2025-26 NBA | Page 6 | Syracusefan.com
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2025-26 NBA

Day2 said:
Then why didn’t she leave this job she didn’t need? The argument is that her dad knew it was a sinking ship when he invested the money and did it anyway. Why didn’t she hop off?
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maybe she actually wanted to try and help turn things around. She was not likely motivated by money obviously and given her background one can see that money is likely not something she needs. Maybe she actually believed in the cause. I dont know. thats is different though than forking over millions and millions of more dollars into it
 
The argument for Ballmer is he was an investor in the company, the company was in bad shape, the company went around looking to raise more money, and he (along with other investors) put more money into the company to try and save it. That's totally plausible, it happens all the time. Rich people make lots of investments in startup companies and try to hit a home run. An additional $10 million investment from a guy like Steve Ballmer is like literal couch cushion money. (For context; the guy makes about $1.1 billion a year purely in dividends from his MSFT stock)

And hey! Maybe he really did just give them more money to funnel to Kawhi. Also totally plausible.

To me, the real issue would be that since Aspiration had other sham endorsement deals with celebs where the celebs donated money and then Aspiration then paid them a little bit more (booking the donation as revenue and hiding the expense of the endorsement deal) that its totally possible they had a similar deal with Kawhi, in which case there wouldnt really be any circumvention (there would be fraud!) . If so, there should be evidence Kawhi gave them money. If there isn't, then it just looks like Aspiration paid the guy $28 million to do nothing and got...nothing out of it? That seems petty bad!
 
Knicks411 said:
The argument for Ballmer is he was an investor in the company, the company was in bad shape, the company went around looking to raise more money, and he (along with other investors) put more money into the company to try and save it. That's totally plausible, it happens all the time. Rich people make lots of investments in startup companies and try to hit a home run. An additional $10 million investment from a guy like Steve Ballmer is like literal couch cushion money. (For context; the guy makes about $1.1 billion a year purely in dividends from his MSFT stock)

And hey! Maybe he really did just give them more money to funnel to Kawhi. Also totally plausible.

To me, the real issue would be that since Aspiration had other sham endorsement deals with celebs where the celebs donated money and then Aspiration then paid them a little bit more (booking the donation as revenue and hiding the expense of the endorsement deal) that its totally possible they had a similar deal with Kawhi, in which case there wouldnt really be any circumvention (there would be fraud!) . If so, there should be evidence Kawhi gave them money. If there isn't, then it just looks like Aspiration paid the guy $28 million to do nothing and got...nothing out of it? That seems petty bad!
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As long as there are multiple possibilities, it’s hard to envision the Clippers getting penalized. Maybe a fine. Maybe Leonard gets fined. Or Uncle Dennis gets banned.

In Sanberg’s view, he was getting value. He had a $300 million sponsorship deal with the Clippers and was taking care of their biggest star. Could have been something he used to scam more people.
 
STEVEHOLT said:
maybe she actually wanted to try and help turn things around. She was not likely motivated by money obviously and given her background one can see that money is likely not something she needs. Maybe she actually believed in the cause. I dont know. thats is different though than forking over millions and millions of more dollars into it
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If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be easier to get her dad to invest under false pretenses? She wouldn’t have to know about any of it.
 
Day2 said:
As long as there are multiple possibilities, it’s hard to envision the Clippers getting penalized. Maybe a fine. Maybe Leonard gets fined. Or Uncle Dennis gets banned.

In Sanberg’s view, he was getting value. He had a $300 million sponsorship deal with the Clippers and was taking care of their biggest star. Could have been something he used to scam more people.
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The cba gives the commissioner a lot of leeway in a situation like this, circumstantial Evidence is theoretically enough to lay the hammer down. Whether or not that happens in reality is a different story.
 
Knicks411 said:
The cba gives the commissioner a lot of leeway in a situation like this, circumstantial Evidence is theoretically enough to lay the hammer down. Whether or not that happens in reality is a different story.
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Silver indicated circumstantial evidence won’t be enough in this case.
 
Knicks411 said:
The cba gives the commissioner a lot of leeway in a situation like this, circumstantial Evidence is theoretically enough to lay the hammer down. Whether or not that happens in reality is a different story.
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The league won't have the stones to go after Balmer unless the evidence gets much firmer.
 
