Pablo Torre

And it turns out a lot didn't add up for anybody.

Yes.

You're so friendly.

What a friendly, friendly giant.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the parlor game that I find absolutely fascinating because Steve Ballmer, to reiterate, has, A, denied any wrongdoing, didn't know about any of this, says it's provably false.

I await the proof, frankly.

But nonetheless, Steve Ballmer is the richest owner, not just in the NBA, but all of sports, right?

He's the good guy who saved the Clippers from noted racist Donald Sterling.

He has Barack Obama sitting courtside.

All of this stuff means he's both powerful and a good spokesperson for the league that wants to be on the good guy side of things.

But yet you have this other dynamic where Steve Ballmer, who paid for the Intuit dome with personal private money, no public funds, right?

Great on him.

He has spent so much money to expand his front office because that's uncapped.

Here you have the problem of why Adam Silver called in 2019, according to the athletic report on the investigation, a cardinal sin of alleged caps or convention in which the NBA per that report had outlined possible consequences.

forfeiture of draft picks, million dollar plus fines, at the most extreme end, the nullification of contracts for the players whose salaries were circumvented.

So I go back to history and I'm like, what's the last time this happened?

And the only analogous case in terms of documentation

And salary caps for a convention was the Minnesota Timberwolves, Joe Smith, which I don't know if anybody in the container even remembers, but Joe Smith and Glenn Taylor, the owner of the T-Wolves, had worked out a side deal, and it was written on paper because they were afraid Glenn Taylor was going to die before the completion of that contract.

It's a total side fascinating story.