it and said, ‘Mr. Goldstein, you’re too much of a legend. I apologize for even entering your space.’”
I’m not the first to suggest Goldstein has Epstein vibes. Someone, presumably a model, emailed Jeffrey Epstein in 2013: “Im in la right now. Shooting at James Goldstein house. So funny. Of course h= is here as well. Just checking us out. Im sure u know him.”
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