Day2 said:
Silver indicated circumstantial evidence won’t be enough in this case.
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Yup I was going to mention that but I was posting on my phone and didnt want to type out all the words. Let's see what the league/Pablo can dig up
 
Cubans story never made any sense to me. These people are going to spend $4 billion to buy the team but let the old guy run it?
 
Day2 said:
He still owns 35% of the team.
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Sure but I mean he sold the controlling stake. People don’t usually buy the controlling stake in a company only to let the old guy run it.
 
Knicks411 said:
Sure but I mean he sold the controlling stake. People don’t usually buy the controlling stake in a company only to let the old guy run it.
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I see what you mean. It sounds like he had an agreement with the new owners regardless, which the NBA removed from the contract. There had to have been a reason for that.
 
Knicks411 said:
Sure but I mean he sold the controlling stake. People don’t usually buy the controlling stake in a company only to let the old guy run it.
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Its not totally uncommon in business especially smaller ones - certainly not the norm by any means though.

Usually its because the former owner wanted to liquidate their investment in his business, and the new owners want to retain their knowledge and leadership. So the agreement is they stay on to manage and lead the company and it works for both..... until it often stops working because there is a strategic disagreement between what the old guy wants to do and the controlling stake wants to do.

In this case, its quite plausible the new ownership may want Cuban due to his NBA knowledge to still be the face and head decision maker of the basketball team. It works, until they really disagree on something.
 
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Knicks411 said:
The argument for Ballmer is he was an investor in the company, the company was in bad shape, the company went around looking to raise more money, and he (along with other investors) put more money into the company to try and save it. That's totally plausible, it happens all the time. Rich people make lots of investments in startup companies and try to hit a home run. An additional $10 million investment from a guy like Steve Ballmer is like literal couch cushion money. (For context; the guy makes about $1.1 billion a year purely in dividends from his MSFT stock)

And hey! Maybe he really did just give them more money to funnel to Kawhi. Also totally plausible.

To me, the real issue would be that since Aspiration had other sham endorsement deals with celebs where the celebs donated money and then Aspiration then paid them a little bit more (booking the donation as revenue and hiding the expense of the endorsement deal) that its totally possible they had a similar deal with Kawhi, in which case there wouldnt really be any circumvention (there would be fraud!) . If so, there should be evidence Kawhi gave them money. If there isn't, then it just looks like Aspiration paid the guy $28 million to do nothing and got...nothing out of it? That seems petty bad!
Expand...

I'm not making any conclusion on the Ballmer case. Could be legit **** ery, may not be legit. Furthermore, the NBA and its owners may have various agendas on how they want to proceed. I don't trust Uncle Dennis, he's slimy, so he could be behind demanding things... or he may not be, So I'm not getting invested.

That being said the first thing to look at if I was investigating would be the following:

What is the share value of Ballmer's investment relative to others who invested right at the same time.
- if Ballmer invested as part of a private placement where multiple investors get shares at the exact same $x price, its hard to implicate Ballmer in any shenanigans. That pretty much clears him or makes him difficult to implicate.
- Or if he made a one off investment whereby the share value he was receiving was close to others around that time, again its hard to implicate him.

Things would get shady if Ballmer is making investments at different $ values than others. If he is putting money and getting shares at $5/share, while everybody else is getting in at $2/share, one has to wonder why he is getting so few shares for the equity he is putting in. Arguable the excess "equity" he is putting in is being used for other purporses.

Alternatively if these were investments with a convertible debt element that is unique to Ballmer as an investor, it could also be shadier.

I don't know the answers to any of the above. I know in Canada some private placements and private financings get publicly filed for certain reasons but not all. So who knows how easy it is to find or get access to that info.
 
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jncuse said:
Its not totally uncommon in business especially smaller ones - certainly not the norm by any means though.

Usually its because the former owner wanted to liquidate their investment in his business, and the new owners want to retain their knowledge and leadership. So the agreement is they stay on to manage and lead the company and it works for both... until it often stops working because there is a strategic disagreement between what the old guy wants to do and the controlling stake wants to do.

In this case, its quite plausible the new ownership may want Cuban due to his NBA knowledge to still be the face and head decision maker of the basketball team. It works, until they really disagree on something.
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Right, the bolded is the key. Which really means the new guy is in charge.

To me, Cuban comes off naive in this whole thing; just the idea that someone would pay a $4 billion valuation to buy an NBA team (which is a vanity project to an extent in a way that a regular manufacturing business or something isnt) but wouldn't want to, you know, run the team.
 

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